III. MINOR SCULPTURE AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS. The Chaldæans could work in bronze as skilfully as in stone. M. de Sarzec has collected some bronze figures which, compared with other monuments already secured, allow us to fix some precise landmarks in the gradual development of the art of casting and chiselling metals in Chaldæa. A certain statuette of a man or woman (fig. 23) may be considered the most rudimentary attempt.[21] It has simply the shape of a cylindrical stem, the upper part of which is furnished with two arms and a human head like the _xoana_ of the Greeks. This head, surmounted by small horns, is strangely barbarous; it recalls the art of the men of the bronze age and the most rustic of the Cypriote terra-cottas. Progress is manifest in other [Illustration: Fig. 24.--Chaldæan statuette (Louvre).] bronzes--separated, perhaps, from the former by several hundred years. These are statuettes which, instead of being fixed on a base, end in a reversed and much elongated cone, which must have served to plunge them into a soft matter such as mortar. One represents a recumbent bull, the other (fig. 24) a kneeling man holding in his hands the base of the cone; he is bearded and covered with the tiara with several pairs of horns, reserved for gods and genii. A third, lastly, is a woman carrying a basket on her head, whose body has remarkably the appearance of an elongated ingot. This canephoros, whose female form is only indicated by the breasts and the width of the hips, leads us naturally to speak of another canephoros (fig. 25), found at Afaj on the Euphrates, bearing the name of the king Kudurmapuk (B.C. 2000). It may be seen by this statuette that the art of working in bronze followed closely the progress of sculpture in stone. Though the head and arms are still the work of half-trained artists, the head is very remarkable; the arch of the eyebrows and the eyes are treated as in the large diorite statues; the hair is completely shaved. The same characters are observed in a remarkable figure of a bearded priest, wearing a tiara of moderate height, dressed in a long tunic with flounced fringes.[22] Here is a mutilated statuette from Tello (fig. 26); it is a god standing on a crouching lion; the head of the roaring beast has a ferocious and natural expression, but the god’s robe is cylindrical, without amplitude and without modelling, and the artist has tried in vain to conceal this stiffness, which betrays his impotence, by engraving the fringes and rosettes of the drapery. Remark that the long hairs of the lion are treated like the woollen shag of the priest’s cap which we examined just now (fig. 15). The animal has very small wings; his forelegs are those of a bull, his hind-legs end in lion’s claws; the study of nature here is perfect, but in those conventional lines which are meant to express the swell of the muscles, we feel the tendency to exaggeration and trivial rudeness which we remarked in the statues.