The industries of saddle-making and working in leather, which are still so flourishing among the Turks, Persians, and Arabs, can be traced back, according to tradition, to the Assyrians who raised them to the dignity of an art. Notice the harness of the king’s chariot horses. The leather straps, embroidered with red and yellow threads, form variegated trimmings. Sometimes a leather band, crossing the chest and fastened on the withers, is decorated with a double row of tassels, and finished off by bells. Another embroidered band descends from the top of the head, and sustains under the jaw a tassel formed of three tufts, one above the other, also adorned with bells. Above the head rises a superb plume with a triple crest. The head-piece is adorned with rosettes, and above the horse’s eyes there is a band formed of overlapping scales, joined to the head-stall by a double tassel. Everything, including even the strap which holds the bit, and that passed under the nostrils, is relieved by rosettes and brilliant trimmings, and probably also by metal disks, perhaps of gold and silver. § V. ORNAMENTS AND CYLINDRICAL SEALS. The excavations in Chaldæa and Assyria have, down to this day, scarcely furnished us with any ornaments of gold or silver. However, we know from the inscriptions that these metals occupied the first rank, and were abundantly employed in the ornaments of the Ninevites and Babylonians. The tombs of primitive Chaldæa contained bronze bracelets and ear-rings of the simplest form. These are circular rings, sometimes thinner at the two ends, which are both pointed. At Khorsabad Botta found necklaces formed of precious stones pierced with holes, which were spheroidal in form or elongated like olives; these balls of marble, jasper, chalcedony, amethyst, lapis lazuli, were sometimes mixed with cylinders or other seals of conical shape. At Kouyunjik a necklace was discovered, formed of little golden balls alternating with little cylinders of the same metal. A bronze bracelet at the Louvre has lions’ heads at the two extremities. [Illustration: Fig. 114.--Assyrian deities carried in procession. Bas-relief (after Layard).]