fore-legs being raised preparatory to standing up; these heifers are marvellously life-like and true to nature, and already we seem to see in them the forerunners of those masterpieces of Assyrian art which adorned the palace walls of Ashur-bani-pal. This scene of country life was evidently very popular at this period, it occurs on the little sculptured block seen in Fig. 27, as well as elsewhere. But success in the reproduction of animal life at this epoch seems to have been largely conditioned by the artist’s abstention from trying to depict the animals full-face; when he aspires to the latter the result is amazingly stereotyped and formal, and a comparison between the lion-headed eagles and the lions on the one hand, and these spirited heifers, at once reveals the contrast, as well as the cause of the contrast. The artist himself was evidently conscious of his failure, for he has striven, but it must be admitted without much success, to impart life to his lions and lion-headed eagles by elaborating the wings of the one and the mane of the other by means of an altogether extravagant amount of detailed attention. The inscription round the neck informs us that this vase was dedicated by Entemena, the fourth successor of Ur-Ninâ, to the god Nin-girsu in his temple Eninnu, during the priesthood of one Dudu, whose name also occurs on the little sculptured block (cf. Fig. 27), thus proving the contemporaneity, which the style of art to which the decorations on both conform would have independently led us to infer. But silver sometimes played a subsidiary, though nevertheless from the artistic point of view an essential part in the decoration of metal figures: a good example of the latter is afforded by a bronze figure of a bull, already referred to (cf. Fig. 40, D).