[Illustration: _Photo Mansel. British Museum_ GLAZED BRICK, WITH FIGURE OF AN ASSYRIAN KING POURING OUT A LIBATION ON HIS RETURN FROM A HUNT] Painted pottery has been similarly found in Assyria: at Nimrûd Sir Henry Layard’s men discovered various fragments of pottery which apparently belonged to the covers of jars; they were decorated with the spiral design, also honeysuckles, cones and tulips, in black on a pale yellow ground. Prehistoric pottery has moreover been found in the course of the recent excavations at Ashur, the clay vessels in question being decorated with red and black geometrical designs. Clay slipper-shaped coffins were also sometimes coloured; many of the sarcophagi discovered at Nippur were covered with a blue glaze, but they belonged apparently to the Parthian period. Glazed sarcophagi were likewise found at Warka (i.e. the ancient Erech) as well as at the city of Babylon, though they also were the products of a late period. Various other terra-cotta objects were not infrequently coated with a vitreous glaze, the colour of the enamel being usually blue or green. Colour was not only used in Babylonia however for decorating buildings, pots and figures, but also apparently for the adornment of the human body, for the German excavations at Fâra revealed the presence of alabaster colour-dishes in the graves, traces of the colour in some cases still remaining. The colours are black, yellow, light green and light red. According to the analysis of the colours of the Babylonian bricks conducted by Sir Henry De la Becke and Dr. Percy, quoted by Layard,[128] “the yellow is an antimoniate of lead, from which tin has also been extracted, called Naples yellow, supposed to be comparatively a modern discovery, though also used by the Egyptians. The white is an enamel or glaze of oxide of tin, an invention attributed to the Arabs of Northern Africa in the eighth or ninth century. The blue glaze is a copper, contains no cobalt, but some lead; a curious fact, as this mineral was not added as a colouring material, but to facilitate the fusion of the glaze, to which use, it was believed, lead had only been turned in comparatively modern times. The red is a sub-oxide of copper.” CHAPTER IX—CYLINDER-SEALS[129] Of the smaller relics of Babylonian and Assyrian antiquity there are none so numerous or so pregnant with interest as the engraved seals which kings and commoners of all periods alike possessed. The universality of their usage in later times is attested by Herodotus (I, 195), who tells us that in his day everyone in Babylonia carried a seal as well as a walking-stick, while abundant evidence of their general use in early times is afforded by the vast quantity of seals discovered in the course of the excavations.