from the same place. The engraved oblong mother-of-pearl plaques would appear to have been used for the decoration of the handles of knives or daggers. [Illustration: FIG. 80.] [Illustration: FIG. 81. (Musée du Louvre)] [Illustration: FIG. 82. Cat., pp. 393, 401.] [Illustration: FIG. 83. (After Layard.)] In Fig. 83 we have one of the best preserved and most interesting specimens of later shell-work in Mesopotamia. This fragment was discovered at Warka (Erech), but is clearly Assyrian in style: the elaborately caparisoned horses remind us strikingly of the horses sculptured in relief on the palace walls of Ashur-naṣir-pal at Nimrûd (Calah), while the floral decoration betrays Egyptian influence and recalls the carved ivories which were found amid the débris of that king’s palace. The ruined mounds of Assyria herself have yielded but few specimens of the shell-engraver’s art, and those that have been recovered are for the most part Phœnician in workmanship and Egyptian in conception, sphinxes and lotus-plants assuming the most prominent part in the decoration. The discovery of engraved shells of apparently a yet later date was among the many interesting results attending the German excavations at Babylon; a number of these shells were found on the floor of a building of Nebuchadnezzar, some of which showed Egyptian influence and were decorated with lotus ornaments. Shell was thus used for various decorative purposes, but in early times it sometimes served as a material for the fashioning of even so utilitarian an object as a seal, as we have already had occasion to remark. (_B_) IVORY-WORK [Illustration: FIG. 84.]