But the practice of making vases of stone did not cease with the decline of Babylonian supremacy; the Assyrians imitated their cultural progenitors in this as in all other matters. The most interesting stone vase belonging to the Assyrian era is that bearing an inscription of Sennacherib (cf. Fig. 91, A). It is a kind of amphora though the two handles are nearly worn away. The shape and proportions of this vase are very artistic, and the curves well rounded off. In general contour it somewhat resembles the little glass vase of Sargon, a yet more remarkable relic of antiquity (cf. Fig. 91, C). Another interesting example of Assyrian stone-ware is seen in Fig. 91, B; the vase, which is decorated round the neck, bears the traces of a well-nigh effaced inscription, and like the small glass vase of this same king is engraved with a small lion. It is shaped differently from most of the stone vases of the period, and has a charm and beauty all its own. Various glass vessels and tubes were recovered from the ruins of Babil, Kouyunjik and elsewhere, but their date is in nearly all cases an uncertain quantity. Assyrian and Babylonian glass would appear to have been made in the ordinary way, i.e. by a mixture of silex or sand with alkalis, while it was fashioned into the required shape by means of a blow-pipe, and finished off with a turning machine, of which the marks are sometimes still visible. This is the case with the little vase of Sargon illustrated above.[152] Stone-ware of the late Babylonian period is well illustrated by the jar-fragment of Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 B.C.) published by W. L. Nash in the _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_ (1910, p. 180). The inscription is very brief and apart from the king’s name only has the numeral “one,” which was probably followed by a measure, but the name of the latter is broken away. This stone jar like the Assyrian jars differs from most of the inscribed vessels of earlier times, which usually bear a dedicatory inscription, while in shape it is not unlike the Assyrian jars seen in Fig. 91. Allusion has elsewhere been made (cf. p. 86) to the marble vase bearing the name of Xerxes in cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics, but a number of similar vases and fragments bearing an inscription of this same king have also been brought to light. One such vase was found by Newton at Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, the fragments of another being found by Loftus at Susa, while a third (cf. Fig. 91, D) recently acquired by the Babylonian Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, is published by Clay in the _Museum Journal_ (1910, I, p. 6). It bears the royal inscription of Xerxes the Great written in four different languages, Persian, Elamite, Babylonian and Egyptian, the last-named being written in the old hieroglyphics, and the other three in cuneiform. The vase measures nine and seven-eighths inches in height, and eight and fifteen-sixteenths inches in diameter.