Wall nearest the entrance, several =inscriptions=, among which notice the frequency of the Labarum, with the two birds pecking at it,—a common Early Christian Symbol. Below them, good early =sarcophagus=. On its end, remote from window, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, a traditional representation, of which an extremely rude barbaric degradation may be noticed, high up, near the door which leads into the Della Robbia room, adjacent. In Early Christian art certain subjects from the Old and New Testaments became conventionalised, and were repeated on numerous works; of which this scene of Daniel is an example. Observe here that Old Testament subjects are frequent; while Madonnas are rare, and saints almost unknown. Further on, on the ground, sarcophagus representing =Christ with the Twelve Apostles=. The treatment here, in spite of slight Oriental tendencies (compare the Mithra reliefs) is on the whole purely classical. Now, the great interest in this room is to watch the way in which classical styles and figures passed slowly from pagan types into Christian, and again from the debased classical types of the later Empire into those of Romanesque or Gothic barbarity. As an example of this surviving pagan element, see, on the wall to the R of this sarcophagus, =Elijah taken up to Heaven= in a chariot of fire, and leaving his mantle to Elisha. Here, the Jordan is represented, in truly pagan style, by a river-god reclining on an urn and holding water-weeds. Such river-gods were the conventional classical way of representing a river (see the Tiber here, and the Nile of the Vatican, reproduced in the Vestibule): and Christian artists at first so represented the Jordan, as in the Baptism of Christ (in mosaic) in the Baptistery of the Orthodox at Ravenna. Above the sarcophagus of Christ and the Twelve Apostles is an extremely beautiful =altar-front= from the abbey of St. Denis (read label) with a cross and palm trees, the True Vine interlacing it, and the characteristic wave-pattern, which you may note on many other works in this room. This is the most beautiful piece of early Romanesque or intermediate Christian carving in this collection. In the centre of the Elijah wall, below, a sarcophagus with a very Oriental figure of the =Good Shepherd=—a frequent early Christian device. Compare this figure with the plaster cast of a similar statue from Rome, near the Della Robbia doorway. Compare the marked Orientalism of face, form, and foot-gear, with the Mithra reliefs. Above it, Scenes from the Life of Christ:—Blessing the Children, Christ and Peter, the Woman of Samaria, etc.; treatment quite classical. Still higher, sarcophagus-front of Christ and the Twelve Apostles; workmanship becoming decadent; architecture, classical in the centre, passing at the sides into early Romanesque or Constantinian and Diocletianesque, as in some of the other examples in this room. L of it, Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac, with rather late architecture.