A proof that genuine antiques can still be picked up in our day in the East is given by Doctor Ward, who said that he bought in Bagdad a lovely gold ring set with a cameo on which was inscribed in Greek characters “Protarchus made it.” When, on visiting London, he told this to Doctor Murray, of the British Museum, the latter gave full expression to his scepticism, saying, “There are plenty of those signed things.” But when the gem itself was shown him, he exclaimed, “This is jolly genuine,” and he had it photographed for his book.[7] A very interesting find was made in 1893, during the excavations conducted under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania at Nippur. In the northwestern part of the mound, as many as 730 inscribed tablets were unearthed, which had been carefully stored in a chamber measuring eighteen by nine feet. These tablets, when deciphered, proved that the chamber was the record room of the sons of a certain Murashu, Bêlhâtin and Bêl-nadin-shumu, whose activity seems to have been analogous to that of our counsellors-at-law. Many of the tablets bear records concerning the members of the family personally, but in other cases their services appear to have been claimed in various legal difficulties. One of the most curious of these ancient documents is a contract dated the eighth of the month of Elul, in the year 429 B.C. (thirty-fifth year of Artaxerxes I of Persia), in which Bêl-ah-iddina, Bêlshumu, and Hâtin give the following guarantee to Bêl-nadin-shumu, son of Murashu: As concerns the gold ring set with an emerald, we guarantee that in twenty years the emerald will not fall out of the gold ring. If the emerald should fall out of the gold ring before the end of twenty years, Bêl-ah-iddina, Bêlshumu, and Hâtin shall pay unto Bêl-nadin-shumu an indemnity of ten mana of silver. The record bears the names of seven witnesses and that of the scribe, and is signed with the thumb-nail marks of those who guaranteed the jewel, “instead of their seals.”[8] It seems that we have here the names of the members of a firm of jewellers doing business in Nippur, in the fifth century before Christ, and evidently they were quite confident that the work they sold was well and solidly done, for the indemnity represented a sum equivalent to about $400 in our money. This must have been the estimated value of the emerald. As the stone was probably not very large, this particular gem must have been highly valued at that time, a fact due, in all likelihood, to the special talismanic virtues attributed to it.