In the island of Sardinia have been found numerous intaglios under the form of scarabs, they were apparently used as signets. The under parts are incised with Egyptian, Assyro-Chaldean or Persian subjects. In the necropolis of Tharros, an early Phœnician colony situated near the present Torre di San Giovanni di Sinis, have been found more than 600 scarabs ornamented with Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian subjects;[115] and one might believe a colony which came from Egypt or Assyria settled there. These scarabs are usually cut in dark green jasper, some are made of cornelian, others of a glass-paste, rarely in amethyst or sardonyx. The work is variable sometimes carefully done, but none of the scarabs have the clearness of those found in Egypt, nor of the Assyro-Chaldean of Asia. Most of these scarabs, which are always made in nearly the same form, were mounted, some in gold and others in silver; also sometimes in other metals which the corrosions from age had already caused to disappear when they were found. These intaglios can be divided from the nature of the subjects into three varieties. The first those imitating the Egyptian; the second, the Assyro-Chaldean; and the third, the Persian. All these scarabs are of Phœnician manufacture, but they were probably made in Sardinia, as the remains of the workshops and materials used in making them, have been found there. They do not go back of 500 B.C. The Phœnicians in their colonies, showed no more originality in their work than they did in the mother country, and have been only the intermediary agents between the civilization of the Orient and that of the Occident. This people even counterfeited Egyptian manufactures and antiquities in order to sell them, and the borrowings in their own religion show, they were governed more by the gains of trade than the desires or depths of piety. There are a number in the Cesnola collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There is a magnificent scarab in green jasper in the British Museum, but where it was produced is not known. It appears to be from the chisel of an Egyptian artist. The base however has been engraved by another; its subject is clearly Assyrian, in the style of work done with the drill, by the artists of Calah. In the field of the signet is a symbol unknown to Assyria or Egypt, below this is evidently the Egyptian _ankh_ or _crux ansata_ and below this is the inscription: "(Signet) of Hodo, the Scribe." This a beautiful specimen of the intelligent work of the Phœnicians. FOOTNOTES: [113] Such contracts written on terra cotta, have been found sealed with impressions of the finger nails on the margin of the terra cotta before it was baked; others have had something as to the act done, referred to on the margins, written in Phœnician letters. There has been found an example of this as early as 783 B.C. [114] Menant. _Les Pierres Gravées de la Haute-Asie_, p. 211 _et seq._ [115] Crespi, _Catalogo_, p. 138, No. 1. X.