Unfortunately the site of Eridu has not yet been systematically excavated. Once again the archæological materials for settling an archæological question are not at hand, and we are thrown back upon an examination of the picture-writing from which the cuneiform characters are derived. Here the evidence on the whole may be said to be in favour of tradition. It is true that there is no special ideograph for “river,” but there is one for “the deep,” and “the spirit of the deep” must have been a chief object of worship at the time when the primitive hieroglyphs were first formed. The “ship,” too, played a prominent part in the life of their inventors, and the picture of it represented it as moved not by oars but by a sail.[78] The flowering reed was equally prominent, and was even used to symbolize what stood firm and established.[79] Houses, fortresses, temples, and cities were built of brick, and vases were moulded out of clay.[80] The tablet, rectangular or square, was already employed for the purpose of writing, but as it was provided with a handle or a couple of rings at the top, I think it was more probably of wood than of clay. The sheep, goat and ox were domesticated,[81] and so also probably was the ass,[82] and corn was cultivated in the fields. The symbol of the “earth” appears to have been the picture of an island of circular or elliptical form. Among trees the cedar was well known. All this points to the sea-coast of Babylonia as the district in which its civilization first arose. But on the other hand, there is the fact that “country” and “mountain” are alike represented by the picture of a mountainous land. There is also the fact that the land in which the inventors of the hieroglyphs lived was one in which copper, gold and silver were procurable--perhaps also meteoric iron; and the further fact that hard wood was sufficiently plentiful for tools or weapons to have been made of it before the employment of metal. That they should have been made of wood, however, and not of stone, is a strong argument in favour of the Babylonian coast.