There are numbers of instances of impressions from small devices, cyphers and letterings cut on blocks of wood or soft metal and made on pieces of pottery. These stamps are the forerunners of the types with which our modern books are printed. Among these impressions those which are made on the tablets or cylinders of baked clay, many of which have been found among the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, are by far the earliest. They are covered with inscriptions printed in cuneiform characters, and contain records of sales of slaves, loans of money, sales of land and the like, and on the larger bricks and cylinders are longer inscriptions of greater interest, among them stories of the Flood. Many of these records are contained within an outer shell of the same shape, in which is either a short title with seal or even a duplicate inscription. These outer cases are the earliest examples of anything in the shape of a cover or binding over written or printed matter. Some of the cuneiform bricks are said to date from the third thousand years B.C., and many of the later examples belonged to the libraries of Sennacherib and Ashurhani-Pal, Kings of Assyria. [Illustration: FIG. 66.--Assyrian tablet of clay, impressed with cuneiform inscription. With outer case.] Similar bricks, impressed with inscriptions, have been found in North America. The letters on these bricks, tablets, or cylinders were printed letter by letter by hand upon the clay when it was wet and soft, without ink, then the brick was dried either in an oven or in the sun, so that this earliest method of printing is diametrically opposite to the modern process, in which case the letters are inked and kept rigid, while the paper or other substance on which the impression is to come is lightly pressed upon them. In the eleventh century the Chinese made types of clay or porcelain, and set them up in a frame and printed from them, and afterwards they cut the original types in wood and made impressions, or stereotypes from them in porcelain, and when this had been baked they cast leaden types from it. Chinese and Japanese letters are always most decorative, whether in the cursive or square seal characters. Babylonian and Assyrian tablets, cylinders, and cones of baked clay impressed with cuneiform inscriptions have proved themselves to be the most permanent and reliable form of record that has yet been invented by mankind. The hammer alone seems to be able to destroy them. The most precious faience in the world is that variously known as “Oiron,” “Henri Deux,” “Diane de Poictiers,” or “Faience de Saint Porchaire.” There are fewer than seventy pieces of this ware known, and each example is a masterpiece, no two being alike. It is said to consist mainly of clay found at Saint Porchaire, a village in Poiton, and not far from Oiron, and at one of these places it was probably made. [Illustration: FIG. 67.--Italian book stamps impressed upon the faience de St. Porchaire.]