art may be said to close with the rise of Assyria in the fourteenth century B.C.; and though archaic Babylonian intaglios continued to be imported into the West down to the time of the Romans, it is not likely that they were imitated by Western artists after the latter had become acquainted with better and more attractive models. I think, therefore, that the two rings may be assigned to the period of archaic Babylonian power in western Asia, a period that begins with the victories of Naram-Sin in Palestine in the seventeenth century B.C. or earlier, and ends with the conquest of Babylon by the Assyrians and the establishment of Assyrian supremacy. This is also the period to which I am inclined to refer the introduction among the Phoenicians and Greeks of the column and of certain geometrical patterns, which had their first home in Babylonia.[35] The lentoid gems with their rude intaglios, found in the islands, on the site of Heraeum, in the tombs of Mykenae and elsewhere, belong to the same age, and point back to the loamy plain of Babylonia where stone was rare and precious, and whence, consequently, the art of gem-cutting was spread through the ancient world. We can thus understand the existence of artistic designs and other evidences of civilizing influence among a people who were not yet acquainted with the use of iron. The early Chaldean Empire, in spite of the culture to which it had attained, was still in the bronze age; iron was almost unknown, and its tools and weapons were fashioned of stone, bone, and bronze. Had the Greeks and the Phoenicians before them received their first lessons in culture from Egypt or from Asia Minor, where the Khalybes and other allied tribes had worked in iron from time immemorial, they would probably have received this metal at the same time. But neither at Hissarlik nor at Mykenae is there any trace of an iron age.