from which idolatry afterwards arose; and his celebrated daughter-in-law, Semiramis, queen of Babylon, in the building of that city, introduced among the ornaments there coloured representations from life of divers kinds of animals, as well as of herself and of her husband Ninus, with the bronze statues of her father, her mother-in-law, and her great-grandmother, as Diodorus relates, calling them Jove, Juno, and Ops--Greek names, which did not then exist. It was, perhaps, from these statues that the Chaldeans learned to make the images of their gods. It is recorded in Genesis how 150 years later, when Rachel was fleeing from Mesopotamia with her husband Jacob, she stole the idols of her father Laban. Nor were the Chaldeans singular in making statues, for the Egyptians also had theirs, devoting great pains to those arts, as is shown by the marvellous tomb of that king of remote antiquity, Osimandyas, described at length by Diodorus, and, as the severe command of Moses proves, when, on leaving Egypt, he gave orders that no images should be made to God, upon pain of death. Moses also, after having ascended the Mount, and having found a golden calf manufactured and adored by his people, was greatly troubled at seeing divine honours accorded to the image of a beast; so that he not only broke it to powder, but, in the punishment of so great a fault, caused the Levites to put to death many thousands of the false Israelites who had committed this idolatry. But as the sin consisted in adoring idols and not in making them, it is written in Exodus that the art of design and of making statues, not only in marble but in all kinds of metal, was given by the mouth of God himself to Bezaleel, of the tribe of Judah, and to Aholiab, of the tribe of Dan, who made the two cherubim of gold, the candles, the veil, and the borders of the sacerdotal vestments, together with a number of other beautiful things in the tabernacle, for no other purpose than that people should put them on for their own adornment and delight. From the things seen before the flood, the pride of man found the means to make statues of those who wished their fame in the world to be immortal; and the Greeks, who give a different origin to this, say that the Ethiopians found the first statues, according to Diodorus, the Egyptians imitated these, while the Greeks followed the Egyptians. From this time until Homer's day it is clear that sculpture and painting were perfect, as we may see from the description of Achilles' shield by that divine poet, who represents it with such skill that the image of it is presented to our minds as clearly as if we had seen the thing itself. Lactantius Firmianus attributes the credit of the invention to Prometheus, who like God formed the human form out of dust. But according to Pliny this art was introduced into Egypt by Gyges of Lydia, who on seeing his shadow cast by the fire, at once drew a representation of himself on the wall with a piece of coal.