SUMERIAN TECHNOLOGY—BOBULA 651 
reliable indices of the changing aspects of art and culture during 
almost three thousand years.” It is characteristic of the inner struc- 
ture of Sumerian society that even the 
slaves, male or female, had their seals, 
Le., they had lost their freedom, but not 
their identity. The idea of printing with 
cylinder seals is essentially identical with 
the principle of the giant cylinders of our 
printing presses: both perform the me- 
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CYC \ chanical reproduction of a pattern. The 
ar IGT history of printing begins with the cylin- 
Ficure 21.—Ram carved of lapis; der seal. 
amulet of Prince Mes-Kalam Dug. 3 
The art of the gem cutters of ancient 
Ur produced artifacts of surprising and, in this field, unsurpassed 
beauty. The sculptors of statues were more handicapped by their 
material; nevertheless, they met the challenge. 
It is from small blocks of the imported stone that Sumerian artists 
carved their statues, impressive portraits of men and women of long 
ago. Quite often a large head sits on a Lilliputian body; there was 
not enough stone to carve whole life-size statues, and the head was 
favored. But some of these statues from the third millennium are 
Ficure 22.—Fragment of soapstone vase, from Nippur. (National Museum, Istanbul.) 
quite realistic and in matter of beauty are above archaic Greek art. 
To mention three examples: the alabaster head in the University of 
Pennsylvania Museum, the Boston head, and the hauntingly beautiful 
“Lady of Warka.” The French orientalist Leon Heuzey (1902) 
compared the art of the Sumerian sculptors with that of their Assyr- 
ian followers, who worked many centuries later. He found that the 
Sumerians surpassed in this respect the later empire builders. 
Sumerian sculpture is characterized by two marks of mastery: work- 
ing im hard stone and working in the round. Heuzey’s judgment is 
