A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY. 597 



as factories. We have a number of certificates of delivery which show 

 how the raw materials were delivered into the industrial establish- 

 ments and how the finished products were delivered from them. These 

 indicate how long the laborers worked and what amount of wages they 

 received. As soon as the products of the trades came into demand as 

 objects of luxury, craftsmanship touched the boundaries of art. The 

 conditions in question are similar to those which existed in ancient 

 Egypt. Artizanship is a refinement of what is commonly called trade 

 work, which yet can not attain individuality. 



The fine arts were mainly employed upon the royal edifices. Almost 

 every kind of technique was practiced there — metal work (especially 

 embossed work), metal casting, ivory and wood carving, and stone and 

 tile mosaic. The technical perfection of the last was especially remark- 

 able. One is with reason astonished at the blues, partly metallic colors, 

 partly lapis lazuli, which were burnt in upon the tiles for mosaics. The 

 bronze doors of Balawat are a splendid relic of the artistic skill of 

 former times. In considering the stone carving it is striking in how 

 masterly a way the hardest stones were subdued in the most remote 

 times, and that, too, with tools with which modern artists can not work 

 at all. At that time there was as yet no steel. Even the hard basalt 

 was worked with chisels of tempered bronze. Among the minor arts, 

 that of the lapidary is especially to be noticed. We find quite delight- 

 ful engravings upon the hardest gems. Here, again, is such a technical 

 perfection as could be developed only by the practice of centuries, and 

 which later became lost, so that similar noticeable works could first 

 be produced again only in Italian workshops. Wood carving was 

 employed in the construction of thrones and of little Yenus figures in 

 wood. A similar highly developed art appears also in ivory work. 

 Ivory was a much-prized article, for the sake of which the kings often 

 undertook military expeditions, since the elephants were already exter- 

 minated on the Euphrates and the Tigris toward the beginning of the 

 tenth century B. C. The ceramics, for which the most excellent raw 

 material was present in all Babylonia, were also remarkable. The clay, 

 which was already washed smooth by the rivers, was ground up so fine 

 that clay writing tablets, for instance, were made of such superlative 

 quality that they could be covered with writing so small as hardly to 

 be read without a microscope. 



The Babylonians are our predecessors in the art of printing. We 

 have matrices in clay and in wood. The writing to be multiplied was 

 first carved in wood, then cast in clay, and could then be imprinted 

 upon any number of clay tablets. 



A highly developed branch of industry was the art of weaving and 

 embroidery, although we have no specimen of the material. We can 

 form an idea of this art from the representations of the Egyptians and 

 the Babylonians. The Babylonians understood how to weave very thin 

 fabrics as well as the thickest. I myself have seen a clay tablet in Lon- 



