BIBLIOGRAPHY. 15 
In the Académie des Inscriptions, N. S., t. xv1, part 2, 1846, M. Raoul-Rochette 
had a paper, “De la Croix ansée,” accompanied by a plate with eight cylinders. 
In t. xv, part 2, 1848, he published another paper “Sur |’Hercule Assyrien et 
Phénicien considéré dans ses rapports avec |’Hercule Grecque,” which is illustrated 
with plates, three of which contain 19 cylinders. 
The first important large collection of engravings of cylinders was made by 
A. Cullimore, London, 1843 (n. d., 1848 ?), and published in four successive parts. 
It contained no text whatever, except three pages of autographed list of the cylinders, 
telling their ownership. The cylinders number 174, and are unclassified and rather 
poorly drawn; 114 are credited to the British Museum, 19 to the Imperial Collec- 
tion at Vienna, and all the rest to private persons in Great Britain. 
The importance of this work was soon completely overshadowed by that of 
a much more ambitious work by M. Felix Lajard, published in 1847 by the Imperial 
Press at Paris. This was “Introduction 4 |’Etude du Culte Publique et les Mystéres 
en Orient et en Occident.’’ It is a large folio volume of plates and was followed 
by a stout posthumous octavo volume of text published by the Imperial Press in 
1867. ‘The plates in the first volume number 110, of which 40 contain drawings 
of 276 cylinders, besides numerous engraved cone seals and other objects that 
would illustrate the author’s theory that all these designs had to do with the wor- 
ship of Mithra. The drawings are excellently made in fine outline, enlarged, and 
the value of this collection from every available source can not be overestimated. 
It remained, until the publication of M. de Clercq’s collection, the chief source of 
information on the subject of the cylinders. 
The conclusions of M. Lajard as to the meanings to be attached to the monu- 
ments so carefully collected by him were nothing less than fantastic. He drew 
from these monuments the theory that there were represented the various stages, 
or grades, in the initiation into the Mithraic mysteries. Of these there were, he 
held, twelve grades, that of the Soldier, the Bull, the Lion, the Vulture, the Ostrich, 
the Raven, the Griffin, the Persians, the Sun, the Eagle-Father, the Sparrow- 
Father, and the Father of Fathers. With these were connected various priests, 
priestesses, hierodules, and initiatory ceremonies, which are figured on the seals. 
Wherever a worshiper is led to a god, it is a scene of initiation. ‘This theory had 
considerable vogue, and its influence is seen in the writings even of Meénant and 
other French scholars.* 
The two names of M. Joachim Ménant, Member of the Institut, and M. 
Louis de Clercq, deputy, will always be closely associated on account of the more 
scientific development of the study of the art of the nearer Orient, which we owe 
to the careful and modest scholarship of Ménant and the generous liberality of 
de Clercq, who made, at just the time when it could best be done, a remarkable 
collection of Oriental cylinders and other objects, and put the task of their publi- 
cation into the hands of his friend Ménant. They published under the final date of 
1888, at Paris, a series of forty folio plates containing 461 cylinders belonging to 
de Clercq’s collection, with a full description. Among these are several royal 
cylinders, including that of the Elder Sargon (fig. 26), which is the gem of all col- 

* M. Lajard believed there was an intimate relation between the mysteries of Mithra and those of Mylitta, or Venus; and 
he published two quarto volumes of “ Recherches sur le Culte, les Symboles, les Attributs, et les Monuments figurés de Vénus en 
Orient et en Occident,” of which the volume of text appeared in 1837, while that of plates bears date of 1849. It contains 
eleven cylinders, also to be found in the plates of the “ Culte de Mithra.” 
