12 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
London “A Dissertation on the Newly Discovered Babylonian Inscriptions,” in 
which (p. 40) he figures three cylinders, two of which were copied from Tassie and 
Raspe, and a third was sent him by Dr. Miinter from Copenhagen. This last is an 
interesting one, as it shows the goat-fish, or capricorn, with vase and streams. Dr. 
Hager was taken up wholly with the inscriptions, especially on those brought lately 
to England from Babylon by order of the East India Company. 
In 1802 Dr. Friedrich Miinter published in Copenhagen his “Versuch tber 
die Keilformigen Inschriften,” in which he gave copies of four cylinders, two of 
them after Tassie and Raspe, and one of them the same cylinder, with the goat- 
fish, which Dr. Hager had published the previous year. ‘[wenty-five years later 
the same author returned to the subject and published his “Religion der Baby- 
lonier,’’ Copenhagen, 1827, in which he gave figures of fifteen cylinders, besides 
cone seals, and one of the so-called “boundary-stones,”’ or kudurrus. ‘These cylin- 
ders are taken from Caylus’s “Recueil,” Tassie and Raspe’s “Catalogue,” * and 
also the “Fundgruben des Orients,” Rich’s “Second Memoir,”’ Murr’s “ Journal 
fiir Kunst,” and Dorow’s “Morgenlandische Alterthtimer,”’ 1, which had mean- 
while appeared. Minter was a careful and intelligent student of these objects, and 
secured plaster casts of the 59 seals, mostly cylinders, bought from the Rich collec- 
tion by the British Museum, and of others given by Rich to the Vienna Museum. 
Casts of the collection of cylinders made by Captain Lockett, of London, when with 
Mr. Rich in Baghdad, seem to have been in Miinter’s hands (p. 95). 
In 1803 was published at Helmstadt D. A. A. H. Lichtenstein’s “’Tentamen 
Palezographiz Assyrio-Persice,”’ which was a futile attempt, long pursued, to 
decipher the cuneiform inscriptions. On plate viii he gives the design of an interest- 
ing cylinder of late Assyrian period, often copied from him.* 
In the years 1809-18 appeared in two languages at Vienna six successive 
folio volumes of Von Hammer’s “Fundgruben des Orients,” also called “Mines 
de l’Orient.’”’? Of this series two volumes are important for the first contributions 
of C. J. Rich and the publication of his cylinders. His first “Memoir on the Ruins 
of Babylon” was published in vol. m1, pp. 129-162 (1813), and was followed in 
the next Heft by a further article entitled “Continuation of the Memoir on the 
Antiquities of Babylon.” ‘This is accompanied by a plate with 8 cylinders, well 
chosen for their importance, for they include the seated Ishtar (fig. 407), that of a 
lion with her paw on a bull’s shoulder, attacked by a man with a spear (fig. 1068), 
and that with the streams about a kneeling figure under a solar disk (fig. 655). 
In vol. 1v, p. 86, under the title “ Babylonische Talismane,” is a short notice 
of the cylinders figured on two plates from the Rich collection. These were given 
partly to Erzherzog Johann for the Johanneum in Graz,f and partly to Graf 
Rzewusky and Herr von Hammer. One of these plates (p. 86) contains 14 cylin- 
ders, and the other, following an article by von Hammer, “Ueber die Talismane 
der Muslimen,” contains 15 more of the Rich cylinders. 
In 1818 Claudius James Rich, who had been for some years British Resident 
at Baghdad and had devoted himself to topographical and archeological investiga- 
tion, published in London his “Second Memoir on Babylon,” the substance of 
which had appeared just before in “Fundgruben des Orients.” In it he gives 

* For its history see “ Tentamen,” p. 145. 
{ See Fischer and Wiedermann’s Catalogue of the Johanneum “ Talismane.” 
