4 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
the middle of the cylinder. Even when this archaic type becomes quite thick it 
is likely to retain the two registers and the separating lines. Judging from the 
peculiarities in the art, the drawing of the human faces, and the other designs, they 
appear to belong to a period which Heuzey and Hilprecht have made 4000 and more 
B.C.; that is, as early as the time of the most ancient kings of Nippur and Lagash. 
Herodotus tells us (Book 1, 195) that every Babylonian gentleman had his 
seal. “Every one carries a seal and a walking-stick.” It was worn suspended 
by a cord about the neck or on the wrist. It was not mounted on a swivel; but a 
single or double wire of copper, 
or occasionally gold or silver, 
and in later times iron, was put 
through the circular hole with 
which it was pierced longitudi- 
nally. This was clamped at the 
lower end, and bent or doubled 
into a loop at the upper end to 
receive the cord (figs. 19, 194). 
A number of cylinders with such mountings are in the museums. 
The iron has often rusted and split the cylinder, and the copper 
is usually oxidized in good part, but those mounted in gold are of 
course perfectly preserved. We find cases in which a flat plate 
of copper was applied to each end to protect the cylinder, and the 
copper wire was passed double through these plates and clamped at the lower end 
as usual, but against the copper plate, with the loop at the upper end. ‘These are 
not of the older period, when perhaps only the copper wire was used, without any 
cap at the end; or usually, it may be presumed, only a cord was need with no 
metal core or handle. 
Mr. J. Taylor found at Mugheir (Ur) graves with skeletons having cylinders 
on the wrists. He says: 

On the arm is sometimes found an inscribed cylinder of meteoric stone [hematite]. I have 
procured them with the remains of the string still existing, and I always observed that the ends went 
round the wrist. In some cases I have found a second engraved (rudely) but uninscribed cylinder 
of sandstone [?] between the feet. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv, 1855, p. 273. 
Speaking of one burial vault, he says: 
There was, of course, the usual copper bowl (but broken); and a beautifully perfect inscribed 
cylinder of meteoric stone was fastened round the wrist. . . . At its feet was a cylinder, in common 
white sandstone (but much damaged), without an inscription. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 
VOLEXV, 615.55, aDse2 78. 
There were found at Nippur, by the University of Pennsylvania Expedition, 
cylinders with the remains of the string, as I am informed by Mr. D. Z. Noorian, 
one of its members. 
We have evidence in the case of certain cylinders of the Kassite period, as we 
gather from their impressions on tablets, as figured by Clay in his vol. xiv of 
“Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,” p 15, that the ends 
were covered at times with a wide band of gold, very finely embossed with a geo- 
metrical design of chevrons and curves and dots (figs. 20, 21) as elaborate as some 
