IV PREFACE. 
But I owe particular thanks to Prof. Ira M. Price, for his labor in translation of 
inscriptions on cylinders and reading the proof of the entire work; and to Professor 
Morris Jastrow, Prof. W. A. V. Jackson, Prof. W. Max Miller, and Dr. Louis H. 
Gray for valuable suggestions and aid; also to Dr. T. G. Pinches, who has given 
his scholarly assistance. I have been much helped by the technical knowledge of 
Mr. George F. Kunz in determining the material of the cylinders; and Mr. Daniel 
Z. Noorian, by his acquaintance with the customs of the Orient and his skilled aid 
in detecting forgeries, has given me much valuable aid. 
In editing a public or private collection, it would be most desirable to have 
all cylinders represented by a phototype process, as in the case with the magnificent 
collection of M. de Clercq edited by M. Ménant, and that of Mr. Morgan edited 
by myself; but this is not possible in such a work as this, which depends on all sorts 
of casts, in plaster, hard or soft wax, or gutta-percha, or even on a paper squeeze 
or the impression on a tablet. The only practicable way was to have the impres- 
sions drawn by an artist under my direction; and while this method has its disad- 
vantages, it yet makes more distinct, especially with worn cylinders, the outlines of 
the figures. I have thus followed the examples of Lajard in his magnificent “ Culte 
de Mithra” and of Ménant in his “ Glyptique Orientale.” 
My purpose has been, passing by the Egyptian cylinders, as already sufficiently 
given to the public, to provide as complete a monograph as possible of the cylinder 
art of Western Asia, from Persia to Palestine and Cyprus, and to classify the cylin- 
ders by countries and subjects. I have especially desired to study the forms under 
which the gods and their emblems were worshiped, so that we may add pictorial 
representations to the literary material which a host of scholars have gathered. 
While I have given my best efforts to make this work as nearly complete as possible, 
yet I know there will be many points brought out which will give further sugges- 
tion to learned Assyriologists, who will find from the texts light which has escaped 
me. [| may also venture to hope that the interrupted and fragmentary way in which 
I have been compelled to pursue this work has not too much prevented that con- 
sistent and harmonious discussion of the many interrelated branches of the subject 
which is so essential. While I have done what I could, much may have escaped me of 
some importance in the fields of special study which reach from the plains of Elam 
and the later investigations by M. de Morgan, to the Cretan discoveries of Mr. Evans. 
The reader will observe that in a certain number of cases a cylinder has been 
repeated in a succeeding chapter for comparison with those there considered. 
This is true especially of Chapter 111, where the cylinders which we can date by the 
names of kings inscribed on them are duplicated in the chapters where their designs 
place them. Also in Chapter Lxvi, on “Altars and Sacrifices,” it seemed well to 
gather a number of cylinders previously considered. The author regrets that the 
numbering of the figures is not quite consistent, but the process of revision has com- 
pelled occasional deviation from a regular sequence. ; . 
Such as it is, I commit this work to the judgment of scholars. Of this I am 
satisfied, that the thousands of cylinders that have passed under my eye have 
included the main Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, and Syro-Hittite types, and to 
no one will further explanations and better identifications of the gods and their 
emblems be more welcome than to myself. 
