182 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
dots. In fig. 502a the four seated figures have their hands lifted, as in other cases. 
The border line below is the same as we have seen in fig. 502. In fig. 504 we seem 
to have four figures seated before a fifth, and with them a number of vases. Fig. 
505 belongs to this same type, but is of serpentine, and in place of being pierced 


S val . 
498 
it has two holes at one end connected below so as to make a loop and hold a string. 
There are a seated figure and an ibex, and other objects not easily determined. 
No. 508 seems to carry two spiders; while fig. 507 gives two scorpions and three 
serpents. In fig. 506 we again have two seated figures, but also two standing figures. 
We now revert to the period to which these cylinders belong. 
There is"so little art, and that of the 
~( coarsest kind, about these cylinders that it 
— is not easy to draw evidence from it. The 
animals are of the most formal kind and 
they suggest a decaying rather than a nascent art. The abundant use of the boute- 
rolle, as previously stated, suggests a late period. The white marble does not abso- 
lutely exclude the earliest date, for we meet with a few large cylinders of white 
marble of an archaic period, and now and then one of unusual thickness, as in 
fig. 71, which is doubtless archaic, of white marble, and of a thickness (length 28 
mm., diameter width 22 mm.) nearly proportionate to that of the cylinders we are 
considering; but the marble seems to be of a different texture. 


SOL 
The shrines, or doorways, on these cylinders are not like those which we have 
found on other archaic cylinders. ‘Those are much more simple; these seem to 
suggest, perhaps, a door with a recess in the wall. The door itself is framed in two 
or three similar outlines, and they quite suggest the huts or shrines from Latium, 
seen in figs. 509, 510. Indeed, the hut shown in fig. 509 1s almost of the shape of 
the cylinder shown in fig. 486. 
