CHAPTER XXXII. 
THE KASSITE CYLINDERS. 
With the introduction of the Kassite dynasty into Babylonia there came in a 
new type of cylinders quite different from those of the two previous periods. In 
the period about Sargon the Elder a large cylinder prevailed, from 3 to 4 cm. in 
length and two-thirds as thick. In the Middle Babylonian period, from the time 
of Gudea, the cylinders were much smaller, seldom reaching 3 cm. in length and 
with the thickness generally about half the length. In the Kassite period there 
was a reversion to the length of the earlier period, but not to its ratio of thickness. 
Thus they were generally 3 to 4 cm. in length, but only 1.5 to 2 cm. in thickness. 
It is true that there are smaller ones, but they are likely to occur in the more unusual 


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agates or jaspers. But these cylinders are particularly notable for their inscriptions, 
which may run to seven or eight lines and which are usually composed of prayers 
to the gods. The space for figures is thus limited, often only a single figure appear- 
ing, or two at the most, a god and a worshiper. But new emblems occur frequently, 
of which the most remarkable is a Greek cross. Few of these cylinders are of any 
special artistic merit, and we begin here to find the use of the wheel, or revolving 
disk, as an instrument of cutting. 
The date of these cylinders is fixed by several royal cylinders of Burnaburiash 
and Kurigalzu, belonging to the Kassite dynasty, three of which we have already seen 
in figures 40, 40a, 41a, and which are here repeated 
(figs. 512, 513, 539). Jo these may be added figs. 514, 
515, which are related to Kassite kings. They date 
from the period of the fourteenth or fifteenth century 
B.C. It is true that the Kassite dynasty began some 
three centuries earlier, but we have no evidence of this “= a EE 
peculiar style before the times of these five cylinders, and it was not till this time 
that we could presume the Egyptian influence to have begun to show itself. Pre- 
viously the Kassite art would hardly have differed from that general in Babylonia. 
We have in Oriental art abundant evidence of the profound influence of the 
Egyptian invasion of Asia, and to this must be attributed much that we have 
been accustomed to call Phenician. These cylinders belong to the usual and 
characteristic type, often a prayer to the god occupying so much space that there is 
room for but a single figure, which may be that of a god, but is usually that of a 
worshiper, whom we may consider to represent the owner of the seal in an attitude 
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