CHAPTER LVI. 
GEOMETRICAL DESIGNS. 
Among cylinders, as in pottery, the geometrical designs represent the coarser 
and less skilful workmanship, but we can not certainly say the oldest. They prob- 
ably belong to rude people, rather than to the more ancient. Indeed they are not 
found in the early Chaldean, but only in Assyria or the regions about. ‘This might 
be suspected from the material, which is usually serpentine or a black slaty rock. 
The cross-lines and angles can hardly be called ornamental, and only occasionally 
do they take, as in figs. 1044, 1047, any claim to symmetry or beauty. 
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1039 








1037 il a i Nai 1 (10) ake 
Fig. 1037 gives us Werte acute angles, separated and flanked above and 
below by a complex of lines. The three dots in each angle hardly represent the 
Moon-god Sin (Thirty), but merely fill up the space. Somewhat similar are fig. 
1038 and fig. 1039, but here the angles are obtuse. In fig. 1040 we have a very 
simple set of alternating angles. 
In some of these cylinders the geometrical figure is balanced or reinforced 
by crude animal forms, as if the untrained artist were trying his ’prentice hand at 
drawing life. Such an example appears in fig. 1041. This cylinder is in two regis- 
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