extinct, in consequence of the impiety of the nation, 200 years before the time at which he was writing.

This invaluable trophy was carried to Rome, together with the other spoils of the Temple. Of the subsequent fate of these treasures there are two opposite accounts; one, that they were conveyed by Genseric, after his sack of Rome, to Carthage, but that the ship containing them was lost on the voyage; the other, and the more probable one, that they had been transferred, long before that time, to Constantinople, and had been deposited by Justinian in the sacristy of Santa Sophia. Hence there is a chance of the gems at least emerging from oblivion, at no distant day, when the dark recesses of the Sultan's treasury shall be rummaged by the Russian heir of the "sick man," whilst he

"Jam circum loculos et claves lætus ovansque
Currit."

"Joyous the long-expected wealth to seize,

Bustles about the money-chests and keys."

What a day of rejoicing, both to archæologists and to the religious world, will the identification of one of these sacred monuments occasion; a contingency by no means to be thought chimerical in an age which has witnessed the resuscitation of Sennacherib's signet, of his drinking cup, and of his wife's portrait.

The consideration of the Babylonian cylinders naturally introduces the subject of the Sassanian seals, or stamps, still

found in large numbers about Bassora and Bagdad, which gradually superseded that most ancient form of the Oriental signet. They are termed Sassanian, from the circumstance of their having come into general use under the revived dynasty of the ancient Achæmenian race, commencing with Ardeschir in the 3rd, and closing with Yezdigerd III. in the 7th century of our era-sovereigns styled Sassanidæ, from Saasaan, the Roman mode of spelling Shaahshaan, "King of Kings," the title in all times assumed by the Persian monarchs, and not, as is absurdly repeated, a family name derived from an imaginary ancestor Sasan.

It

These seals are conical blocks of the same kinds of stone as those the cylinders are made of, Calcedony and Agate being by far the most usual material, having a hole drilled through the apex for the purpose of suspension round the neck or wrist. Sometimes they are of a spherical shape, often with flattened sides, and perforated through the diameter; with about a third of the circumference ground down so as to present a flattened tablet for the reception of the intaglio. will be noticed, on examination of a collection of these stamps, that the earliest among them, on which the designs are often cut in a very neat but very stiff and archaic style, are generally in the form of cones with angular sides. These are assigned to the date of the Assyrian and first Persian monarchy, before the conquest of Alexander. A fanciful antiquary may be inclined to suggest that the form of the cone was adopted as being the universally received symbol of the solar ray. Thus we find the conical stone of Emesa, of which Heliogabalus was the priest, occurring on the coins of that emperor, with the legend "Sacerdos dei Solis Elagabalus ;" and the Egyptian obelisk has always been interpreted as a representation of the rays of that luminary. The spherical stamps, on the contrary, are exclusively of Sassanian date, and many of

them doubtless belong to the centuries immediately preceding the Mohammedan conquest of Persia. The most interesting of the early conical seals that I have ever seen bears a figure of Mercury, identified by his caduceus and talaria, but closely draped, and wearing a Phrygian bonnet, a singular Oriental rendering of the representation of a Hellenic deity. The stone is a very fine Sapphirine Calcedony, and the form of the cone itself octangular. But the great majority of the intagli seen upon the tablets or bases of these cones and spheres are of an utterly rude character, and evidently cut by means of a very coarse wheel, all the lines being thick, and the design entirely executed by their repetition, assisted occasionally by a blunt-pointed drill. No traces are visible of the use of the diamond-point, or of that high polish which is so marked a peculiarity of the Greek and Roman intaglio. I subjoin a list of the most usual types occurring upon them, first premising that the whole-length figures or busts of royal personages form a large proportion of the designs to be seen upon the bases of these stamps. A priest praying before an altar; a priest sacrificing at a fire-altar; a winged figure walking, and holding a plant in his hand; a winged quadruped, with human head, a plant in front, a star above; a bird, with human head and scorpion's tail; a lion, with scorpion's nippers and a serpent's tail, behind him a tree, above, Capricorn and a star; a gazelle, surrounded by a legend; bust of a horned animal supported on two large wings; a priest in front of an altar, behind him an inscription on one side of the cone are engraved two figures, one of them with a bull's head, engaged in combat. The fantastic animals which will be found represented on more than half the number of these seals, are executed, for the most part, in a truly Chinese style of drawing. And there is a most wonderful similarity between the mode of the design of some

of these delineations of various beasts, and those of the same subjects upon the Gallic and British coins. For instance, a Carnelian stamp, engraved with a horse, a wild boar in the field beneath (in the collection of Mr. Litchfield of Cambridge), from its exact identity with the well-known potin coins of the Channel Islands, caused me for a long time to flatter myself with having made the discovery of a unique intaglio, the work of a Gallic gem-engraver as yet uninfluenced by Roman instruction in his art.

We however frequently meet with Sassanian gems, cut in the form of ring-stones, and these sometimes of very good workmanship. They appear to be, invariably, portraits of the reigning prince, or of members of his family, and occur in considerable numbers; often on the Garnet, and of very fair execution, especially if we consider the lateness of their date, yet still, in most instances, do they betray traces of the heavy and coarse hand of the workman, which so strongly mark this class of intagli. Although gems of the Sassanian dynasty are plentiful enough, yet works that can be certainly ascribed to the times of the Arsacidæ, their immediate decessors, are extremely rare; still more so are such as belong to the first race of Persian kings, who ruled over all Asia prior to the Macedonian conquest: and the small number of examples of these highly interesting classes that

pre

have come under my own notice shall be described farther on. A few indeed among the indisputable Sassanian portraits are of such good and careful execution, that, in spite of the Pehlevi legends they bear, and which authenticate their date, we have some difficulty in regarding them as the productions of that late epoch, the 3rd century, when that race regained the throne of Persia; so great is their superiority to any works executed by contemporary gem-engravers of the Roman school. But it is true, that with the restoration of the ancient religion and dynasty under Ardeschir the Blacksmith, A.D. 226, all the arts appear to have simultaneously revived in Persia; the coinage of this patriot prince and that of his next successors, being vastly superior in all respects, as regards both design and execution, to that of the last Parthian sovereigns.

These ring-stones are usually gems with a very convex surface, probably the reason of the so frequent choice of the carbuncle for this purpose. Even when Sards and Nicoli have been employed, they are generally cut into a pointed shape, with a small flat surface left to receive the intaglio and the inscription. These legends are always in the Pehlevi character, which only appears after the restoration of the ancient Persian monarchy at the period just mentioned; the Arsacidae or Parthian kings having invariably employed, on their monuments, the Greek language, and probably Greek artists, as is shown by the legends and style of their medals; probably from a wish to be regarded as the legitimate successors of the Macedonian line. The early Pehlevi is nearly identical with the rabbinical Hebrew character, of which it was, to all appearance, the parent; but upon the coins of the later kings it assumes the form of the Pehlevi used in the religious writings of the modern Parsees. Some of the legends on this class of coins, like one set of the trilingual