of Mesopotamian art will only
be able to tell this earlier work from the later by the earlier style
of the accompanying inscriptions). Not many mounds of this period
have been dug.

V. EARLY IRON AGE:
1. Late Babylonian and Assyrian periods; c. 1000-540 B.C.

Characteristics. Flourishing period of Assyrian art and writing (for
details see the archaeological books, which are very full on this
period). Mounds may be known by the occurrence of fragments of
granite or basalt bowl-querns, often with feet; pieces or whole vases
of the multi-coloured opaque glass usually called 'Phoenician' (which
are already found in the preceding period); alabaster pots; straight-
sided cylinder seals (see XIV, Fig. 6); Syrian conical seals of
steatite (XIV, Fig. 7); small and rude clay figures of deities, such
as Ishtar or Papsukal (the guardian of buildings), and animals, such
as horses, sheep, doves, ducks, &c.; bronze pins, often with birds on
the heads; baked clay tablets of the fine Kuyunjik type (see XV, Fig.
12; script, Fig. 17); pottery lamps with long protruding curved
nozzles; pottery vases simple and undecorated save by incised lines,
as for many centuries past (for types see XIV, Figs. 9 a b c d);
light-blue glazed ware introduced from Egypt towards end of period;
polychrome glazed ware with designs of rosettes, chevrons) &c.,
somewhat earlier; large pots without feet common for storage of grain
and oil, sometimes for tablets: mouth often closed with a brick.
Stone pithoi are also found. Vertical drains or sinks, made of a
number of pottery cylindrical drums, fitting on top of or into one
another, are found everywhere on town-mounds of this period; visitors
should avoid tumbling into them, as they are often open or only
covered by a very thin crust of earth. Usually they are perforated to
allow of soaking into the surrounding earth, and are, when excavated
whole, generally found capped by, a beehive-shaped perforated cover.
Sometimes these drains were made of old pots with their lower parts
broken off, and fitted into one another. Secular buildings were of
burnt brick; sacred buildings usually of crude brick, from religious
conservatism. Crude bricks nearly always oblong; burnt bricks square
(14 ins.) or oblong (9x6x3 ins.). The burnt brick of Nebuchadnezzar's
time is extraordinarily fine and hard, and the bitumen-mortar so
finely spread as to be almost invisible (Babylon). Walls of this
reign have a rock-like solidity and