orah; eight left Mossoul, so that only
about a fourth of the antiquities collected reached their destination in
safety. The cases with the objects despatched by the Babylonian mission,
that is by MM. Fresnel, Oppert, and Thomas, were included in the same
disaster. But for this the Assyrian collections of the Louvre would be less
inferior than they are to those of the British Museum.

[369] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 253.

[370] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 253. These marks were recognized upon
many fragments found at Babylon by MM. Oppert and Thomas (OPPERT,
_Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. pp. 143, 144). LOFTUS has transcribed
and published a certain number of marks of the same kind which he found
upon glazed bricks from the palace at Suza. These are sometimes cut in the
brick with a point, sometimes painted with enamel like that on the face.
(_Travels and Researches_, p. 398.)

[371] EZEKIEL xxiii. 14, 15.

[372] BEROSUS, fragment i. Sec. 4, in vol. ii. of the _Fragmenta Historicorum
Graecorum_ of Ch. MUeLLER.

[373] TEXIER, _Armenie et Perse_, vol. ii. p. 134. In the same work the
details of the magnificent decoration upon the mosque of the Sunnites at
Tauris (which afforded a model for that at Ispahan) will be found
reproduced in their original colours. It is strange that this art of
enamelled faience, after being preserved so long, should so recently have
become extinct in the East. "At the commencement of the last century," says
M. TEXIER (vol. ii. p. 138), "the art of enamelling bricks was no less
prosperous in Persia than in the time of Shah-Abbas, the builder of the
great mosque at Ispahan (1587-1629); but now the art is completely extinct,
and in spite of my desire to visit a factory where I might see the work in
progress, there was not one to be found from one end of Ispahan to the
other." According to the information I gathered in Asia Minor, it was also
towards the beginning of the present century that the workshops of Nicaea
and Nicomedia, in which the fine enamelled tiles on the mosques at Broussa
were made, were finally closed. In these _fabriques_ the plaques which have
been found in such abundance for some twenty years past in Rhodes and other
islands of the Archipelago were also manufactured. [The manufacture of
these glazed tiles is by no means extinct in India, however. At many
centres in Sindh and the Punjab, glazed tiles almost exactly similar to
those on the mosque at Ispahan, so far as co