cked would be of no use.

The Chaldaeans kept a similar object before them. They neglected nothing to
secure the body against the action of damp, in the first place by making
the sides of their vaults and the coffins themselves water-tight, secondly,
by providing for the rapid escape of rain water from the cemetery,[432]
and, finally, if they did not push the art of embalming so far as the
Egyptians, they entered upon the same path. The bodies we find in the
oldest tombs are imperfect mummies compared with those of Egypt, but the
skeleton, at least, is nearly always in an excellent state of preservation;
it is only when handled that it tumbles into dust. In the more spacious
tombs the body lies upon a mat, with its head upon a cushion. In most cases
the remains of bandages and linen cloths were found about it. Mats,
cushions, and bandages had all been treated with bitumen. A small
terra-cotta model in the British Museum shows a dead man thus stowed in his
coffin; his hands are folded on his breast, and round the whole lower part
of the body the bands that gave him the appearance of a mummy may be
traced.

The funerary furniture is far from being as rich and varied as it is in the
tombs of Egypt and Etruria, but the same idea has governed the choice of
objects in both cases. When the corpse is that of a man we find at his
side the cylinder which served him as seal, his arms, arrow heads of flint
or bronze, and the remains of the staff he carried in his hand.[433] In a
woman's tomb the body has jewels on its neck, its wrists and ankles; jewels
are strewn about the tomb and placed on the lid of the coffin. Among other
toilet matters have been found small glass bottles, fragments of a bouquet,
and cakes of the black pigment which the women of the East still employ to
lengthen their eyebrows and enhance their blackness.[434]

[Illustration: FIGS. 159, 160.--Vases; from Warka. British Museum.]

The vases which are always present in well-preserved tombs, show the ideas
of the Mesopotamians on death more clearly than anything else. Upon the
palm of one hand or behind the head is placed a cup, sometimes of bronze,
oftener of terra-cotta. From it the dead man can help himself to the water
or fermented liquors with which the great clay jars that are spread over
the floor of his grave are filled (Figs. 159 and 160). Near these also we
find shallow bowls or saucers, used no doubt as plates for holding food.
Date-stones, chicken an