[Illustration: FIG. 37.—A (Cat., p. 367; _Déc. en Chald._, Pl. 5 tert. Musée du Louvre.) B (Heuzey, _Une Villa Royale_, Fig. 19.)]
At Ur (Muḳeyyer) Taylor discovered a large copper spear-head and two arrow-heads made of the same metal, while in the early strata at Tellô, M. De Sarzec discovered a copper blade some thirty-one and a half inches in length, and belonging to a votive-lance; unfortunately the name of the king by whom it was dedicated is lost owing to the oxydization of the metal, but the title “King of Kish” is still clearly legible, Kish being one of the most ancient sites of Euphratean civilization (cf. Fig. 37, A). The tang of the blade is pierced with four holes, and one of the flat surfaces of the blade itself is engraved with the figure of a lion, crude indeed, but spirited. This unique object was found at a great depth, and only six inches above the stratum in which the architectural remains of Ur-Ninâ were buried. Not far distant, De Sarzec discovered an immense hollow pipe of beaten copper (cf. Fig. 37, B) over ten feet long and having a diameter of four inches; a number of copper nails by means of which this long tube was fastened to a wooden pole being also found. The pipe itself tapers upwards and the top of it is crowned with a hollow ball of hardened bitumen, a little below which there is a large semicircular handle, or what purports to be a handle, consisting in a hollow tube and likewise made of copper. The use to which this strange implement was put is unknown, but it is exactly reproduced on some of the early cylinder-seals as well as on the well-known vase of Gudea. Various suggestions have been made as to the purpose which it served; one theory is that it is a chariot pole, another that it is a part of a standard, but the former is ruled out of court by the position which it occupies on the seals and on the aforementioned vase. The latter, however, may be near the truth.
Among the earliest specimens of Babylonian metallurgy may be mentioned a number of very small copper representations of animals in a crouching attitude, and all apparently belonging to the domestic order, though in some cases they are so covered with vert-de-gris that it is difficult to determine with precision what animals they are intended to represent. They are probably to be regarded as sacrificial offerings to the gods, being in fact economical substitutes for actual victims. They were found by De Sarzec in the lowest and therefore earliest strata of the ruined mounds of Tellô. Another class of metal objects to which we must also assign a date earlier than the time of Ur-Ninâ, the founder of the first dynasty of Lagash, comprises a number of copper statuettes, all much the same in shape, contour and style, though not in size. They all show a woman’s bust, her hands clasped across her chest, and her hair hanging about her neck like a heavy wig, while the waviness of the hair is indicated by strongly-marked horizontal lines (cf. Figure 38, C). The style at once recalls the figures on the crude bas-reliefs belonging to the same period. A further peculiarity of these little figures is the manner in which they all terminate in the point of a nail, by means of which they were destined to be fixed in the ground with a view to deterring the advance of demons from the nether world.