Shell. Very largely used for decoration; small plaques of nacre
often engraved with scenes of men worshipping, &c. (Telloh);
tessellated pillars with nacre plaques ('Obeid). Seal-cylinders of
shell.
Wood. Rarely survives; small beams plated with copper ('Obeid).
Burials. Pottery coffins with lids, mat burials; bodies contracted;
funerary furniture, copper, stone or pottery drinking cups held near
mouth: copper weapons, fish-hooks, net weights; beads of agate,
lapis, shell (unpolished); colour-dishes, (Fara). (The idea that the
Babylonians ever burnt their dead is now discredited; the supposed
'fire-necropoles' at Zurghul, &c., are not substantiated.)
The burials are hard to distinguish from similar contracted
interments of later date, except that the furniture is more abundant
in early times and mat graves are unusual in later days Mounds of
this age may be known by the occurrence on the surface of scraps of
oxydized copper, nails, &c.; shell-fragments; undecorated light drab
sherds; and the typical small plano-convex bricks.
III. MIDDLE BRONZE AGE.
1. Early Semitic or Akkadian (Sargonid) period; c. 3000-2500 B.C.
Characteristics. Less crude style of art: development of writing (see
XIV, Fig. 1); first inscribed clay tablets of usual style; beginnings
of cuneiform, developed from the archaic semi-pictographic character.
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