Note 222 — Chapter II · SCULPTURE. (continued 2)

Loftus (Travels, p. 116), describes a statue of black granite that he found at Hammam in lower Chaldæa. So far as we can tell from his short description, it must bear no slight resemblance to the Tello statues. The right shoulder was bare and had an inscription engraved upon it. The rest of the figure was clothed, and the hands were crossed upon the knees. The head was missing. At Warka the same traveller saw a bas-relief representing a man striking an animal; it was of basalt and was broken into several pieces. Among the objects acquired in 1877 by the British Museum, I find mentioned “a fragment of black granite or basalt, which seems to belong to a statue of Hammourabi, king of Babylon about 1,500 years before our era.” (Account of the Income and Expenditure of the British Museum for 1878.) Is not this the broken statue which now figures in the gallery under the name of Gudea? At the first moment the inscription may not have been readily deciphered; the summary report presented to Parliament seems, indeed, to name Hammourabi with some hesitation.