Note 447 — Chapter IV · THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.

In the inventory, compiled with so much care by de Longpérier, of all the little objects in the Assyrian collection of the Louvre, and especially of those necklaces found by Botta in the sand under the great threshold at Khorsabad (from No. 295 to No. 380), there is not the slightest mention of amber. MM. Birch and Pinches tell me that the oriental department of their museum contains no trace of amber, with the exception of a few beads brought from Egypt, to which they have no means of assigning a date. They have never heard that any of the Mesopotamian excavations have brought the smallest vestige of this substance to light.