When once accustomed to the difficulties and intricacies of their calling, the scribes were never at a standstill.  The stylus was plied in Chaldaea no less assiduously than was the calamus in Egypt, and the indestructible clay, which the Chaldaeans were as a rule content to use, proved a better medium in the long run than the more refined material employed by their rivals:  the baked or merely dried clay tablets have withstood the assaults of time in surprising quantities, while the majority of papyri have disappeared without leaving a trace behind.  If at Babylon we rarely meet with those representations, which we find everywhere in the tombs of Saqqara or Gizeh, of the people themselves and their families, their occupations, amusements, and daily intercourse, we possess, on the other hand, that of which the ruins of Memphis have furnished us but scanty instances up to the present time, namely, judicial documents, regulating the mutual relations of the people and conferring a legal sanction on the various events of their life.  Whether it were a question of buying lands or contracting a marriage, of a loan on interest, or the sale of slaves, the scribe was called in with his soft tablets to engross the necessary agreement.  In this he would insert as many details as possible—­the day of the month, the year of the reigning sovereign, and at times, to be still more precise, an allusion to some important event which had just taken place, and a memorial of which was inserted in official annals, such as the taking of a town, the defeat of a neighbouring king, the dedication of a temple, the building of a wall or fortress, the opening of a canal, or the ravages of an inundation:  the names of the witnesses and magistrates before whom the act was confirmed were also added to those of the contracting parties.  The method of sanctioning it was curious.  An indentation was made with the finger-nail on one of the sides of the tablet, and this mark, followed or preceded by the mention of a name, “Nail of Zabudamik,” “Nail of Abzii,” took the place of our more or less complicated sign-manuals.  In later times, only the buyer and witnesses approved by a nail-mark, while the seller appended his seal; an inscription incised above the impress indicating the position of the signatory.  Every one of any importance possessed a seal, which he wore attached to his wrist or hung round his neck by a cord; he scarcely ever allowed it to be separated from his person during his lifetime, and after death it was placed with him in the tomb in order to prevent any improper use being made of it.  It was usually a cylinder, sometimes a truncated cone with a convex base, either of marble, red or green jasper, agate, cornelian, onyx or rock crystal, but rarely of metal.  Engraved upon it in intaglio was an emblem or subject chosen by the owner, such as the single figure of a god or goddess, an act of adoration, a sacrifice, or an episode in the story of Gilgames, followed sometimes by the inscription