* The ornaments, of which we have now no specimens, but only
     the original moulds cut in serpentine, betray imitation of
     Assyria and Chaldaea.

** The custom of clothing themselves in dyed and embroidered stuffs was one of the effeminate habits with which the poet Xenophanes reproached the Ionians as having been learned from their Lydian neighbours.

*** M. Perrot points out that one of the vases discovered by G. Dennis at Bintepe is an evident imitation of the Egyptian and Phoenician chevroned glasses.  The shape of the vase is one of those found represented, with the same decoration, on Egyptian monuments subsequent to the Middle Empire, where the chevroned lines seem to be derived from the undulations of ribbon-alabaster.

     **** The stone funerary couches which have been discovered
     in Lydian tombs are evidently copied from pieces of wooden
     furniture similarly arranged and decorated.

[Illustration:  054a.jpg LYDIAN COIN BEARING A RUNNING FOX]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a specimen in the Cabinet des
     Medailles:  a stater of electrum weighing 14.19 grammes.

     [These illustrations are larger than the original pieces.—­Tr.]

[Illustration:  054b.jpg LYDIAN COIN WITH A HARE]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des
     Medailles.

Lydia, inheriting the traditions of Phrygia, and like that state situated on the border of two worlds, allied moreover with Egypt as well as Babylon, and in regular communication with the Delta, borrowed from each that which fell in with her tastes or seemed likely to be most helpful to her in her commercial relations.  As the country produced gold in considerable quantities, and received still more from extraneous sources, the precious metal came soon to be employed as a means of exchange under other conditions than those which had hitherto prevailed.  Besides acting as commission agents and middle-men for the disposal of merchandise at Sardes, Ephesus, Miletus, Clazomenaa, and all the maritime cities, the Lydians performed at the same time the functions of pawnbrokers, money-changers, and bankers, and they were ready to make loans to private individuals as well as to kings.  Obliged by the exigencies of their trade to cut up the large gold ingots into sections sufficiently small to represent the smallest values required in daily life, they did not at first impress upon these portions any stamp as a guarantee of the exact weight or the purity of the metal; they were estimated like the tabonu of the Egyptians, by actual weighing on the occasion of each business transaction.

[Illustration:  055.jpg LYDIAN COINS WITH A LION AND LION’S HEAD]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des
     Medailles.