The Seal Cylinders Of Western Asia

For twenty years I have given a good part of the minutes or hours that could be spared from very engrossing daily office-work to the study of Oriental seal cylinders. I first hoped to be able to master the cuneiform texts, and had begun the study as far back as I862; but the driblets of time which could be taken for it, often with long periods when nothing could be done, were not sufficient to achieve a task which needed all one's time if merely to keep in memory the forms of so complex a system of writing.