A broad and thin brick, usually made of fine clay, and hardened in the fire. Such tiles were very common in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris, (See BABYLON,) and offered to the exiled prophet Ezekiel the most natural and obvious means of depicting the siege of Jerusalem, Eze 4:1. Great numbers of similar rude sketches of places, as well as of animals and men, are found on the tiles recently exhumed from the ancient mounds of Assyria, interspersed among the wedge-shaped inscriptions with which one side of the tile is usually crowded. At Nineveh Layard found a large chamber stored full of such inscribed tiles, like a collection of historical archives, Ezr 6:1. They are usually about a foot square, and three inches thick.

Eze 4:1, a sun-dried "brick," the same as is translated "brick" in Ge 11:3. For "pourtray" translated "engrave." Bricks with designs engraven on them are found still in ancient Mesopotamian cities. Related to these are the tablets, of which many have been found in the Assyrian and Babylonian rains and mounds. Some of these bear historical inscriptions and narrate the annals of the various reigns; others are known as report tablets, and are of the character of letters or dispatches on various military, political, and social subjects; again a third class are such as the Egibi tablets, a series of financial and contract records belonging to a family of that name, the particular attestations to which for a period of nearly 200 years, from 677 B.C. to 455 B.C., reflect as in a mirror the principal changes in dynastic and imperial affairs. It is greatly owing to the light derived from these various classes of tablets that the chronology and events of history in Western Asiatic and Biblical countries have within the last few years been so greatly elucidated; and further revelations are continually being obtained.