A history of art in Chaldæa & Assyria, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Georges Perrot; Charles Chipiez

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Rawlinson The Five Great Monarchies, &c., (4th edition), vol. i. p. 278.

[2] Millin, Monuments inedits, vol. i. plates 8 and 9.

[3] Rheinisches Museum, 1829, p. 41. This passage will be found in a note appended by the illustrious historian to a paper by Ottfried Müller, entitled Sandon und Sardanapal.

[4] Traces of the excitement caused by these discoveries may be found in an article written by M. de Longperier in 1845, in which, before having seen the monuments, he points out the interest and importance of the discoveries with rare sagacity. The paper in question is entitled Ninive et Khorsabad. It has lately been reprinted in the first volume (page 34) of his collected works (A. de Longperier, Œuvres, 5 vols. 8vo. Leroux). This first volume bears for sub-title: Archéologie orientale: Monuments arabes.

[5] Lettre à M. Isidore de Lowenstern sur les Inscriptions cunéiformes de l’Assyrie (Œuvres, vol. i. p. 109). M. de Lowenstern had already by a kind of happy intuition hit upon the name, but without being able to give a reason for his transliteration.

[6] This latter hypothesis was sustained, with more erudition, perhaps, than tact or taste, by Dr. Hœfer. A skilful historian of chemistry, he was by no means an archæologist. He had no feeling for the differences between one style and another. See the Memoires sur les Ruines de Ninive, addressés à l’Académie des Inscriptions, par Ferd. Hœfer [20th February and 24th May, 1850]; see especially the second paper: De l’Âge et du Caractère des Monuments découverts à Khorsabad, à Nimroud, à Kouioundjik, à Karamles et à Kaleh-Shergat, Paris, Didot, 1850. His assertions were refuted by de Longperier in the first part of his paper entitled: Antiquités assyriénnes, published in 1850, in the Revue archéologique, (Œuvrcs, vol. i. p. 139).

[7] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. chapter xi. § 2.

[8] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 38, Esarhaddon was the chief offender in this respect.

[9] See G. Perrot, Souvenirs d’un Voyage en Asia Mineure, p. 50.

[10] This preconceived notion explains the erroneous title he gave to his great work: Monument de Ninive, découvert et décrit par P. E. Botta, mesuré et dessiné par E. Flandin, published at the expense of the state at the Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 1849, 5 vols, folio (1 volume of text, 4 of plates).

[11] The palace platform was not quite in the centre of the north-western face. The Assyrians were no fonder of a rigid symmetry than the Egyptians.

[12] Place, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 7.

[13] In this plan the darkest parts are those discovered by M. Botta; the more lightly shaded lines show the rooms and courts excavated by his successor.

[14] Place, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 18 bis.

[15] Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 286), and Lenormant (Historie ancienne, vol. ii. p. 196) make the two parts of the platform—the arms of the T and its shank—different in height. In doing so they have borrowed a mistake from Botta. The mistake is easily understood in the case of Rawlinson, whose fourth edition, although published in 1879, reproduces the plans compiled by Fergusson after Botta. We are more surprised at Lenormant falling into the same error, as he gives an excellent résumé of Place’s discoveries. Botta seems to have thought the two parts of the palace had different levels in consequence of an inequality in the distribution of the fallen materials. In the neighbourhood of the latter buildings, such as the so-called Observatory, and where the open spaces were fewer and less ample, there was, of course, a thicker bed of rubbish than where the buildings were lower and the walls farther apart. But wherever the original surface of the mound was reached, Place ascertained that its level never varied. In none of his plans is there the slightest trace of any slope or staircase leading from one level to the other, so far as the summit of the platform is concerned.

[16] Layard, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 14 and 15.

[17] Thomas placed this ramp at the south-east rather than at the south-west because it seemed better to make it lead direct to H, the forecourt of the sélamlik, than to break in upon the privacy of the harem at the opposite corner.

[18] This court was about 206 feet wide, by 366 feet long.

[19] The letters on our plan signify courts, or rooms—like some of those in the harem—that were only partially roofed in.

[20] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 57.

[21] Lenormant, Manuel d’Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 197.

[22] See Vol. I. page 392.

[23] Oppert, Expédition scientitique, vol. ii. p. 242.

[24] The doorway beside which these artificial palms are raised is that which leads from the court U to the hall marked Y on the plan. As to the elements made use of in our restoration, see Place, vol. i. pp. 114–127, and vol. ii. p. 35. We have already noticed the discovery of the metal-sheathed poles (p. 202, and fig. 72).

[25] Place, Ninive, vol. iii. plate 25, fig. 4.

[26] See the Book of Esther.

[27] This room corresponds to the apartment in the richer houses of Mossoul and Bagdad, that goes by the name of iwan or pichkaneh. It is a kind of summer hall, open on one side (Oppert, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 90).

[28] A minute description of all these offices will be found in Place (Ninive, vol. iii. pp. 76–105).

[29] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 99 and 274.

[30] Oppert, Les Inscriptions des Sargonides, p. 52.

[31] So far as I know, Place alone has given this problem a moment’s attention (Ninive, vol. i. p. 279), but nothing could be more improbable than the hypothesis by which he attempts to solve it. He suggests that one of the drains of which we have already spoken may have been a conduit or siphon in communication with some subterranean reservoir and provided with pumping apparatus at its summit. We have no evidence whatever that the principle of the suction-pump was known to the Assyrians.

[32] Strabo (xvi. i. 5) pretends that the hanging gardens of Babylon were watered by means of the screw of Archimedes (κοχλίας or κόχλος). If it be true that this invention was known to the Chaldæans, it may also have been used to raise water to the platforms of the Assyrian palaces. The discovery, however, is usually attributed to the Sicilian mathematician, and Strabo’s evidence is too isolated and too recent to allow us to accept it without question.

[33] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 197.

[34] Loftus, Travels and Researches, chapter xvi. and especially page 179.

[35] Diodorus, ii. viii. 3–4.

[36] Diodorus, ii. viii. 7.

[37] Oppert, Expédition scientifique de Mésopotamie, vol. i. p. 150. See also Layard, Discoveries, p. 508, upon the tradition of the Arabs relating to the tall tamarisk, the only tree that grows on the summit of the mound.

[38] J. Ménant, Babylon et la Chaldée (1 vol. 8vo. 1875), p. 181.

[39] Diodorus (ii. 10), speaks of λίθιναι δοκοί, or stone beams, to which he attributes a length of sixteen feet, and a width of four; Strabo (xvii. i. 5) makes use of the expression, ψαλιδώματα καμαρωτά, which means vaulted arcades. Both writers agree that there were several terraces one above another. Diodorus says that the whole—as seen from the Euphrates no doubt—looked like a theatre. Both give the same measurements to these hanging gardens; they tell us they made a square of from three to four plethra each way (410 feet). The mound of Tell-Amran is much larger than this, and if it really be on the site of the famous gardens, it must include the ruins of other buildings besides, pleasure houses, chapels and kiosks, like those figured in the reliefs, to which we have already had frequent occasion to allude.

[40] Layard believes himself to have ascertained that the buildings on one part of the Nimroud mound were ruined and covered with earth, when those upon another part of the platform were founded. The paved floor of the north-western palace is on a level with the upper part of the walls of the north-eastern and central palaces (Nineveh, vol. iii. p. 202).

[41] George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, (pp. 71–73), gives the following résumé of the monumental history of Calah, from the inscriptions found at Nimroud. “A city was built on this spot by Shalmaneser I., King of Assyria, B.C. 1300, but this afterwards fell into decay, and was destroyed during the subsequent troubles which came on the Assyrian Empire. Assurnazirpal, who ascended the Assyrian throne B.C. 885, resolved to rebuild the city; and bringing numbers of captives taken during his wars, he set them to work to rebuild Calah, and then settled there to inhabit it. The north-west palace and the temples near the tower were the work of this king, and from these came most of the fine Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum. Shalmaneser II., King of Assyria, succeeded his father Assurnazirpal, B.C. 860. He built the centre palace, and the base at least of the south-eastern palace. Vulnirari III., his grandson, B.C. 812, built the upper chambers and the temple of Nebo; and Tiglath-pileser II., B.C. 745, rebuilt the centre palace. Sargon, King of Assyria, B.C. 722, restored the north-west palace, and his grandson, Esarhaddon, B.C. 681, built the south-west palace. Lastly the grandson of Esarhaddon, Assur-ebil-ili, the last King of Assyria, rebuilt the temple of Nebo just before the destruction of the Assyrian Empire.” A general description of the platform and the buildings upon it will be found in Layard, Discoveries, pp. 653–656.

[42] This idea is favoured by Layard (Discoveries, p. 654).

[43] The central palace was partly destroyed even in the days of the Assyrians, by a king who wished to make use of its materials. Layard (Nineveh, ii. p. 19) found more than a hundred sculptured slabs stacked against each other, as if in a warehouse. The architect of Esarhaddon, the author of this spoliation, had not finished his work when it was suddenly interrupted. For a full account of the discoveries in the south-eastern palace, see Layard, Nineveh, ii. pp. 38–40.

[44] Especially from the central palace (Layard, Discoveries, p. 656). The small rectangles shown on our plan at each side of the wall dividing the rooms marked 2 and 3 from each other, represent slabs lying on the ground at the foot of the wall for whose decoration they were intended. They were never put in place. The bases of circular pedestals, standing very slightly above the ground, are also marked. Sir H. Layard could not divine their use.

[45] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 25, 26, and 29.

[46] For an account of the excavations see Layard, Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 34, 39, 46, 59–62, 347–350; vol. ii. pp. 25–36.

[47] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 14–16.

[48] All the passages by ancient writers bearing on the subject will be found collected in the first of those articles of Hœfer, of which we have already had occasion to speak. Its title is: Textes anciens sur l’Histoire et la Position de Ninive. It is certain that even in the Roman period its site was not positively known. Lucian, who was born at Samosata, less than a hundred leagues from Nineveh, says: “Nineveh has perished; no trace of it remains, and we cannot say where it stood” (Charon, c. xxiii).

[49] Layard, Discoveries, p. 137.

[50] The plan in which Layard shows the results of his two digging campaigns will be found in the Discoveries, facing page 67. For the excavations at Kouyundjik see also his Nineveh, vol. ii. chapter xiv, and Discoveries, pp. 67–76, 102–120, 135–161, 228–233, 337–347, 438–463, 582–588, and 645–652. Layard attempts to give a general idea of the palace and of its decorations. There is also much detailed information regarding this building in Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies, vol. ii. pp. 178–133.

[51] The only details that have been given, so far as we know, of the discovery and exhumation of Assurbanipal’s palace, are to be found in an article by Mr. Rassam entitled: Excavations and Discoveries in Assyria (Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. vii. pp. 37–58). This paper contains a plan of the northern palace (p. 40).

[52] “Ervil is the site of the Assyrian city of Arbela, and in the plains outside it was fought the great battle between Alexander and Darius. I had no time to examine the place, but I saw in passing that there were mounds rivalling in size those of the Assyrian capital. Over the principal mound a Turkish fortress is built, which would make it difficult to excavate here; but as Arbela was a great city, much may be expected here whenever it is explored.” George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 67.

[53] See the article by Mr. Rassam quoted on the last page. The plan (p. 52) he gives does not tell us much.

[54] See Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 45–63; and Discoveries, p. 581.

[55] See Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 169.

[56] It is in chapters xi. to xiv. of his second work (Discoveries, &c.) that Layard tells the story of his discoveries in that valley of the Chaboras from which the writings of Ezekiel were dated.

[57] See page 145.

[58] We have noticed at pages 176 and 177 of our first volume the two passages in which Strabo discusses the houses of Susiana and Chaldæa. As to the villages in the Euphrates valley, in which domes are still used, see Oppert, Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 46.

[59] Herodotus, i. 180.

[60] Diodorus, ii. viii. 4, 5.

[61] G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 55, 56. M. Oppert also admits that this is the only city that has left traces that cannot easily be mistaken. (Expedition scientifique, vol. i. pp. 194, 195.)

[62] Herodotus, i. 178.

[63] Diodorus, ii. vii. 3. The following passage has been quoted from Aristotle’s Politics (iii. 1), as supporting the assertion of Diodorus: “It is obvious that a town is not made by a wall; one might, if that were so, make the Peloponnesus into a town, Babylon, perhaps, and some other towns belong to this class, their enceinte inclosing towns rather than cities.” The text of Aristotle seems to me to prove nothing more than that the philosopher was acquainted with the descriptions of Diodorus and Ctesias. He says nothing as to their exactness; he merely borrows an illustration from them, by which he attempts to make his thought more clear, and to explain the difference between a real city with an organic life of its own, and a mere space surrounded by walls, in which men might live in close neighbourhood with each other, but with nothing that could be called civic life. All the texts relating to the ancient boundaries of Babylon will be found united in M. Oppert’s examination of this question.

[64] Even now the wall of the Royal City stands up more than thirty feet above the level of the plain.

[65] Herodotus says nothing of the tunnel; Diodorus alone mentions it (ii. ix. 2). See Oppert on this subject. He believes in its existence (Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 193).

[66] Herodotus, i. 186; Diodorus, ii. viii. 2. Diodorus, following Ctesias, greatly exaggerates the length of the bridge when he puts it at fifty-five stades (3,032 feet). Even if we admit that the Euphrates, which in ancient times lost less of its waters in the adjoining marshes than it does now, was then considerably wider than at present, we can hardly account for such a difference. On the subject of this bridge see Oppert, Expédition &c., vol. i. pp. 191–193.

[67] Layard, Discoveries, p. 489.

[68] See Oppert, Expédition &c., vol. i. pp. 184, 185. Herodotus mentions these quays (ii. 180, 186). Diodorus (ii. viii. 3), gives them a length of 160 stades (nearly 18½ miles), which seems a great exaggeration.

[69] Herodotus, i. 180.

[70] And this makes us think that the streets were narrow, a conjecture confirmed by the words of Herodotus. In speaking of the doors above mentioned by which the river was reached, he does not use the word πύλαι, but πυλίδες, its diminutive. If these doors were so small, the streets must have been lanes.

[71] This we gather from more than one phrase of the historian (ii. 183 and 196).

[72] Diodorus, ii. viii, 3

[73] All that he says is that it was on the Tigris (i. 193), that it had a king called Sardanapalus (ii. 150), and that it was taken by the Medes (i. 103, 106).

[74] Anabasis, iii. 4.

[75] Diodorus, ii. iii. 2, 3.

[76] Line 35 of the Cylinder of Bellino, after Pongnon (l’Inscription de Bavian, p. 25, in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes-Études).

[77] M. Oppert also considers the evidence of Ctesias as worthless (Expédition scientifique, vol. i. p. 292). Sir Henry Layard on the other hand believes in the great Nineveh of that writer (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 243). He is chiefly influenced by the often quoted verses of the Book of Jonah, in which it is declared: “Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey,” and that there were in it “more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand,” which, with the ordinary proportion of children to adults, would give a total population of about 800,000. We shall not waste time in explaining that all these expressions are but poetic ways of saying that Nineveh was a great city. It is a singular idea to look for topographical and statistical information in a book which makes a prophet sail from Joppa for Spain and, immediately afterwards, without any preparation, speaks of him as preaching in the streets of Nineveh. Add to this that, according to the most recent criticism, the Book of Jonah is not older than the sixth century before our era, so that it must have been written long after the fall of Nineveh, and when its power was no more than a memory (see Nœldeke, Histoire littéraire de l’Ancien Testament, p. 116). [In Sir H. Layard’s latest published remarks on the extent of Nineveh, he rejects the statements of Diodorus for much the same reasons as those given by M. Perrot (article on Nineveh in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1863 edition).—Ed.]

[78] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 21. Oppert, Expédition, vol. i. p. 292. Layard, vol. ii. p. 243. The English explorers have found traces of some external works and of a ditch which is now filled with the waters of the Khausser. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 259–261.

[79] Layard, Discoveries, pp. 120–122.

[80] It has no scale.

[81] Herodotus, i. 178.

[82] Herodotus, i. 179. Herodotus says that the Chaldæans constructed buildings of a single chamber along each parapet of the wall, leaving room between them for a four-horse chariot to turn. His words are: ὲπάνω δὲ τοῦ τείχεος παρὰ τὰ ἔσχατα, οἰκήματα μουνόκωλα ἔδειμαν, τετραμμένα ἐς ἄλληλα· τὸ μέσον δὲ τῶν οἰκημάτων ἔλιπον τεθρίππῳ περιέλασιν.—Ed.

[83] Diodorus, ii. vii. 4.

[84] In many carved pictures of sieges we see soldiers who appear to be digging mines (Layard, Monuments, series i. plates 19, 20, 66. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 473).

[85] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 165; vol. ii. p. 11.

[86] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 197–198.

[87] Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. I. p. 342.

[88] See Vol. I. Page 242, and Fig. 97.

[89] All these details are taken from Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 169–182.

[90] Genesis xix. 1.

[91] Genesis xxiii. 10.

[92] Ruth iv. 1 and 2.

[93] See also 2 Kings vii. 1.—Ed.

[94] Esther ii. 21.

[95] Esther iii. 2, 3, iv. 2, 6.

[96] At Semil, to the north of Mossoul, Layard saw the Yezidi chief, “Abde Agha, seated in the gate, a vaulted entrance with deep recesses on both sides, used as places of assembly for business during the day, and as places of rest for guests during the night.”—Discoveries, p. 57.

[97] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 186.

[98] It is even believed that the Assyrians used a machine for launching great stones, like the Roman catapult. The representations in the bas-reliefs are not, however, very clear. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 472.

[99] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 196. Causeways of this kind may be noticed stretching away from the tower in our Fig. 29. See also Layard, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 18 and 21.

[100] A few terra-cotta statuettes have certainly been found, but these seem to be idols rather than images of the defunct.

[101] The ordinary and principal office of the human-headed bull, was to guard the doors of temples and palaces, but in his rôle of protecting genius, other functions were included. Thus, in a bas-relief representing Sargon’s campaigns in Phœnicia, we find a bull that seems to be walking on the sea. With Anon, Oannes, or Dagon, the fish-god, he presides over the journeys of the ships that bring cargoes of wood from Lebanon (Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 32).

[102] M. Lenormant has collected these texts in his Origines de l’Histoire, vol. i. p. 115.

[103] This must represent one of the favourite rites of the Chaldæo-Assyrian religion, allusion to it is made in the passage given as a letter of Jeremiah (Baruch vi. 25): “Now shall ye see in Babylon gods of silver, and of gold, and of wood, borne upon shoulders, which cause the nations to fear.”

[104] Chabouillet (Catalogue général des Camées de la Bibliothèque nationale, No. 754) proposes to recognize in the scene here represented the offering of his nightly spouse to Bel in his temple at Babylon (Herodotus, i. 181). M. Lenormant agrees with this interpretation (Essai de commentaire des Fragments de Bérose, p. 374). Ménant, on the other hand, thinks it as little justified as that which finds the early scenes of Genesis—the temptation of Eve, and the eating of the forbidden fruit—reproduced upon the cylinders (Remarques sur un cylindre du Musée Britannique, in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions, 1879, pp. 270–286).

[105] In the great stone torso of which we shall speak presently (p. 98), these details seem to have been omitted; at least no trace of them is to be found on the stone; but they may have been added in paint. In figures of men the Assyrians very rarely indicated the male organs. One of the personages sculptured on the Balawat gates affords an exception to this general practice, but he is a prisoner about to be put to death, and the detail in question is a kind of indignity meant by the sculptor to show that the man in question was a savage who fought in puris naturalibus.

[106] Among the Lydians, says Herodotus, in his account of the adventure of Gyges (i. 10), “As among nearly all barbarous nations, it was a great indignity, even for a man, to be seen naked.” Conf. Plato, Republic, 452, c; Thucydides, i. 6; Xenophon, Hellenica, iii. iv. 19.

[107] Herodotus, i. 195; “As for their dress they wore a linen tunic coming down to their feet, and, over that, a woollen tunic. Finally they wrapped themselves in a short white cloak.”

[108] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 98.

[109] Heuzev, Les fouilles de Chaldée, p. 13.

[110] See Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 255; vol. ii. figs. 247, 259, &c.

[111] Ibid. vol. ii. plate facing p. 334, and figs. 268, 269.

[112] See Layard, Monuments, 1st series, plates 15 and 16.

[113] In one relief the figures of these swimmers are no more than fourteen inches long (British Museum, Assyrian Basement room, No. 56).

[114] Layard, Monuments, 1st series, plate 57; 2nd series, plates 25 and 28.

[115] Ibid. (1st series), plate 63; Discoveries, p. 457.

[116] We have refrained from giving a reproduction of this fragment on account of its bad condition. Its surface is rough; it lacks the head, the forearms and the foreparts of the feet. The material is a coarse limestone. The height of the fragment is thirty-eight inches.

[117] No people that have ever lived have been more solicitous than the Assyrians to transmit the remembrance of their exploits to posterity. We thus find that many of their sculptured slabs had their posterior faces, those that were turned to the wall, also covered with inscriptions.

[118] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 437.

[119] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 448.

[120] British Museum. The whole series is illustrated in Layard, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 20–24.

[121] Sir H. Layard’s translation is different (Discoveries, p. 152). That quoted in the text has been kindly furnished to us by M. Oppert.

[122] Sir H. Layard, who has seen more Assyrian sculptures in place than any one else, seems to have been much struck by these incongruities. “It is rare,” he says, “to find an entire (Assyrian) bas-relief equally well executed in all its parts” (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 78).

[123] This impression is still more strongly felt on glancing through the plates in which Sir H. Layard has reproduced in their entirety the series of sculptures which we can only show in fragmentary fashion. Compare, for example, the Panathenaic cortége with two processions taken from the palace of Sennacherib, the grooms leading horses, and servants carrying fruits and other comestibles (Monuments, 2nd series, plates 7–9), and the triumphal march of the Assyrian army with its chariots (ib. plates 47–49).

[124] Layard, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 45 and 46.

[125] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 302–314.

[126] At Nimroud, in the palace of Esarhaddon, the lions and bulls of the gateways are of a grey and rather coarse limestone, while the bas-reliefs are of alabaster (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 26 and 163). The same mixture occurs in the palace of Assurnazirpal. Several of the bulls in that building are of a fine yellow limestone which must have been brought from the hills of Kurdistan (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 315).

[127] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 316; Discoveries, pp. 307, 308, 309, &c.

[128] Each side of the original has five reliefs. We have been compelled to suppress one in order to give our figures sufficient scale.

[129] The obelisk reliefs should be studied in horizontal bands, and not by taking the whole of a face at a time. A translation of the accompanying texts will be found in Oppert’s Expédition, vol. i; and reproductions of all the four faces in Layard’s Monuments, 1st series, plates 53–56.

[130] Place, Ninive, vol. i, p. 150, and vol. iii. plate 48, fig. 3.

[131] Heuzey, Catalogue des figurines en terre cuite du musée du Louvre, vol. i. p. 26.

[132] Heuzey, Catalogue, &c., p. 18.

[133] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 375.

[134] Both the British Museum and the Louvre possess examples of this kind of work in which the handling shows the greatest freedom.

[135] The slab numbered 107 contains, perhaps, the nearest approach to a reproduction of the group in question.

[136] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 197–203, and figs. 179 and 180.

[137] This was the opinion of M. de Longpérier (Musée Napoléon III., description of plate 1).

[138] See vol. i. page 242.

[139] See also plate xii.

[140] Layard, Discoveries, p. 563.

[141] De Longpérier, Notice des antiquités assyriennes du Musée du Louvre, 3rd edition, 1854.

[142] We take this transcription from a note sent by Dr. Birch to the Athenæum (14 July, 1877), when the ivory in question, together with many more objects, was stolen from the British Museum. It was offered by the thief, in the first place, to M. de Longpérier, who thought it a forgery, and afterwards to the keeper of the Hague Museum, who, put on his guard by the publicity which by that time had been given to the theft, detained the piece and restored it to its legitimate owners.

[143] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 293–295.

[144] Layard, Discoveries, p. 361. The same characteristics may be recognized in the alabaster statues found by Place in one of the harem courts at Khorsabad (Ninive, vol. i. pp. 122–125, and vol. iii. plate 31, bis.). They are shown on a small scale in our fig. 197 (vol. i.). We may see that they were set with their backs against a wall, and that they carried a cushion on their heads, on which we have placed a vase of flowers. These statues were drowned in the Tigris!

[145] We may also quote the following monuments as examples of Assyrian statues: 1. The fragment of a seated statue found at Kaleh-Shergat, which we figure on page 127 (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 51–52). 2. The head of a statue of Istar, discovered at Kouyundjik (Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 248 and 430). This head is about nine inches high. 3. Fragment of a colossal statue of shelly limestone, found in the same place by the same explorer (ibid. p. 430). It consists only of a part of the left shoulder. There is an inscription on the back tracing the descent of Assurbanipal from Sargon.

[146] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 284–288; vol. i. fig. 173, and vol. ii. fig. 240.

[147] E. Guillaume, in his Considérations sur les Principes de l’Histoire du Bas-relief, which was read at the annual public meeting of the five Academies in Paris on the 14th August, 1866, (Didot, 4to.).

[148] Vol. I. page 266.

[149] In this particular, the two large bulls from Khorsabad in the British Museum are better placed than the pair in the Louvre. Their position at the entrance to the Khorsabad Transept (?), gives an exact idea of their original arrangement.—Ed.

[150] It must not be thought, however, that its employment was universal. In the palace of Sennacherib, at Kouyundjik, and in one of the palaces at Nimroud, the bulls had only four legs.

[151] See Perrot and Guillaume, Expédition archéologique de la Galatie, vol. i. pp. 345, 346, and vol. ii. plate 57.

[152] This contrivance may also be seen on the small limestone stele, covered with writing, which represents Assurbanipal carrying a basket on his head, and preparing to make an offering to the gods (British Museum, Assyrian Side Room).

[153] Look for instance at the last figure but one, on the right, in Place, vol. iii. plate 60, fig. 4. It is that of a man turning to speak to one who follows him. The feet are turned in one direction, and the head in one diametrically opposite to it. Nothing more ungraceful could be conceived.

[154] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 98; vol. ii. figs. 250, 254, 255, &c.

[155] Ibid. p. 294.

[156] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 185–196, plates ix. x. xi. and figs. 172, 173, 174, 178, 183, 198, 199, 205, 208, 213, 214, 215, 216, 223, &c.

[157] Ibid. figs. 273–275.

[158] Ibid. p. 192.

[159] An almost unique exception to this rule occurs in those bas-reliefs in the British Museum which represent the great hunts of Assurbanipal. We there see a company of beardless individuals marching, bare-headed, dressed in a short tunic and armed with lance and buckler. But this is an apparent rather than a real exception. The chase is not war. These men are not soldiers, but attendants on the hunt, an inferior kind of shikarrie. In the battle pieces we sometimes see the eunuchs attached to the king’s person fighting at his elbow.

[160] We have no reason to believe that the Egyptian fashion of wearing wigs obtained in Assyria (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 327, 378). Herodotus tells us that in his time the Chaldæans wore long hair (i. 195).

[161] This is the opinion of M. Lenormant (Gazette des Beaux Arts, vol. xxv. pp. 218–225), and M. Ménant has upheld the same thesis in a paper read before the Académie des Inscriptions (Remarques sur des Portraits des Rois Assyro-Chaldéens, in the Comptes Rendus for 1881, pp. 254–267).

[162] On this point again I regret to be unable to agree with M. Ménant; I am unable to perceive any of the differences of which he speaks (see p. 258 of his paper).

[163] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. ii. p. 500.

[164] Upon the discovery of these figures and their nature, see Layard, Discoveries, p. 230.

[165] Layard, Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 126–127. The English explorer himself remarks in speaking of this relief, that the features of the men show nothing of the special type which the artist endeavoured to suggest by this clumsy expedient.

[166] This is what M. Ménant sees in this Babylonian stele: “It represents a race with a short, thickset body, a short neck buried between the shoulders, a flat nose and thick lips” (p. 259 of his paper).

[167] Layard, Discoveries, p. 537.

[168] Herodotus, i. 192.

[169] Loftus gives a poor reproduction of this monument, which he found at Sinkara (Travels, &c., p. 258). We have not reproduced it, because it is in much worse condition than the terra-cotta dog.

[170] Herodotus, i. 193.

[171] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 234. Upon each of these figures appears the dog’s name, which always bears some relation to the qualities he displayed in the performance of his duties.

[172] This relief is figured in Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 356.

[173] W. Houghton, On the Mammalia of the Assyrian Sculptures in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. v. pp. 33–64, and 579–583.

[174] We are tempted to believe that these animals were exterminated before the days of the Sargonids by the unrelenting pursuit to which they were subjected; they are not to be found in the pictures of Assurbanipal’s hunts. On the other hand, in the palace of Assurnazirpal, which dates from two centuries earlier, they were figured with peculiar insistence and in great detail (Layard, Monuments, first series, plates 11, 12, 32, 43–44, 46, 48 and 49).

[175] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 351; Layard, Monuments, first series, plate 58. Second series, plates 26 and 29.

[176] Layard, Monuments, first series, plates 58 and 60.

[177] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 233.

[178] Among the reliefs in which the Assyrian horse may be best studied, are the slabs from the palace of Sennacherib, in which a string of horses led by grooms are shown (Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 7). They have no trappings or clothing of any kind to hide their form.

[179] Other incidents, figured with no less spirit, will be found in Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 355, 356; 516, 517.

[180] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 21, Monuments, first series, plate 61; second series, plate 50. Botta (Monuments de Ninive, plate 128), reproduces a group of camels sketched with a light hand, but with much truth and judgment.

[181] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 433. All four faces of this obelisk are reproduced on plates 53–56 of the first series of Layard’s Monuments.

[182] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 40 and 350; and Layard, Discoveries, p. 109.

[183] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 434, 435.

[184] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 436. The Assyrians seem to have been much struck with these apes when they first appeared at Calah. This is shown by the care expended upon them by the sculptor of Shalmaneser’s obelisk; he has reproduced the bas-relief of Assurnazirpal on a smaller scale (Layard, Monuments, first series, Plate 55).

[185] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 437.

[186] Layard, Monuments, series ii. plates 32 (Khorsabad), and 40 (Kouyundjik).

[187] A lion hunt is to be found in the bas-reliefs of Assurnazirpal, dating from the ninth century, B.C. (Layard, Monuments, first series, plates 10 and 31); but it is especially in those of Assurbanipal (7th century), that the animal becomes so conspicuous.

[188] On the subject of these great hunts and their arrangements, see Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 505–512. The custom is still kept up in Eastern countries, and their personnel is pretty much the same as it was in antiquity. See Chardin, Voyage en Perse (Langles’ edition), vol. iii. p. 399; and Rousselet, L’Inde des Rajahs, pp. 202, 464, 468.

[189] These caged lions are only found in the bas-reliefs of Assurbanipal. The number of lions killed between the eleventh and seventh centuries B.C. must have been something extraordinary. Tiglath-Pileser I. boasts in one of his inscriptions of having done eight hundred lions to death. In time they must have become rare in Assyria. They must then have been brought from Chaldæa or Susiana, where they have always been more abundant, and transported to the north in carts, cages and all, there to afford sport for the king. In our day lions are hardly to be found higher up the Tigris than Bagdad; but on the Euphrates they occur much farther north, as far as Bir and all over the valley of the Khabour (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 48). They are most numerous in the marshes of the lower Euphrates, where they were hunted in boats by the kings of Assyria (Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 361 and 508). Most of the lions of Mesopotamia have very little mane, but a few have been encountered here and there in which that feature is largely developed. These seem to have been chosen as models by the Assyrian artists.

[190] In one single series of these reliefs, there are eleven lions killed and seven terribly wounded.

[191] The king sometimes found himself engaged with a lion at the closest quarters. In an inscription on one of these reliefs, Assurbanipal thus expresses himself. “I, Assurbanipal, king of the nations, king of Assyria, fighting on foot in my great courage with a lion of terrifying size, I seized him by the ear(!), and, in the name of Assur and Istar, goddess of war, I put an end to his life with the lance I held in my hand.” (Fox Talbot in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xix. p. 272).

[192] Layard, Discoveries, p. 487. As to the part played by the lion in the ceremonies of the present court of Abyssinia, see Georges Perrot, Les Fouilles de M. de Sarzec en Chaldée, pp. 532, 534, of the Revue des deux Mondes for October 1, 1882.

[193] The same rock may be identified in the fragments from Tello. There is a kind of cylindrical base in the Louvre, which appears to have been cut from a material differing in no respect from that of the object figured above. Lions’ heads appear upon it also.

[194] Upon the employment of the head and paws of the lion as an ornament, see also Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 301.

[195] In the inventory this monument is described as acquired in Syria, that is to say it was bought from M. Peretié, at Beyrout. M. Peretié was a well-known collector, and objects found in Mesopotamia were continually brought to him from Mossoul, Bagdad, and Bassorah. There can be no doubt as to the origin of this little monument; the execution is certainly Chaldæan or Assyrian. The same monster, rampant, is to be found on the Assyrian cylinder described by M. Lenormant under the title, Le Dieu-lune délivré de l’Attaque des mauvais Esprits (Gazette archéologique, 1878, p. 20).

[196] As to where this colossus was found, see Layard, Nineveh, vol. i. p. 68.

[197] De Longperier, Deux bronzes Antiques de Van (in his Œuvres, vol. i. pp. 275–278).

[198] In de Longperier’s reproduction of one of these figures, the ring attached to its back is shown.

[199] G. Perrot, Les Fouilles de M. de Sarzec en Chaldée, in the Revue des deux Mondes, for October 1, 1882. A methodical account of the whole enterprise will be found in a forthcoming work, which will bear for title: Découvertes en Chaldée, par M. E. de Sarzec, ouvrage publié par les soins de la conservation des antiquités orientales au Musée du Louvre. Its quarto size will make it a more convenient work than those of Botta and Place. The illustrations will be produced by the Dujardin heliogravure process.

[200] Saïd-Hassan and Chatra, of which we have made use to give some approximate idea as to where Tello is situated, are marked upon the map given by Loftus (Travels and Researches, &c.).

[201] Vol. I. Chap. I. § 4.

[202] M. Oppert believes that he has discovered in the inscriptions of Gudea, proof that the stone he employed came from Egypt. We cannot attempt to discuss the phrases which seem to him to bear that sense. We have some difficulty, however, in believing either that they took the trouble to transport such ponderous blocks across the desert, or that they sent them on a voyage round the whole peninsula of Arabia, a voyage that must have lasted some months, and that when similar materials were within reach. See what Mr. Taylor says about the district which is called Hedjra (heap of stones, from Hadjar, stone), from the numerous masses of black granite that may be found there. This district is almost opposite Schenafieh, not far from Bahr-ul-nejef (Notes on Abou-Sharein, p. 404, of vol. xv, of the Royal Asiatic Society’s Journal).

[203] Heuzey, Les Fouilles de la Chaldée, p. 16 (extracted from the Revue archéologique for January, 1881).

[204] Perhaps we should rather give the Chaldæan artist the credit of having produced a not untruthful bird’s-eye view. The bodies in the sepulchre are evidently stretched side by side, and they diminish in size from front to back, as their distance from the eye of the spectator increases. The two living men are mounting upon the edge, or wall, of the grave, an edge such as the tomb figured on p. 358 of Vol. I. (Fig. 164) must have had before its lid was put on. In these two figures there is an unmistakable attempt to give the effect of distance in varying their size. A curious detail in this relief is the post with a rope knotted round it that appears in the lower left hand corner.—Ed.

[205] It has been thought that the inscriptions contain proof, that, during the period, to which this primitive art belongs, Sirtella was the capital of a small independent kingdom, while the title of Gudea (patési, or governor) would seem to show that in his time it formed part of a larger state. Gudea can only have been a great feudatory; his position must have been similar to the nome princes in Egypt. Heuzey, in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions for 18 August, 1882.

[206] A tenth statue of Gudea, very much mutilated, is not yet exhibited. There is also the lower part of a small seated statue, without inscription.

[207] The great seated statue that occupies the middle of the room is five feet three inches in height, and has no head. One of the standing statues is four feet eight inches high. The one figured in our Plate VI. is only four feet two inches. The small statue called the architect (Fig. 96) is three feet one inch. It will be seen that some of these figures are over, and some under, life-size; one only, if we allow for the head, will correspond with what we may call the height of a man.

[208] Letter from M. de Sarzec read to the Académie des Inscriptions on the 2nd December, 1881 (reprinted in Heuzey, Fouilles de Chaldée).

[209] On the knees of these seated figures we find the scale, the stylus and the plan of a fortified city that we explained on pages 327 and 328 of our first volume.

[210] Heuzey, Les Fouilles de Chaldée, p. 12.

[211] Some may be inclined to think that the bald head may once have been protected by a covering cut from a separate block. This idea was suggested to us by the existence in the British Museum of a kind of wig of black stone (Nimroud Gallery, case H). It is carved to imitate hair, and, in front, has a kind of crest, the whole being cut from one piece of stone. It may have been used to surmount a limestone figure, and the contrast between the light colour of the one material, and the blackness of the other would be neither unpleasant nor unfitting. In another case (A) of the same gallery, we find beards and wigs made some of glass, others of a sandy frit imitating lapis-lazuli. The use of these disconnected pieces must then have been very widespread. But we doubt whether the Tello head ever had such a covering, because that part of its surface which would in such a case have been hidden from sight, is finished with the same care as all the rest. If the artist had included a wig in his calculations, would he have taken the pains he did with the modelling and polishing of the cranium?

[212] In the sculptures representing the erection of Sennacherib’s palace, many of the workmen have their heads protected from the sun by a turban resembling that of the Tello statue. This can hardly be clearly seen in small scale reproductions (Vol. I. Figs. 151 and 152), but Layard gives two of these heads on the original scale, for the express purpose of calling attention to their singular head-dress (Monuments, series ii. plate 16).

[213] Here M. Heuzey answers M. Ménant, who thought he could discover in these two heads that the sculptor’s models had not been Semites, but belonged to the primitive race, of Turanians, no doubt, by whom the Chaldæan civilization was founded (Les Fouilles de M. de Sarzec en Mesopotamia, in the number for December, 1880, of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts).

[214] Heuzey, Les Fouilles, &c., p. ii.

[215] Heuzey, Les Fouilles de Chaldée, pp. 13, 14.

[216] De Longpérier, Musée Napoléon III., plate 2.

[217] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. fig. 271.

[218] Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 32.

[219] Heuzey, Les Fouilles de la Chaldée, p. 15.

[220] We may give as an instance the very small fragment of a relief in white stone, representing the Indian humped bull, the zebu, which has also been met with in the Assyrian bas-reliefs. The treatment is very fine.

[221] See De Longperier, Monuments antiques de la Chaldée decouverts et rapportés par M. de Sarzec (Œuvres, vol. i. p. 335). The learned archæologist, of whom the writing of this paper was one of the last occupations, saw in this fragment evidence of worship rendered to the great rivers that watered and fertilized Mesopotamia; the double stream of water is the symbol of Naharaim, or “the two rivers,” a symbol whose presence in other objects from the same region he points out.

[222] Loftus (Travels, p. 116), describes a statue of black granite that he found at Hammam in lower Chaldæa. So far as we can tell from his short description, it must bear no slight resemblance to the Tello statues. The right shoulder was bare and had an inscription engraved upon it. The rest of the figure was clothed, and the hands were crossed upon the knees. The head was missing. At Warka the same traveller saw a bas-relief representing a man striking an animal; it was of basalt and was broken into several pieces. Among the objects acquired in 1877 by the British Museum, I find mentioned “a fragment of black granite or basalt, which seems to belong to a statue of Hammourabi, king of Babylon about 1,500 years before our era.” (Account of the Income and Expenditure of the British Museum for 1878.) Is not this the broken statue which now figures in the gallery under the name of Gudea? At the first moment the inscription may not have been readily deciphered; the summary report presented to Parliament seems, indeed, to name Hammourabi with some hesitation.

[223] This type comes from Tello. Among the statuettes found there by M. de Sarzec, there were some in which it was reproduced, but they were all inferior to the example figured above. Layard found statuettes inspired by the same motive in a mound near Bagdad (Discoveries, p. 477).

[224] Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 30.

[225] Ibid. p. 35.

[226] Layard found this type near Bagdad (Discoveries, p. 477), and Loftus encountered a great number of examples in his explorations at Susa (Travels, &c., p. 379). Those brought by him to London are quite similar to the statuette in the Louvre that we have chosen for reproduction (Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 32).

[227] In the case of the Caillou Michaux, this has been clearly established by M. Oppert (Expédition scientifique, vol. i. pp. 253, 254). He remarks that the betrothed of the person who had caused the stone to be cut, is spoken of as a “native of the town of Sargon;” so that the stone must be later than the end of the eighth century, B.C. And all the monuments belonging to this class bear such a strong mutual resemblance, that their dates cannot be very widely separated. They are reproduced on a large scale, both texts and figures, in the Cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. iii. plates 41–45, and vol. iv. plates 41–43. We have reproduced two, in vol. i. fig. 10, and above, fig. 43.

[228] According to Millin, who was the first to draw attention to this monument, its material is a black marble; it would be a mistake to call it basalt (Monuments antique inedits, vol. i. p. 60, note 6). The inscription on the Caillou Michaux has been translated by Oppert (Chronologie des Assyriens et des Babylonians, p. 40), and by Fox Talbot in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xviii. pp. 53–75. [There is a cast of this Caillou in the Assyrian Side Room at the British Museum.—Ed.]

[229] The weight of these objects was in itself sufficient to prevent them being easily removed. The Caillou Michaux weighs rather more than 70 lbs.

[230] Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 32.

[231] Ἔστι δὲ τοῦ ἐν Βαβυλῶνι ἱροῦ καὶ ἄλλος κάτω νηός, ἔνθα ἄγαλμα μέγα τοῦ Διὸς ἔνι κατήμενον χρύσεον (i. 183).

[232] Ἐπ’ ἄκρας τῆς ἀναβάσεως τρία κατέσκευασεν ἀγάλματα χρυσὰ σφυρήλατα, Διός, Ἥρας, Ῥέας. Diodorus, ii. ix. 5–8.

[233] The Five Great Monarchies, &c., vol. ii. p. 79.

[234] See ante.

[235] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 5.

[236] For the reasons which led him to take this step, see the Introduction to the first series of plates published in the Monuments.

[237] The original arrangement of these things is shown in the second series of Layard’s Monuments, plate 4.

[238] We have round-headed steles of Assurnazirpal, of Shalmaneser II., of Samas-vul II., and of Sargon. Those of other princes are figured in the reliefs. In the Balawat gates we find Shalmaneser erecting them wherever his conquests led him (plate 12).

[239] We have not copied the uniform dark green tint forced upon the English publication by the necessity for printing in one colour. We have borrowed from the fragments in the possession of M. Schlumberger the broken hues of the patina deposited upon the bronze by age, a patina which has, perhaps, been too much removed by the cleaning to which the pieces in London have been subjected.

[240] In page 3 of his Introduction, Mr. Pinches speaks of a “crocodile and a young hippopotamus.” I do not think that either of those animals can ever have lived in the cold waters of Lake Van, which receives, in the spring, such a large quantity of melted snow.

On the other hand, the argument applied by M. Perrot to architectural forms (see vol. i. pp. 139 (note 2) and 395), may here be invoked by Mr. Pinches. It is more likely that the artist introduced such animals as were to be found in the rivers and meres of Mesopotamia, than that he ascertained how Lake Van was peopled before he began his work.—Ed.

[241] In order that we might give two interesting subjects on a single page, we have here brought together two divisions that do not belong to the same band in the original.

[242] Herodotus, i. 184.

[243] In repeating this hypothesis we have followed Professor Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. ii. pp. 119–121); to us it appears worthy of extreme respect.

[244] See above, page 40.

[245] See also Layard, Monuments, first series, plates 57–67.

[246] Among the reliefs in which the transport of the materials for Sargon’s palace is represented, there is one which shows timber being dragged down to the Phœnician coast. Here the sea is no longer indicated merely by sinuous lines and a few fishes as in most of the earlier reliefs; there are all kinds of animals, shells, turtles, crabs, frogs, and even sea-serpents (Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 34). In one place we find a wooded hill, with trees still of indeterminate form (plate 78). In another we may recognize pines in the forest traversed by the Assyrian cavalry (plates 108–113); birds fly among the branches and several among them fall pierced with the arrows of the hunters. Other trees bear fruit (plate 114). Partridges run upon the slopes of the hill. See also in the basalt reliefs from the building we have called a temple, a coniferous tree of some kind, probably a cypress, the general form of which is very well rendered (Place, Ninive, plate 48).

[247] This stele now belongs to the Berlin Museum. It has recently been the subject of an important work by a learned German Assyriologist, Herr Schrader (Die Sargonstele des Berliner Museums, in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1881). He gives a translation of the inscription, with a commentary, showing the date of the stele to be 707, or the fifteenth year of Sargon’s reign.

[248] These lions are figured by Layard, Monuments, first series, vol. i. p. 128. Their inscriptions are brought together in a single plate in the Discoveries, p. 601. The Aramaic texts will be published in the Corpus inscriptionum Semiticorum, in the first instalment of the part devoted to Aramaic inscriptions.

These lions of Khorsabad and Nimroud may be compared, both for type and use, to the bronze lion found at Abydos, on the Hellespont, in 1860. M. de Vogué has made us acquainted with the latter in the pages of the Revue archéologique for January, 1862. His article, which contains a reproduction both of the monument as a whole and of its inscription, and an explanation of the latter, has been reprinted in the Mélanges d’archéologie orientale (8vo. 1868, pp. 179–196). Mr. Norris has published a special study of the weights in the British Museum (On the Assyrian and Babylonian Weights, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xvi. p. 215).

[249] Botanists are of opinion that the conventional representations of the marsh vegetation suggests the horse-grass, or shave-grass (prêle), rather than the arundo-donax, in which the leaves are longer and thinner.

[250] See Layard, Monuments, second series, plates 12 and 13.

[251] Layard, Monuments, second series, plates 14, 15.

[252] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 17.

[253] Sennacherib caused his sculptors to celebrate the campaign in which he subdued the peoples of Lower Chaldæa. Like the Arab of to-day, they took refuge when pursued among the marshes in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf (Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 25). The light, flat-bottomed boats, with their sharp prows, are shown pushing through the reeds, and bending them down into the water to clear a passage.

[254] The slabs taken from this corridor are now in the Kouyundjik Gallery of the British Museum, and numbered from 37 to 43. See also Layard’s Monuments, second series, plates 7–9.

[255] See Layard, Monuments, second series, plates 47–49. &c.

[256] These sculptures were discovered and described for the first time by M. Rouet, the immediate successor of M. Botta, at Mossoul (Journal Asiatique, 1846, pp. 280–290). More detailed descriptions will be found in Layard, Discoveries, pp. 207–216, and in Place, Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 161–164. The latest and most complete translation of the Bavian inscriptions, or rather of the one inscription that is repeated in three different places, has been given by M. Pognon, under the following title: L’Inscription de Bavian, texte, Traduction et Commentaire philologique avec trois Appendices et un Glossaire, 1 vol. 8vo. in two parts, 1879 and 1880 (in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes-Études).

[257] Layard, Discoveries, p. 216.

[258] Layard tells us that near the entrance to the gorge, and under the alluvial earth carried down by the stream, he found the remains of carefully-built stone walls, but he is silent as to the character of the building to which they may have belonged. (Discoveries, p. 215.)

[259] See the vignette on page 214 of Layard’s Discoveries.

[260] Perrot and Guillaume, Exploration archéologique de la Galatie, vol. i. pp. 367–373, and vol. ii. plates 72–80.

[261] Layard, Discoveries, p. 210.

[262] Layard, Discoveries, p. 211.

[263] Mr. Layard intended to give accurate and complete drawings of all the bas-reliefs at Bavian. For that purpose he despatched to the valley a young artist named Bell, who had been sent out to him by the authorities of the British Museum. Unhappily, this young man was drowned while bathing in the torrent, in July, 1851. Before his death he seems only to have copied the great relief; hence, in Layard’s great work Bavian is represented only by the plate we have copied. In the Discoveries a few additional sketches are given.

[264] Page 203.

[265] In the valley of the Nahr-el-Kelb, there are five or six Assyrian reliefs mingled with those of Egyptian origin. They may at once be distinguished from the works of the Rameses by their arched tops. The only one of which the inscriptions are still legible, is that of Esarhaddon (see Monuments inédits de l’Institut de Correspondance archéologique, 1858, plate 51, fig. F, and especially Lepsius, Ægyptische Denkmæler, part iii. plate 197, fig. D). Judging from their style and the historical information we possess, these steles may be attributed to Tiglath-Pilezer, Assurnazirpal, Shalmaneser II., and Sennacherib. The remaining figures must be referred to other princes. Quite lately Mr. Boscawen has published an interesting article (The Monuments and Inscriptions on the Rocks at Nahr-el-Kelb) in the seventh volume of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology (pp. 331–352). It is accompanied by a general view of the site, and a very careful plan of that part of the valley in which the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions are to be found. Professor Lortet has also paid a recent visit to the valley. We are indebted to one of his photographs for our fig. 122 (Tour du Monde, 1882, p. 415). We should have expected to find traces of these Assyrian rock-sculptures on the shores of Lake Van, where the princes of Nineveh so often appeared as conquerors: so far, however, nothing beyond cuneiform inscriptions has been found. There are no royal effigies (Schulze, Mémoire sur le Lac de Van, in the Journal Asiatique for April-June, 1840, and Layard, Discoveries, chapter xviii.).

[266] Layard, Discoveries, p. 369.

[267] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 154.

[268] See vol. i. page 75, and fig. 13.

[269] The bas-reliefs of Malthaï have been described by Layard (Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 230, 231), and, with greater minuteness, by Place (Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 153–160). The latter alone gives a reproduction of them, made from photographs. Between the two accounts there is one considerable discrepancy: Layard speaks of four groups of nine figures each, Place of three only.

[270] Other cylinders belonging to the same group will be found reproduced in Layard Recherches sur le Culte de Vénus, notably in plate iv. figs. 9–12.

[271] French National Library, No. 710.

[272] Florence Museum.

[273] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. pp. 120–122.

[274] Flandin published in the Revue des deux Mondes (15 June, and 1 July, 1845), two papers under the general title of Voyage archéologique à Ninive, and headed severally L’Architecture assyrienne, and La Sculpture assyrienne. The assertion to which we have alluded will be found in the second of the two articles, at page 106.

[275] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 178.

[276] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 82, 83.

[277] Ibid. vol. iii. plate 46, No. 4.

[278] Botta (Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 178.) Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 310.

[279] Upon this question of polychromy in the reliefs, a very precise note of Layard’s may be consulted with profit (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 312). The discussion has also been very judiciously summed up by Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 357–365). One of the plates from which we may gather the best idea of how this sculpture must have looked when its colouring was intact, is that in which Layard gives a reproduction of one of the winged bulls as it appeared when first uncovered (Monuments, first series, plate 92).

[280] Botta, Monument de Ninive, plates 12 and 14.

[281] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 58.

[282] Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 113.

[283] Ibid. plates 43 and 53.

[284] Botta, Monument, &c. plate 62.

[285] Ibid. plates 61 and 76, and vol. v. p. 124.

[286] See especially at the south end of the Nimroud Gallery, the upper part of a male figure, numbered 17 a. The black of the hair and beard has preserved much of its strength.

[287] “At Kouyunjik there were no traces whatever of colour.” Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 310.

[288] Heuzey, Catalogue des Figurines en terre cuite du Musée du Louvre, p. 18.

[289] Heuzey, Catalogue, &c. p. 19.

[290] Ibid. p. 20. Layard also found many of these blue statuettes at Khorsabad (Discoveries, p. 357).

[291] These fragments were found by Layard in one of the small temples at Nimroud (Discoveries, pp. 357, 358).

[292] M. Sully Prudhomme has lately embodied this idea in his verses addressed to the Venus of the Louvre (Devant la Vénus de Milo in the Revue politique for 6 January, 1883):—

“Dans les lignes du marbre où plus rien ne subsiste

De l’éphémère éclat des modèles de chair,

Le ciseau de sculpteur, incorruptible artiste,

En isolant le Beau, nous le rend chaste et clair.

Si tendre à voir que soit la couleur d’un sein rose,

C’est dans le contour seul, presque immatériel,

Que le souffle divin se relève et dépose

La grâce qui l’exprime et ravit l’âme au ciel.

*****

Saluons donc cet art qui, trop haut pour la foule.

Abandonne des corps les éléments charnels.

Et, pur, du genre humain ne garde que le moule,

N’en daigne consacrer que les traits éternels!

[293] Herodotus, i. 195. Strabo says the same thing, but in a passage (xvi. i. 20), in which he borrows from Herodotus without acknowledgment.

[294] There are fine series of these seals, or cylinders, both in the Louvre and in the Cabinet des Antiques of the French National Library. But the collection of the British Museum is the richest of all. It possesses about 660 examples, against the 500 of the Cabinet des Antiquités, and the 300 of the Louvre. The cabinet at the Hague has 150. A single French collector, M. de Clercq, possesses more than 400, most of them in very fine condition and of great interest. He is preparing to publish a descriptive catalogue of his treasures, accompanied by photogravure facsimiles of every cylinder. According to M. Ménant, the total number of these cylinders now in European galleries can fall very little short of three thousand.

[295] M. Fr. Lenormant explains this talismanic value of the cylinders very clearly in his Étude sur la Signification des Sujets de quelques Cylindres babyloniens et assyriens (Gazette archéologique, 1879, p. 249).

[296] We have derived most of the information contained in this chapter from the works of M. Ménant, who, for many years past has given more study to these cylinders than any other savant. We have found his Essai sur les Pierres gravées de l’Asie occidentale of special value, but we have also made use of the various reports he has published in the Archives des Missions, relating to the foreign collections visited by him, and of his papers read before the Académie des Inscriptions. We have, moreover, consulted the following works, not, we hope, without profit: De Gobineau, Catalogue d’une Collection d’Intailles asiatiques (Revue archéologique, new series, vol. xxvii.); E. Soldi, Les Cylindres babyloniens, leur Usage et leur Classification (ibid. vol. xxviii.); and Les Arts méconnus, by the same author (1 vol. 8vo. Leroux, 1881), chapter i., Les Camées et les Pierres gravées.

[297] The thickest cylinders are found among those that appear the most ancient. I measured one, in the Cabinet des Antiquités, that was barely less than an inch in diameter. On the other hand, there are some very small ones in existence.

[298] Ménant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées de l’Asie occidentale, Introduction, p. 19. In the British Museum M. Ménant made a careful examination of a tablet on which these successive impressions from a cylinder allowed the whole of the scene with which it was engraved to be studied (Rapport sur les Cylindres Assyro-Chaldéens du Musée britannique, p. 95, in the Archives des Missions scientifiques, 1879). Even as late as 1854, a fine connoisseur like De Longperier could think that the cylinders were purely amulets and were never used as seals (Notice des Antiquités assyriennes exposées dans les Galeries du Louvre, 3rd edition, p. 87). No such assertion could be made now. Hundreds of impressions are to be found on the terra-cotta tablets from Mesopotamia, and moreover, we find this formula in the inscription borne by many of the cylinders: “Seal (kunuku) of so-and-so, son of so-and-so.” In Assyrian the word kunuku meant, as the word seal with us, both the instrument used and the impression it gave (Ménant, Essai, Introduction, p. 17). Some of these impressions are figured in Layard, Discoveries, chapters vi and xxv. See also his Monuments, second series, plate 69.

[299] The Louvre possesses a cylinder mounted in this fashion. It was found by Place in the foundations of the Khorsabad palace. See De Longperier, Notice, p. 98, (No. 469 in the Catalogue).

[300] Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer, p. 270 (in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv.).

[301] Layard, Discoveries, p. 563.

[302] A few cylinders of fine stone dating apparently from the early monarchy, are exceptions to this rule. M. Ménant quotes a cylinder of sapphirine chalcedony, which he ascribes to the reign of Dungi, the son of Ourkam (Essai sur les Pierres gravées, pp. 141–143); elsewhere he mentions an onyx cylinder in the Cabinet des Antiques (No. 870), which bears an inscription proving it to have been the seal of the scribe or secretary who served the son of Karigalzu, whom he places at the end of the fifteenth century B.C. We also find jasper cylinders that appear, so far as their execution and the costume of the figures engraved on them may show, to have come from the same workshops (ibid. p. 123) as those of the softer materials. This, we acknowledge, is a difficulty. But in the first place they may have now and then succeeded, even in the early years of the art, in fashioning materials harder than those with which they were familiar, by redoubling the patience and time spent upon the work; and, secondly, several kings separated from each other by centuries must have borne the same name, and it is perhaps a little bold to determine the age of a monument from the fact that it is engraved with this or that royal name. Who can say that none of these little monuments were reworked in the time of Nebuchadnezzar? Archaism was then in fashion. The writing of the early monarchy was imitated in official documents. Is it not probable enough that, while they were in the vein, they copied the seals of the old and almost legendary kings? They would reproduce them in their entirety, both images and texts, but in obedience to the taste of the day, they would execute the copies in those harder and more precious materials which his increased skill permitted the workman to attack. In spite of a few doubtful instances, we may repeat the general rule we have laid down: That the great majority of those cylinders that bear incontestable marks of a high antiquity, are cut from materials inferior in hardness to the precious stones, or even to the quartzes.

[303] E. Soldi, Les Cylindres babyloniens (Revue archéologique, vol. xxviii. p. 147).

[304] Ibid. p. 149.

[305] The three pages in which M. Soldi sums up the result of his inquiries, may be studied with advantage (Les Arts méconnus, pp. 62–64).

[306] See J. Ménant, Observations sur trois Cylindres orientaux (Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December, 1879).

[307] Or, more correctly, Dioscurides (Διοσκουρίδης), according to the texts.—Ed.

[308] As to the connection of the Greek Heracles with Izdubar, see a passage quoted from Sayce by Mansell (Gazette archéologique, 1879, pp. 116, 117?). The New York cylinder is only 1.52 inches high. It has been slightly enlarged in our woodcut, so that its workmanship might be better shown.

[309] Upon the exploits of these two individuals, and the place they occupy upon the cylinders, see Ménant, Essai, &c., pp. 66, et seq.

[310] Ménant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées, Fig. 86.

[311] Ibid. p. 138.

[312] De Longpérier, Œuvres, vol. i. p. 335. Compare our Fig. 17, Vol. i., and M. Ménant’s observations upon the double-faced individual in whom the original androgynous type of the human race has been recognised by some (Essai, &c., pp. 111–120). We are inclined to agree with him in supposing the double profile to be no more than a convention, whose strangeness is diminished when we remember that it occurred upon the convex sides of a cylinder, where the eye of the spectator did not grasp it all at once, as upon the flat impression. In choosing such an arrangement, the artist seems to have desired to connect the figure both with the seated god and the figures on the other side; it is an expedient of the same nature as the five legs of the Ninevite bulls.

[313] Ménant, Essai, &c., p. 166. M. Ménant mentions some other myths, with which this scene may be connected. The true explanation cannot be decided, however, until the Chaldee mythology is better known than at present.

[314] Ibid. p. 153.

[315] Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. i. Fig. 85.

[316] Ménant, Essai, &c., pp. 61–96.

[317] Ménant, Essai, p. 94. Izdubar contends not only with monsters; he pursues, for his own pleasure, all the beasts of the desert and mountain; like the Nimrod of Genesis, he is a “mighty hunter before the Lord.” See the cylinders figured and explained by S. Haffner (La Chasse de l’Hercule assyrien, in the Gazette archéologique, 1879, p. 178–184).

[318] Ménant, Essai, p. 91.

[319] See above, page 144, and Fig. 70.

[320] Ménant, Essai, pp. 55–62.

[321] Berosus, fragment 1, § 4, in vol. ii. of the Fragmenta historicorum Græcorum of Ch. Müller.

[322] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 2. Layard, Discoveries, p. 605.

[323] These two cylinders are respectively numbered 937 and 942 in the Cabinet des Antiques.

[324] Ménant, Catalogue des Cylindres orientaux du Cabinet royal des Médailles de La Haye (The Hague, 4to.), No. 135.

[325] Upon these types see Ménant, Archives des Missions, 1879, pp. 128–9. The signet figured above belonged to a member of the tribe called Egibi, a group of merchants and bankers who seem to have held the highest rank upon the market of Babylon, both under the last national kings, and under the Achæmenidæ.

[326] Archives des Missions, 1879, p. 115.

[327] The charging animal seems rather to be a wild boar. The shape of its head and body, the ridge of hair along the spine, the shape of the legs and feet, and its action in charging, all suggest a boar, a suggestion confirmed by the action of the hunter, who receives the rush of the animal on a kind of scarf or cloak, while he buries his boar-spear in its back.—Ed.

[328] The cylinder published by Layard, Introduction à l’Étude du Culte public et des Mystères de Mithra, plate xxv. No. 4. See on the subject of the inscription upon it, Levy, Siegel und Gemmen, plate 1, No. 15. A certain number of intaglios with Aramaic characters, which belong to the same class, have been studied and described by M. de Vogué, in his Mélanges d’Archéologie orientale, pp. 120–130.

[329] National Library, Paris; No. 1086.

[330] National Library, No. 978.

[331] Ménant, Empreintes de Cachets assyro-chaldéens relevées au Musée britannique (Archives des Missions, 1882, p. 375), fig. 5.

[332] Ibid. fig. 25.

[333] A kneeling figure occurs on a contract dated from the seventh century, Ménant, ibid. p. 376, fig. 7. Several impressions in the London collection show us personages in the modern attitude of prayer before the figure of a god overshadowed by huge wings. Ibid. figs. 26 and 27.

[334] Ménant, Empreinte de Cachets, &c. fig. 65.

[335] De Luynes collection, No. 188. Diameter 1 inch.

[336] No. 986.

[337] Ibid. figs. 20–24, 27, 30, 31, 41–44.

[338] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 290, 291.

[339] Ménant, Rapport sur les Cylindres du Musée britannique, p. 127.

[340] Soldi, Les Cylindres babyloniens (Revue archéologique, vol. xxviii.), p. 153.

[341] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. fig. 85.

[342] Layard, Discoveries, p. 281. A scarab of Amenophis III. has also been found. Layard also tells us that he found several scarabæi of Egyptian manufacture, while excavating at Nimroud, and others were brought to him which had been found in different parts of Mesopotamia.

[343] Account of the income and expenditure of the British Museum for 1878.

[344] In a recently published work (Kritik des Ægyptischen Ornaments, archäologische Studie, with two lithographic plates, Marburg, 8vo, 1883) Herr Ludwig von Sybel has investigated the influence exercised by what he calls Asiatic ornament upon Egyptian art, after the commencement of the second Theban empire. The impression left by his inquiry—which is conducted with much order and critical acumen—is that Egypt, by the intermediary of the Phœnicians, received more from Assyria and Chaldæa than she gave. This influence was exercised chiefly by the numerous metal objects imported into the Nile valley from western Asia, where metallurgy was more advanced and more active than in Egypt. We may have doubts as to some of Herr von Sybel’s comparisons, and may think he sometimes exaggerates the Asiatic influence, but none the less may his work be read both with profit and interest.

[345] See above, page 98.

[346] Layard, Monuments, first series, plate 7.

[347] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. chapter iv. § 1.

[348] Vol. I. Chapter II. § 7.

[349] The ornament reproduced in our Plate XIII. is borrowed from a plate of Layard’s Monuments (first series, plate 80), and the two subjects brought together in Plate XIV. are taken from plate 55 of the second series. Our Plate XV. brings together, on a smaller scale, the figures which occupy plates 29, 30 and 31 of Place’s Ninive.

[350] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 311.

[351] Place, Ninive, plate 32.

[352] Layard, Discoveries, p. 166, note.

[353] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 251, 252.

[354] Lepsius, Les Métaux dans les Inscriptions egyptiennes. Translated into French by W. Berend, and with additions by the author, 1877.

[355] Layard, Discoveries, p. 166.

[356] Ibid. p. 166.

[357] Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 313.

[358] Layard, Discoveries, p. 166.

[359] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 252.

[360] Diodorus, ii. viii. 4.

[361] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 91, 92. We borrow figs. 163–8 from Professor Rawlinson. Some of these, he tells us, are from drawings by Mr. Churchill, the artist who accompanied Loftus into Chaldæa and Susiana; the rest are taken from objects now in the British Museum.

[362] We borrow the figures numbered 183, 184, 186 and 187, from the plate accompanying a remarkable paper by M. Helbig, in which he points out the similarities that exist between this Ninevite pottery, and the oldest pottery of Attica and the Ægæan islands (Osservazioni sopra la provenienza della decorazione geometrica, in the Annales de l’Institut de Correspondance archéologique, 1875, p. 221). The tracings reproduced by M. Helbig (tavola d’aggiunta, H), were made by Mr. Murray. Our figures 182, 185, and 188 were taken from drawings made by myself in the British Museum.

[363] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 150.

[364] Birch, History of Ancient Pottery, 2nd edition, 1873, p. 91.

[365] Birch, History of Ancient Pottery, 2nd edition, 1873, p. 104.

[366] The British Museum possesses some fine examples of these coffins; they were transported to England by Loftus, who had some difficulty in bringing them home intact. See Loftus, Travels and Researches, &c., p. 204; Layard, Discoveries, pp. 558–561; and Birch, History of Ancient Pottery, pp. 105–107. In the upper parts of the mounds at Warka and Niffer, where these slipper-shaped coffins were packed in thousands, fragments of glazed earthenware, plates and vases, were also found; they seemed to date from the same period.

[367] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 375.

[368] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 173. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 389–391.

[369] On this subject see a note by Sir David Brewster (?), appended to Layard, Discoveries, pp. 674–676.

[370] Layard, Discoveries, p. 197.

[371] Layard, Nineveh, vol. i. p. 421; Discoveries, p. 197.

[372] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 574.

[373] A detailed description of this curious object will be found in a note supplied to Layard by Sir David Brewster, who made a careful examination of the lens (Discoveries, p. 197).

[374] See Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, &c., vol. i. pp. 95–97.

[375] On the richness of the metalliferous deposits about the head-waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, see vol. i. pp. 124, 125.

[376] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 98.

[377] Ibid.

[378] Ibid.

[379] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 263.

[380] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 303–305 and 379.

[381] Place, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 84–89, and plates 70, 71.

[382] A certain number of iron implements are exhibited in the British Museum (Kouyundjik Gallery, case E); they were found for the most part at Nimroud, by Sir H. Layard (Discoveries, pp. 174 and 194). Among objects particularly mentioned by him are feet of chairs, tables, &c., mattocks and hammers, the heads of arrows and lances, and a double-handled saw 62 inches long.

[383] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 264 and plate 71; figs. 5, 6 and 7.

[384] This is formally stated by Dr. Percy, who furnished Layard with a long note upon the composition of the Assyrian bronzes (Discoveries, p. 670). At Nimroud, the latter found helmets and cuirasses of iron with surface ornaments of bronze (Nineveh, vol. i. p. 341). He speaks of this proceeding as characteristic of Assyrian metal-work (Discoveries, p. 191).

[385] To the evidence of Layard, which we have already had occasion to quote on this point, we may add that of Rich (Kurdistan, vol. i. pp. 176 and 222).

[386] Layard, Discoveries, chapter viii.

[387] See Dr. Percy’s note, at the end of the Discoveries, p. 670.

[388] Layard, Discoveries, pp. 176–178.

[389] Nahum, ii. 9.

[390] E. Flandin, Voyage archéologique.

[391] Layard, Discoveries, pp. 198, 199.

[392] In 1882 these fragments were in the Nimroud central saloon. In the Assyrian side room, close to the door, there is another throne whose bronze casing might be restored almost in its entirety. Its decoration is less rich, however, than that of the thrones of which we have been speaking. A poor drawing of it may be found in George Smith’s Assyrian Discoveries, p. 432.

[393] This is not complete; about a third of it seems to be missing.

[394] Reasoning from the analogy of the ivories above mentioned, it might be thought that this fragmentary column belonged to the balustrade of a window. M. Dieulafoy, who first drew our attention to the fragment, provided us with a photograph of it, and is of that opinion.

[395] In Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 164, a bronze bull’s head is figured which must have been used as the arm of a chair.

[396] This motive was by no means rare. Some more examples will be found reproduced in Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 301. At Malthaï there are human figures between the uprights of the throne on which the second deity is seated. They may be seen more clearly in Place’s large plate (No. 45), than in our necessarily small engraving.

[397] 1 Kings x. 18.

[398] Layard, Discoveries, p. 198; Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, pp. 431, 432.

[399] George Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 432.

[400] As soon as these ivories arrived at the British Museum, the learned keeper of the Oriental Antiquities was struck by their Egyptian character. A paper which he published at the time may be consulted with profit (Birch, Observations on two Egyptian cartouches, and some other ivory ornaments found at Nimroud, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, second series, vol. iii. pp. 151–177.)

[401] Layard, Discoveries, p. 195.

[402] Layard, Monuments, first series, plate 24.

[403] Ibid. plates 55 and 56. In the second stage of reliefs, counting from the bottom.

[404] Among the ivories in case C of the Nimroud Gallery there is a kind of blackish ivory egg, which may have served as the knob of a sceptre. In an oval crowned by the uræus between two feathers, we find an inscription which appears to be Phœnician. It has been read as the name of a king of Cyprus. Loftus, in a letter addressed to the Athenæum (1855, p. 351), speaks of other ivories from the south-western palace at Nimroud. They are the remains of a throne, and were found in a deposit of wood ashes. He says there was a shaft formed by figures placed back to back and surmounted by a capital shaped like a flower. There was also, according to the same authority, a Phœnician inscription.

[405] See Vol. I., pp. 299–302.

[406] My researches were not confined to the ivories in the cases. I also went through the thousands of pieces in the closed drawers which are not shown, in some instances because of their broken condition, in others because they are merely duplicates of better specimens in the selection exhibited.

[407] The feet found by Sir H. Layard at Nimroud must, as he conjectured, have belonged to one of these tripods (Discoveries, pp. 178–179).

[408] We should also mention another vase, shaped like the muzzle of a lion, which was used to take liquids out of a large crater set upon a stand (Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. i. plate 76. See also M. Botta’s plate 162, where the chief examples from the bas-reliefs are figured).

[409] Layard, Discoveries, p. 197.

[410] In the eighth chapter of the Discoveries, Layard gives a sort of inventory, rather desultory in form, perhaps, but nevertheless very instructive and valuable, of the principal objects found in the magazines—we have borrowed largely from these pages. The most important of the cups are reproduced, in whole or in part, in the plates numbered from 57 to 68 of the Monuments, second series. A complete and accurate study of the cups and other objects of the same kind discovered in Western Asia will be found in M. Albert Dumont’s Les Céramiques de la Grèce propre (pp. 112–129).

[411] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 68.

[412] This platter is figured in Layard’s Monuments, plate 63, but our drawing was made from the original.

[413] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 87–89.

[414] It is numbered 619 in the museum inventory. It bears an inscription in Aramaic characters.

[415] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. figs. 280, 281.

[416] Inscriptions of this kind have been found on five or six of the bronze platters in the British Museum. They are about to be printed in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, part ii., Inscriptiones Aramæa, vol. i.

[417] Thus, according to M. de Vogüé, who has examined the inscriptions upon the cups recently cleaned, three of the cups from Nimroud bear respectively the names of Baalazar (Baal protects him), Elselah (El pardons him) and Beharel (El has chosen him). Baalazar was a scribe.

[418] See above, p. 220, note 2.

[419] See Prisse, Histoire de l’Art egyptien, vol. ii. plate entitled Le Pharaon Khouenaten servi par la reine. The kind of saucer held by the queen is more like the Assyrian pateræ in shape.

[420] See in Prisse’s Histoire, the plates classed under the head Arts industriels, and especially the four entitled Vases en Or émaillé et cloisonné. In all these I can only find one patera, in the plate called Collection de Vases du Règne de Ramesés III. There is nothing to show that the vases here figured were not earthenware.

[421] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. figs. 287, 288. See also the great vultures on the ceilings (ibid. fig. 282), and winged females (ibid. fig. 287).

[422] Prisse, Histoire de l’Art egyptien, vol. ii., the plate entitled Types de Sphinx.

[423] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. fig. 239, and Prisse, in the plate above quoted.

[424] A cursory glance through the pages dedicated by Prisse to the industrial arts is conclusive on this point, the heads of snakes and horses, the figures of negroes and prisoners of war are almost invariably placed back to back on the objects they are used to adorn. Examples of this abound, but in order to understand what we may call the principle of this ornamentation it will suffice to refer to figs. 314, 327, and 328 of the second volume of our History of Art in Ancient Egypt.

[425] In Prisse’s plate entitled Choix de Bijoux de diverses Époques, there is a bracelet with a central motive recalling that of our cup. It shows us two griffins separated by a palmette from which rises a tall stem of papyrus between several pairs of volutes. This object is, however, almost unique of its kind, and we do not exactly know to what epoch it belongs. May it not belong to a period when Egyptian art began to be affected by that of Mesopotamia, an influence that is betrayed in more than one particular? According to Herr Von Sybel, who has studied Egyptian ornament with so much care, this motive of two animals facing each other did not appear before the nineteenth dynasty, and he looks upon it as purely Asiatic in its origin (Kritik des Ægyptischen Ornaments, pp. 37, 38). We may also quote a small box of Egyptian faïence inscribed with the oval of Ahmes II, the Amasis of Herodotus. It bears two griffins quite similar to those of our group, separated by a cypress. But Dr. Birch, who was the first to publish this monument, recognizes that, in spite of the cartouch, its physiognomy is more Assyrian than Egyptian (Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Series II. p. 177).

[426] See on this subject an ingenious and learned paper to which we shall more than once have occasion to refer, namely, M. Clermont-Ganneau’s Étude d’Archéologie orientale, l’Imagerie phénicienne et la Mythologie iconologique chez les Grecs. First part: La Coupe phénicienne de Palestina (1880, 8vo, 8 plates).

[427] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 66.

[428] Houghton, On the Mammalia of Assyrian Sculptures, p. 382.

[429] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 67.

[430] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 62, B.

[431] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. chapter vii.; Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. pp. 338–348.

[432] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, &c., vol. i. pp. 408–410.

[433] Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 159. In this plate the chief types of weapons figured in the reliefs at Khorsabad are brought together.

[434] Boscawen, Notes on an Ancient Assyrian Bronze Sword bearing a Cuneiform Inscription (in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. iv. p. 347. with one plate).

[435] Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 160.

[436] Sayce, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xiv. p. 653. Mr. Pinches tells me that there is a similar text on the hollow border of the shield reproduced in our Fig. 225. Nothing is now to be distinguished, however, but characters that may be read, “Great king, king of ——”.

[437] See vol. i. page 394.

[438] We cannot too often thank the keepers of the Oriental antiquities in the British Museum for the trouble they took in enabling us to give a figure of this hitherto unpublished monument. The fragments, which had not yet been pieced together or exhibited in the galleries, were arranged expressly for our draughtsman.

[439] Nos. 385–391 in De Longpérier’s catalogue. These objects came from the collection of Clot-Bey, which was formed in Egypt but contained many things of Syrian origin. De Longpérier did not hesitate, on the evidence of their style, to class these objects as Assyrian, and any one who examines the motives of their decoration will be of his opinion. See his Œuvres, vol. i. p. 166.

[440] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 394–395, and figs. 257, 329–331.

[441] De Longpérier, Notice des Antiquités assyriennes du Musée du Louvre, third edition, No. 212.

[442] Many more varieties of the same type will be found in the plate on which Botta reproduced the principal jewels figured in the Khorsabad reliefs (Monument de Ninive, plate 161). See also Layard, Discoveries, p. 597.

[443] The Arab jewellers still make use of similar moulds (Layard, Discoveries, p. 595).

[444] Layard, Discoveries, pp. 177–178.

[445] Layard, Discoveries, p. 597. The oldest mention of the pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf is to be found in those fragments of Nearchus that have been preserved in the pages of Arrian (Indica, xxxviii. 7); but it is probable that the search for pearl oysters began in those waters many centuries before. The Assyrians, as we have seen, made use both of pearl and mother-of-pearl.

[446] J. Oppert, L’Ambre jaune chez les Assyriens (in the Recueil des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie egyptiennes et assyriennes, vol. ii, pp. 34 et seq.) M. Oppert’s rendering of the paraphrase which he believes to specify amber is not accepted by all Assyriologists.

[447] 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.

[448] Arrian, Expedition d’Alexandre, vi. 29.

[449] The reputation enjoyed by Chaldæan textiles all over western Asia is shown by a curious text in the book of Joshua (vii. 21). After the taking of Jericho, Achan, one of the Israelites, disobeyed orders and secreted a part of the spoil, consisting of two hundred shekels of silver, a wedge of gold, and “a goodly Babylonish garment.”

[450] “Pictas vestes apud Homerum fuisse (accipio), unde triumphales natæ. Acu acere id Phryges invenerunt, ideoque Phrygioniæ appellatæ sunt. Aurum intexere in eadem Asia invenit Attalus rex: unde nomen Attalicis. Colores diversos picturæ intexere Babylon maxime celebravit et nomen imposuit.” Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. § 74. Acu pingere, and for short, pingere, here meant to embroider. Picta or picturata vestis was a robe covered with embroideries.

[451] See Pliny, l. c. Lucretius, iv. 1026. Plautus, Stichus, Act ii, Scene ii, v. 54. Silius Italicus, xiv. 658. Martial, Epigr. xiv. 150. I borrow these citations from the first chapter of M. Eugène Müntz’s Histoire de la Tapisserie in the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts.

[452] See Vol. I. pp. 305–307.

[453] Nahum iii. 16.

[454] Ezekiel xvii. 4. Isaiah also alludes to the commerce of Babylon (xlvii. 15).

[455] See on this subject, François Lenormant’s La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité, vol. i. Prolégomènes, cap. iii. and especially pp. 113–122.

[456] Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. p. 108. Ménant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées, p. 128.

[457] “... the Chaldeans whose cry is in the ships,” Isaiah xliii. 14.

[458] Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv. p. 264).

[459] Strabo speaks of a Chaldæan settlement on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf; he calls it Gerrha (xvi. iii. 3). All the products of Arabia, he says, were there brought together. Thence they were transported to Chaldæa by sea, and carried up the Euphrates as far as Thapsacus.

[460] The juxtaposition on the black obelisk of Shalmaneser II. of the rhinoceros, the small-eared or Indian elephant, and the Bactrian camel seems to point to this route. The monkeys in the same reliefs appear to belong to an Indian species (Houghton, Mammalia of the Assyrian Sculptures, pp. 319, 320).

[461] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. figs. 257, 330 and 331.

[462] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 176–179.

[463] Soury, Théories naturalistes du Monde et de la Vie dans l’Antiquité, cap. i. and ii.

[464] Ibid. cap. iii.

[465] Fr. Lenormant, Manuel d’Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. page 176.

[466] Soury, Théories naturalistes, p. 65.

[467] A. de Candolle, Origine des Plantes cultivées, pp. 285, et seq.

Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.
3. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.