Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon

by Austen Henry Layard

Of the cups the most remarkable are:—

No. 1., diameter 5⅝ inches, and 2¼ inches deep, very elaborately ornamented with figures of animals, interlaced and grouped together in singular confusion, covering the whole inner surface; apparently representing a combat between griffins and lions; a very curious and interesting specimen, not unlike some of the Italian chasing of the cinque cento. No. 2., a fragment, embossed with the figures of lions and bulls, of very fine workmanship.

Of the remaining cups many are plain but of elegant shape, one or two are ribbed, and some have simply an embossed star in the centre.

About 150 bronze vessels discovered in this chamber are now in the British Museum, without including numerous fragments, which, although showing traces of ornament, are too far destroyed by decomposition to be cleaned.

The metal of the dishes, bowls, and rings, has been carefully analysed, and has been found to contain one part of tin to ten of copper, being exactly the relative proportions of the best ancient and modern bronze. The bells, however, have fourteen per cent. of tin, showing that the Assyrians were well aware of the effect produced by changing the proportions of the metals. These two facts show the advance made by them in the metallurgic art.

The effect of age and decay has been to cover the surface of all these bronze objects with a coating of beautiful crystals of malachite, beneath which the component substances have been converted into suboxide of copper and peroxide of tin, leaving in many instances no traces whatever of the metals.

It would appear that the Assyrians were unable to give elegant forms or a pleasing appearance to objects in iron alone, and that consequently they frequently overlaid that metal with bronze, either entirely, or partially, by way of ornament. The feet of the ring tripods previously described, furnish highly interesting specimens of this process, and prove the progress made by the Assyrians in it. The iron inclosed within the copper has not been exposed to the same decay as that detached from it, and will still take a polish.

The tin was probably obtained from Phœnicia; and consequently that used in the bronzes of the British Museum may actually have been exported, nearly three thousand years ago, from the British Isles! We find the Assyrians and Babylonians making an extensive use of this metal, which was probably one of the chief articles of trade supplied by the cities of the Syrian coast, whose seamen sought for it on the distant shores of the Atlantic.

The embossed and engraved vessels from Nimroud afford many interesting illustrations of the progress made by the ancients in metallurgy. From the Egyptian character of the designs, and especially of the drapery of the figures, in several of the specimens, it may be inferred that some of them were not Assyrian, but had been brought from a foreign people. As in the ivories, however, the workmanship, subjects, and mode of treatment are more Assyrian than Egyptian, and seem to show that the artist either copied from Egyptian models, or was a native of a country under the influence of the arts and taste of Egypt. The Sidonians, and other inhabitants of the Phœnician coast, were the most renowned workers in metal of the ancient world. In the Homeric poems they are frequently mentioned as the artificers who fashioned and embossed metal cups and bowls, and Solomon sought cunning men from Tyre to make the gold and brazen utensils for his temple and palaces.[78] It is, therefore, not impossible that the vessels discovered at Nimroud were the work of Phœnician artists, brought expressly from Tyre, or carried away amongst the captives when their cities were taken by the Assyrians, who, we know from many passages in the Bible[79], always secured the smiths and artisans, and placed them in their own immediate dominions. They may have been used for sacrificial purposes, at royal banquets, or when the king performed certain religious ceremonies, for in the bas-reliefs he is frequently represented on such occasions with a cup or bowl in his hand; or they may have formed part of the spoil of some Syrian nation, placed in a temple at Nineveh, as the holy utensils of the Jews, after the destruction of the sanctuary, were kept in the temple of Babylon.[80] It is not, indeed, impossible, that some of them may have been actually brought from the cities round Jerusalem by Sennacherib himself, or from Samaria by Shalmaneser or Sargon, who, we find, inhabited the palace at Nimroud, and of whom several relics have already been discovered in the ruins.

Around the vessels I have described were heaped arms, remains of armour, iron instruments, glass bowls, and various objects in ivory and bronze. The arms consisted of swords, daggers, shields, and the heads of spears and arrows, which being chiefly of iron fell to pieces almost as soon as exposed to the air. The shields are of bronze, and circular, the rim bending inwards, and forming a deep groove round the edge. The handles are of iron, and fastened by six bosses or nails, the heads of which form an ornament on the outer face of the shield.[81] The diameter of the largest and most perfect is two feet six inches. Although their weight must have impeded the movements of an armed warrior, the Assyrian spearmen are constantly represented in the bas-reliefs with them. Such, too, were probably the bucklers that Solomon hung on his towers.[82]