Thus, when they represented an archer, stretching his bow, neither the string nor the arrow was allowed to cut the lines of the figure. Both were shown as if the hand which held them were on the opposite side of the body. It is needless to say that this could not have been due to ignorance or negligence on the part of the sculptor, who otherwise proved his knowledge and observation of nature; but was a deliberate kind of conventionalisation, adopted, like the five legs of the colossal bulls, for a well-considered purpose—perhaps, not to interfere with the action of the figure.

Above the dado of sculpture the walls were embellished with glazed tiles, decorated with winged figures of the King, and occasionally with animals, especially lions, framed with borders of rosettes. The usual colours were yellow, blue, green, and black. Coloured tiles also, as well as slabs of alabaster, formed the paving of the floors, which, in the case of smaller rooms, were formed merely of stamped clay, covered, no doubt, while in use, with mats or rugs.

Wall paintings of figures and arabesques seem to have been an exceptional form of decoration, found at Khorsabad only in the larger rooms of the harem.

Yet for all this brilliance of decoration, the effect of the interiors must have been one of subdued richness. The imagination, indeed, pictures the vast palace with its labyrinth of seven hundred rooms, surrounding three sides of the entrance court, where the glare of sunshine would be pitiless, as a sort of subterranean arrangement of tunnel-like passages and chambers.

Their distribution can be studied in the ground plan restoration. There were three groups, each disposed around its own central court. On the left of the main court lay the harem, with its separate provision for four wives, while on the opposite side was accommodation for the service, including kitchen, bakery, wine cellars, and stables. Fronting the main entrance were the King’s suite of rooms and the quarters of his official staff, beyond which were the halls of state. In the open space, adjoining the royal rooms, rose the ziggurat, or terraced temple, the three lower stories of which still exist, connected by a winding ramp.

The conception that one gathers of this huge pile is, externally, of a stronghold, somewhat forbidding; internally, of a crypt-like maze, offering perhaps comfort, but little beauty—the lair of the absolute monarch of a race to whom the market-place and fields of battle and hunting represented the chief ideals of existence.

CHAPTER V
PERSIAN CIVILISATION

The name Iran, by which the Persians still call their country, preserves the origin of their race. They were Aryans, as distinguished from the Semitic peoples; a branch of the race which migrated from the country now called Southern Russia and Turkestan into the rich lands of the South. One branch pushed on to the Ganges and became identified with India; the other settled about the Indus, whence they gradually pushed their way westward. This branch comprised many tribes which in time developed into peoples.

The most powerful of these at the period when the Aryans first came into conflict with the Semitic race, was the Medes, who occupied the northern part of the west side of what is now Persia, while the Persians, who rose to supremacy later, occupied the southern part. This western division of the country, separated by a desert from the eastern, entirely differs in character from Mesopotamia.

For a distance of 50 miles from the Persian Gulf it is flat, swampy, and unhealthful. Then it rises to a system of mountain ranges that average five thousand feet in height, broken up with valleys, lakes, and countless streams. It was a country admirably adapted to rear a hardy and industrious race of men and fine breeds of cattle and horses. The Aryans seem to have always been cattle breeders, from which fact is supposed to be derived the reverence of the cow, which still exists in India. They were also great lovers of the horse and it was not until after 1700 B.C. when advanced posts of the Aryan migration came in touch with the Semitic nations of the West, that the horse made its appearance in Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece. But, while the bas-reliefs of the Egyptians after this date show the horse used only in chariots, its general use among the Persians was for riding purposes. So the love of the modern Aryan races for the horse and horse exercise is an inherited instinct that knits them like their language to their earliest ancestors.