In front of the palace at Tello stood a large stone basin decorated with sculpture, some fragments of which have come down to us. This monolithic trough, 8 ft. 2 in. long by 1 ft, 7½ in. broad, served, perhaps, to water the camels and the flocks which halted at the gate of Gudea’s dwelling; or rather, on account of its rich ornamentation, may we believe that it was a basin consecrated to the service of the temple, like the brazen sea in the Temple of Jerusalem, or the vase of Amathus? However it may be, there were,
Fig. 19.—Bas-relief from Tello (after Heuzey).
Fig. 20.—Bas-relief from Tello (Rev. arch., t. i., 1887, p. 265).
on its two longer surfaces, in low relief, women with arms outstretched, holding magic vases, from which two jets of liquid gushed, on each side of an ear of corn, a graceful symbol of the proverbial fertility of Mesopotamia, enclosed by the sacred streams of the Tigris and Euphrates, which were adored under the name of Naharaim, the two rivers par excellence. The fragment reproduced here ([fig. 19]) shows us that the Proto-Chaldæans already gave to flowing water the conventional form of undulating lines (see also [fig. 34]); the woman is drawn with surprising truth.[19] The same technical skill is remarked in a bas-relief from Tello, which represents a bearded personage, in full face, with a costume in which M. Heuzey has recognised the fleecy stuff called kaunakes by the Greeks. Observe the delicacy with which the Chaldæan artists treated the costume and the beard. It may almost be said that Mesopotamian art has no further progress to make, and that it already shows its full proportions at the fabulously remote epoch represented by the antiquities of Tello.