The Assyrians borrowed their motive from Egypt, but they gave it more than Egyptian perfection. They gave it the definitive shapes that even Greece did not disdain to copy. In the Egyptian frieze the cones and flowers are disjointed; their isolation is unsatisfactory both to the eye and the reason. In the Assyrian pattern they are attached to a continuous undulating stem whose sinuous lines add greatly to the elegance of the composition. The distinctive characters of the bud and flower are also very well marked by the Assyrian artists. The closed petals of the one the open ones of the other and the divisions of the calix are indicated in a fashion that happily combines truth with convention. In our [Fig. 135] we reproduce, on a larger scale, a part of the slab already illustrated at page [240], so that the merits of its workmanship may be better appreciated.
Fig. 135.—Fragment of a threshold; from Khorsabad. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin.
Fig. 136.—Door ornament; from Kouyundjik. After Rawlinson.
The painter also made use of this motive. In a bas-relief from the palace of Assurbanipal we find the round-headed doorway illustrated in [Fig. 136]. Its rich decoration must have been carried out in glazed bricks, similar to those discovered by M. Place on one of the gates of Khorsabad. Here, however, the figures of supernatural beings are replaced by rosettes and by two lines of the knop and flower ornament.
