Fig. 82.—Ornamented base, in limestone.
Surprised at not finding any trace of the column itself, he gives out another conjecture: that these sphinxes were altars upon which offerings to the gods, or presents to the king were placed. This hypothesis encounters many objections. We may easily account for the disappearance of the column by supposing it to have been of wood. If it was stone, it may have been carried off for use as a roller by the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, before that part of the building to which it belonged was so completely engulfed and hidden by the ruins as it afterwards became.[269] Moreover we can point to a certain number of Assyrian altars, and their shapes are very different from this.
| Fig. 83.—Model of a base, side view. Actual size. | Fig. 84.—The same, seen from in front. |
Finally, all our doubts are removed by a bas-relief from the palace of Assurbanipal, which is now in the British Museum ([Fig. 86]). The upper part of this carved picture is destroyed, but enough remains to show that it reproduced the façade of some richly decorated building. Four columns supported on the backs of so many lions, and two flat pilasters upheld in the same fashion by winged griffins, may readily be distinguished. That these griffins are not repeated on the left of the relief, is due perhaps to the haste or laziness of the sculptor. He may have thought he had done enough when he had shown once for all how these pedestals were composed. However this may have been, the lions in this relief play exactly the same rôle as that attributed by us to the little model found by George Smith, and to the winged sphinx discovered by Sir Henry Layard before one of the doors at Nimroud. A base in the form of a vase or cushion is inserted between the back of the animal and the bottom of the shaft. In the pilaster—if we may believe that the artist took no liberties with fact—the junction is direct without the interposition of any ornamental motive.
Fig. 85.—Winged Sphinx carrying the base of a column; from Layard.
