Fig. 30.—An attack by escalade; from Layard.
In the interior of the town—we are still speaking of the town of Sargon—these same causeways formed the principal streets. They were about forty feet wide. Their construction was, of course, far inferior to that of a Roman road. There were no footpaths, either within or without the cities; the stones were small, irregular in shape, and not of a very durable kind. They were placed in a single layer, and the pavement when finished looked like a mere bed of broken stones. All Mesopotamia, however, cannot now show a road that can be compared to these ancient ways. Wherever the traveller goes, his beasts of burden and the wheels of his carts sink either into a bed of dust or into deep and clinging mud, according to the season. It is no better in the towns. Whoever has had the ill luck to be out, in the rainy season, in the sloughs and sewers that the Turks call streets, will be ready to acknowledge that the civilization of Assyria in the time of Sargon was better furnished than that of Turkey in the days of Abdul-Hamid.
Fig. 31.—Chariot for three combatants; from the palace of Assurbanipal. Louvre. Height 16 inches. Drawn by Bourgoin.
At Khorsabad, where the main streets must, like those of Babylon, have intersected each other at right angles, how were the buildings, public and private, arranged? We might have had an answer to this interesting question had M. Place been in command of enough time and means to clear the whole interior of the enceinte. Even as it was he found enough to justify him in asserting that the great inclosure of some eight hundred acres was not, as we might be tempted to imagine at first sight, a royal park attached to the palace, but a city. He sunk trenches at three points where low mounds suggested the presence of ruins, and all his doubts soon disappeared. Several yards below the present level of the ground he found the original surface, with the pavements of streets, courtyards and rooms; doorways with their thresholds and jambs; walls covered with stucco, cut stone and even alabaster slabs; potsherds, fragments of brick and utensils of various kinds—decisive evidence, in fact, that one of those agglomerations of civilized human beings that we call towns, had formerly occupied the site.
CHAPTER II.
SCULPTURE.
§ 1.—The principal themes of Chaldæo-Assyrian Sculpture.
The Egyptian notions as to a future life had much to do with the rapidity with which the art of sculpture was developed during the early years of their history. There was a close relation between their religion and the rites it implied, on the one hand, and the peculiar characteristics of the most ancient Memphite sculptures on the other. We cannot say the same of Chaldæa. So far as our present knowledge extends, we have no reason to suppose that the first efforts of the Mesopotamian sculptor were directed to providing the umbra, the immaterial inhabitant of the tomb, with a material support which should resemble as closely as possible the body of flesh and bones that, in spite of every precaution, would sooner or later end in dust and nothingness. No monument has come down to us in which we can recognize a portrait image executed for a sepulchre.[100]