EGYPTIAN WALL-PAINTING (BRITISH MUSEUM).
ASSYRIAN TREE OF LIFE.
ASSYRIAN BAS-RELIEF. PAVEMENT SLAB (BRITISH MUSEUM).
There is a wall-painting in the British Museum showing a fish pond or tank in a garden, surrounded by trees. The inclosed water is rendered by a flat tint of pale blue, with horizontal zigzag lines in a second tint across it. Lotus flowers and buds spring vertically from it, and on its surface ducks and fish are painted in profile. The trees are painted on the upper side and ends with their stems springing from the edge of the pond; but the row of trees on the near side grows with the tops towards the water; while the row at each end sprouts outward. The whole forms a very pretty piece of ornament, and would embroider well for a table-cloth centre, or lend itself to a treatment for a mosaic floor. Note the way in which the trees alternate (apple trees and date palms), and the grouping of the ducks and the fish alternating with the lotus flower. It is freely painted with direct brush touches on the white plaster.
ASSYRIAN TREATMENT OF NATURAL FORM SLAB 76 BRIT. MUS.
In the ornamental treatment of tree forms all the eastern races seem to have excelled. Trees have always been associated with religious belief, and have had mystical and symbolical significance—as the tree of the garden of Genesis, the tree of life, and the fatal tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Trees, too, were man's first shelter and dwelling; no wonder a race descended from arboreal ancestors should revere them and hold them sacred.
