The type which crops up so often in the pages of this history was fixed, in all its main features, in the earliest attempts at plastic art made by the Chaldæans. By them it was transmitted to their scholars, the Assyrians, and during long centuries, until the fall of Nineveh and Babylon, the painters and sculptors of Mesopotamia, from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the foot of the mountains of Armenia, did not cease to reproduce and perpetuate it, I might say to satiety; they reproduced it with infinite patience, and, so far as we can see, without once suspecting that the human visage might sometimes vary its lines and present another aspect.

§ 4. On the Representations of Animals.

In the preceding pages our chief aim has been to determine the nature and the mode of action of the influences under which the Assyro-Chaldæan sculptor had to do his work. We have explained how certain conditions hampered his progress and in some respects arrested the development of his skill.

The height to which the plastic genius of this people might have carried their art had their social habits been more favourable to the study of the nude, may perhaps be better judged from their treatment of animals than anything else. Some of these, both in relief and in the round, are far superior to their human figures, and even now excite the admiration of sculptors.

The cause of this difference is easily seen. When an artist had to represent an animal, his study of its form was not embarrassed by any such obstacle as a long and heavy robe. The animal could be watched in its naked simplicity and all its instinctive and characteristic movements grasped. The sculptor could follow each contour of his model; he could take account of the way in which the limbs were attached to the trunk; he saw the muscles swell beneath the skin, he saw them tighten with exertion and relax when at rest. He was not indifferent to such a sight; on the contrary, he eagerly drank in the instruction it afforded, and of all the works he produced those in which such knowledge is put into action are by far the most perfect; they show us better than anything else how great were his native gifts, and what a fund of sympathy with the beauties of life and with its inexhaustible variety his nature contained. Whether he model an animal separately or introduce it into some historic scene, it is always well rendered both in form and movement.

This is to be most clearly seen in the rich and varied series of Assyrian reliefs, but the less numerous works of the same kind of Babylonian origin show the same tendency and at least equal talent. In copying the principal types of the animal world with fidelity and vigour, the Assyrian sculptors only followed the example set them by their south-country masters.

A cow’s head in bronze, which was brought from Bagdad by Mr. Rassam, is broad in treatment and of great truth (Fig. 68); the same good qualities are to be found in a terra-cotta tablet found by Sir Henry Rawlinson in the course of his excavations in the Birs-Nimroud (Fig. 69). It represents a man, semi-nude and beardless and with a stout stick in his hand, leading a large and powerfully made dog by a plaited strap. It is a sort of mastiff that might be used for hunting the wild beasts in the desert and marshes, the wild boar, hyena, and panther, if not the lion. The characteristics of the species are so well marked that naturalists have believed themselves able to recognise it as that of a dog which is still extant, not in Mesopotamia indeed, but in Central Asia.[167] We may seek in it for the portrait of one of those Indian hounds kept, in the time of Herodotus, by the Satrap of Babylon. His pack was so numerous that it took the revenues of four large villages to support it.[168]

Similar subjects were represented upon other tablets of the same origin. One of them shows a lion about to devour a bull and disturbed by a man brandishing a mace. Nothing could be more faithful than the action of the animal; without letting go his prey he raises a paw, its claws opened and extended and ready to be buried in the side of the rash person who interrupts his meal.[169]

We may also mention a cylinder which, from its style, M. Ménant does not hesitate to ascribe to the first Chaldæan monarchy. It represents two oxen in a field of wheat. The latter, by a convention that also found favour with the Greeks, is indicated by two of those huge ears that so greatly astonished Herodotus.[170] Was it on a similar principle that the Chaldæan engraver gave his oxen but one horn apiece? In spite of this singularity and the peculiar difficulties offered by work in intaglio on a very hard material, the forms are well understood, and the artist has not been content to give them merely in outline. At the croup and under the belly an effort has been made to model the figure and to mark its thickness.

Judging from their style and inscriptions, several more of these engraved stones may be ascribed to the oldest Chaldæan schools of art, but we are satisfied with again reminding our readers that it was in Lower Mesopotamia that everything had its beginning. We shall take our remaining examples from the richer deposits of Assyria.

Among all those animals that attracted the attention of man either by their size or strength, either by the services they rendered or the terror they caused, there were none that the chisel of the Assyrian sculptor did not treat and treat with taste and skill. With their passion for the chase the kings and nobles of Assyria were sure to love dogs and to train them with scrupulous care.[171] They did more. They employed sculptors in making portraits of them. In the palace of Assurbanipal terra-cotta statuettes of his best dogs have been found (Fig. 71). They belong to the same race as the Chaldæan mastiff above mentioned, but their strength, their fire, I might almost say their ferocity, is better shown in those pictures where they are no longer in a state of repose, but in movement and action. Look at the series of slabs representing the departure for the chase. The hounds are held in the leash by attendants who carry bags on their shoulders for the smaller game (see Fig. 72). Mark the tightened cord, the straining bodies, the tension of every muscle in their desire to get at their quarry! We can almost fancy we hear the deep, confused bayings with which they prelude the regular music of the hunt itself when the game is afoot. These animals are represented with no less truth and vivacity when a kill has taken, or is about to take, place. As an example of this we may point out a relief from the same palace in which two of these bloodhounds launch themselves upon a wild ass whose flight has been arrested by an arrow. The ass still manages to stagger along, but he will not go far; the hounds are already upon him and have buried their teeth in his flanks and croup.[172]

Other domestic animals are figured with no less sure a hand; to each is given the proportions and attitudes that really characterise it. We shall now study them all in succession; others have done so, and have found much precious information upon the fauna of Western Asia and upon the state of Mesopotamian civilization;[173] we shall content ourselves with mentioning the principal types and those in which the sculptor has shown most skill.

The colossi of the gateways have already given us an opportunity for showing how art enlisted the powerful limbs and natural majesty of the bull in its service. Elsewhere the bovine race occupies a less important part in Assyrian sculpture than in that of Egypt, in whose tombs scenes of agricultural art are of such constant occurrence. We find, however, the wild bull,[174] which the kings of Calah hunted in the neighbouring desert (Fig. 15), and the draught ox, which, after a lucky raid, the terrors of Asia drive before them with their prisoners and other booty (Vol. I. Fig. 30).[175]—We may also point to the heifer’s head in ivory which acts as tail-piece to the third chapter of our first volume. We sometimes find also sheep and goats of both sexes (Fig. 54);[176] but of all the animals that have close relations with man, that which occurs most often on the palace walls is the horse. They did not use him as a beast of burden; it was the mule that was used for drawing carts (Vol. I. Fig. 31), for carrying women and children and merchandise (Vol. I. Figs. 30 and 115). As with the Arabs of to-day, the horse was reserved for war and hunting. But the Assyrians were not, like the Egyptians, content to harness him to the chariot; they rode him as well. Their armies comprised a numerous and well-provided cavalry; and the Assyrian artist drew the horse a great deal better than his Egyptian confrère.

The horses we meet with in the Assyrian sculptures are of a heavier breed than Arabs; they are generally shorter and more thickly set. Travellers believe the breed to still exist in the horses of Kurdistan, a country which was bordered by ancient Assyria and dependent upon it.[177] The head is small, well-formed, and well-carried (Fig. 73), the shoulders sloping, the neck and limbs well set on, and the muscles strongly marked. We have already had occasion to figure horses at full speed (Vol. I. Fig. 5), standing still (Vol. I. Figs. 67 and 115), and proceeding at a slow pace (Figs. 21 and 31).[178] No observer can avoid being struck by the truth of attitude, and movement given by the Assyrian sculptor to horses both driven and mounted. Nowhere is this merit more conspicuous than in one of those bas-reliefs of Assurbanipal that figure the episodes of a chase of wild asses (Fig. 74).

Contrary to their usual habits the herd have allowed themselves to be surprised. One of those armies of beaters who are yet employed by eastern sovereigns on such occasions, has driven them upon the hunters. The latter, preceded by their dogs, throw themselves upon the herd, which breaks up in all directions. They pierce those that are within reach with their arrows; those that do not fall at once are pursued and brought down by the hounds. We cannot reproduce the whole scene,[179] but we doubt whether there is any school of animal painters that has produced anything more true to nature than the action of this poor beast stopping in the middle of his flight to launch futile kicks at his pursuers.

The ibex and the wild goat figure in the same sculptured pictures. One marching in front of the herd turns and anxiously sniffs the wind, while her companion quietly browses by her side; farther off, two kids trot by the side of their mother. The alarm has not yet been given, but upon the next slab the artist shows the headlong flight that follows the discovery of the enemy. Naturally it is the wild and domestic animals of Mesopotamia and the districts about that are most commonly figured in these reliefs, but the sculptor also took advantage of every opportunity and pretext for introducing into his repertory those rare and curious animals which were only seen in Nineveh on rare occasions. Thus the camel that we find in so many pictures is the same as that which now occupies the same region and marches in its slow caravans;[180] but on the obelisk of Shalmaneser we find the double-humped Bactrian camel (Fig. 49).[181] The clumsy tribe of the pachyderms is not only represented by the wild boars that still have their lairs in the marshes of the lower Euphrates;[182] the rhinoceros and the Indian elephant also occur on the obelisk (Vol. I. Fig. 111).[183] The apes shown in our Fig. 64 also seem to belong to an Indian species.[184]

The sculptor was not always as happily inspired by these exotic animals as by those of his own country, and in that there is nothing surprising. He only caught a passing glimpse of them as they defiled, perhaps, before the people in some triumphal procession. On the other hand, the fauna of his native land were known to him through long habit, and yet his reproductions of the elephant and the dromedary are very good, much better than those of the semi-human ape. His idea of the rhinoceros is very faulty; the single horn planted on the nose leaves no doubt as to his meaning, but the lion’s mane with which the animal’s back is clothed has never belonged to the rhinoceros. The artist may have worked from a description.

In these pictures birds hold a very secondary place; Assyrian sculpture was hardly light enough of hand to render their forms and feathers. For such a task, indeed, painting with its varied handling, its delicate lines and brilliant colours is required. It was with the brush that the Egyptians succeeded, in the frescoes of their tombs, in figuring the principal birds of the Nile Valley with all their elegance of form and brilliant variety of plumage. In Assyria, among a nation of soldiers and in an art whose chief inspiration had to do with war, the only bird we find often reproduced is the eagle, the symbol of victory, who floats over the chariot of the king, and the vulture who devoured where they fell the bodies of the enemies of Assyria; and even these images are rather careless and conventional, which may perhaps be accounted for by their partially symbolic character and their frequent repetition.[185] A group of partridges rising and, in those sculptures of the later Sargonids in which the artists show a love for picturesque detail, birds hopping in the trees or watching over their nestlings, have been mentioned as showing technical excellence of the same kind as the hunting scenes.[186] The ostrich appears on the elaborate decorations of the royal robes (Fig. 75) and upon the cylinders (Fig. 76). Perhaps it was considered sacred.

As for fishes, crabs, and shells, these were scattered broadcast over the watercourses in the reliefs, but they are never studied with any great care (see Vol. I., Figs. 34 and 157), nor is any attempt made to distinguish their species. They seem to have been introduced merely as hints to the spectator, to dispel any doubt he may entertain as to the meaning of those sinuous lines by which the sculptor suggested rivers and the sea. Where these indications are not given we might indeed very easily mistake the artist’s intention (see Vol. I., Figs. 38 and 71).

Some of the animals in the Assyrian reliefs are then nothing but determinative signs, a kind of pictorial gloss. Of these it will suffice to mention the existence. Their forms are so much generalized that they offer no matter for study. On the other hand, our best attention should be given to those figures whose modelling has strongly interested the artist, who has taken a lively pleasure in reproducing their various aspects and in making them live again in all the originality of their powerful and exceptional natures. In this respect the lion deserves particular notice. He interested the Assyrian sculptors more profoundly than any other animal and they devoted extraordinary attention to illustrating his various attitudes and characteristics. One is inclined to believe that the more skilful among them chose a lion for treatment when they wished to display all the talent they possessed and to gain a reputation for complete mastery of their art.[187]

Here we find the great beast stretched carelessly upon the ground, full of confidence in his strength and careless of danger (Plate XI.); there he rises to his feet and advances ready to collect himself and spring upon any threatening enemy or passing prey (Plate VIII.). We sometimes find both these motives united, as in a bas-relief of Assurbanipal, which is unfortunately mutilated (Fig. 77). Here a lioness is stretched upon the ground, her head upon her forepaws and her tail outstretched behind her, in a favourite attitude of very young cats. The lion stands upright before her in a proud, extended attitude like that of the colossal lion from Nimroud (Plate VIII.); his head and the hind parts of his body are unfortunately missing.

Elsewhere we find the lion cautiously emerging from a stoutly-built timber cage (Fig. 78). He has been captured in a net or snare and shut up in this narrow prison until the day of some great hunt.[188] When that arrives the door is raised at a given signal by a man perched on the top of the cage and protected by a timber grating. In spite of this defence the service would hardly be free from danger but that the lion is too pleased to find himself at liberty to look behind him.[189]

The lion finds himself confronted by the Royal huntsman who fights, as a rule, from his chariot, where two or three companions, chosen from his bravest and most skilful servants, are ready to lend him help if necessary. The British Museum possesses a great number of sculptured pictures in which every incident of the hunt is figured up to its inevitable end. We reproduce two figures from the slabs representing the great hunt of Assurbanipal. The first shows a huge lion mortally wounded by an arrow which still stands in his body. It has transfixed some great vessel, and the blood gushes in a wide torrent from his open mouth. Already the chills of death are upon him and yet with his back arched, and his feet brought together and grasping the soil, he collects his energies in a last effort to prevent himself rolling over helplessly on the sand.

Still more expressive, perhaps, and more pathetic, is the picture of a lioness struck down by the same hand, but in a different fashion (Fig. 80). One of three arrows that have reached her has transfixed the spinal column at the loins. All the hinder part of the body is paralysed. The hind feet drag helplessly on the ground, while the poor animal still manages for a moment to support herself on her fore paws. She still faces the enemy, her half opened jaws are at once agonised and menacing, and, as we gaze upon her, we can almost fancy that we hear her last groan issue from her dying lips.

We might multiply these examples if we chose, but the two fragments we have reproduced will, we hope, send our readers to the British Museum to see the Hunt of Assurbanipal for themselves. In any case they are enough to prove that the Assyrian sculptor studied the lion from nature. He was not without opportunities. He was, no doubt, allowed to assist at those great hunts of which he was to be the official chronicler. He there saw the king of beasts throw himself on the spears of the footmen or fly before the arrows of the charioteers, and break the converging line of beaters; he saw him fall under his repeated wounds and struggle in his last convulsions. Later on he could supplement his recollections, he could complete and correct his sketches by the examination of the victims.[190] At the end of the day the “bag” was displayed as it is now at the end of a modern battue, when the keepers bring pheasants, hares and rabbits, and lay them in long rows in some clearing or corner of the covert. In one of the Kouyundjik reliefs we see the king standing before an altar and doing his homage to the gods after the emotions and dangers of a hunt that was almost a battle.[191] He seems to pour the wine of the libation upon four dead lions, which his attendants have arranged in line upon the ground.

There must also have been tame lions in the palaces and royal parks. Even now they are often to be met with in that country, under the tent of the Arab chief or in the house of the bey or pacha.[192] When captured quite young the lion is easily educated, and, provided that his appetite is never allowed to go unsatisfied, he may be an inoffensive and almost a docile companion until he is nearly full grown. We are ready to believe that the lion and lioness shown in our Fig. 77 were tame ones. The background of the relief suggests a park attached to the royal residence, rather than a marsh, jungle or desert. Vines heavy with fruit and bending flowers rise above the dozing lioness; we can hardly suppose that wild animals could intrude into such a garden. It follows, then, that the artist could study his models as they moved at freedom among the trees of the royal demesne, basking idly in the sun or stretching themselves when they rose, or burying their gleaming teeth on the living prey thrown to them by their keepers.

Thanks to such facilities as these the Ninevite sculptors have handed down to us more faithful reproductions of the lion than their more skilful successors of Greece or Rome. For the latter the lion was little more than a conventional type from which ornamental motives might be drawn. Sometimes no doubt they obtained very fine effects from it, but they always considered themselves free to modify and amplify, according to the requirements of the moment. Thus they were often led to give him full and rounded forms, which had a beauty of their own but were hardly true to nature. The Assyrian never committed that fault. He knew that the great flesh-eating beasts never grew fat, that they were all nerve and muscle, without any of those adipose tissues which reach so great a development in herbivorous animals, like the sheep or ox, or those that eat anything that comes, like the pig. Look at the bronze lion from Khorsabad figured in our Plate XI., and see how lean he is at the croup in spite of the power in his limbs, and how the bones of his shoulder and thigh stand out beneath the skin.

This characteristic is less strongly marked in the bas-reliefs, which hardly enjoy the same facilities for emphasising structure as work in the round. On the other hand the other features of the leonine physiognomy are rendered with singular energy. Anything finer in its way than the head of the colossal lion from Nimroud figured in our Plate VIII. can hardly be imagined.

Seeing how familiar they were with this animal, the artists of Mesopotamia could hardly have failed to employ him as a motive in ornament. In such a case, of course, they did not insist so strongly upon fidelity to fact as in the historical bas-reliefs, but whether they made use of his figure as a whole or confined themselves to the head or paws, they always preserved the true character and originality of the forms. This may be clearly seen in an object belonging to the British Museum (Fig. 81). We do not exactly know where it was found and we cannot say what may have been its use. It is a kind of shallow niche cut from a fossiliferous rock.[193] It is hardly deep enough to have sheltered an idol or statuette of any kind. But whatever it may have been nothing could be more natural than the action of the two lions that show themselves at the two upper angles. They hang tightly to the edge of the stone with their extended claws, giving rise to a happy, piquant, and unstudied effect. The scabbard in our next illustration is no less happily conceived; the lions at its foot who seem about to climb up the sheath with the playfulness of kittens, should be noticed (Fig. 82). Again, we find the lion introduced into those embroideries on the royal robes of which we have already had occasion to speak. In the example figured here (Fig. 83) he is fighting an animal whose feet and legs are those of a bull, although its stature is greater and its form more slender than those of the antelope. It appears to be a unicorn, a fantastic animal that has always played a great part in oriental fables.

The lion’s head with its powerful muscular development, its fine mouth, and picturesque masses of floating hair, has often furnished ceramists, gold and silversmiths, and art workmen of every kind with motives for use upon their creations. A fine example of this is reproduced on the title-pages of these volumes. It belongs to the Luynes collection in the French National Library. The material is gold, and a small staple attached to the neck shows that it once belonged to some object now lost. Our reproduction is of the same size as the original. In spite of its small dimensions its workmanship is no less remarkable for freedom and nobility of style than the colossal head from Nimroud. Something of the same qualities but with more finish in the details is to be found in a terra-cotta fragment covered with a green glaze which now belongs to the collection in the Louvre. These objects, which have come down to us in considerable numbers, must have been used as applied work, in the decoration of vases, utensils, and other small pieces of furniture (Fig. 84). The object figured at the end of the last chapter belongs to the same class. There is a hollow or mortice in its base by which it was attached to some knife or poignard to form its handle.

The lion’s paw was used in the same fashion and no less often. Its expressive form and the elegant curves of its claws are found on numerous altars, tables, and thrones (Vol. I., Fig. 168; and above, Fig. 47).[194]

We find the same truth of design in many small earthenware articles, even when they reproduce a type less interesting and less majestic than that of the lion. A good instance of this is afforded by the goat of white earthenware covered with a blue glaze which was found at Khorsabad by Place (Fig. 85). It is but a sketch. The modeller has not entered into any details of the form, but he has thoroughly grasped its general character. The terra-cottas properly speaking, those that have received no glaze or enamel, are, as a rule, less carefully executed, but even in them we can perceive, though in a less degree, the certainty of eye, the same promptitude in seizing and rendering the special physiognomy of an animal. We feel this very strongly in what is by no means the work of a skilful modeller, the dog figured below (Fig. 86). The head and fore quarters of one of the mastiffs of the bas-reliefs may here be recognized (see Fig. 72).

The same desire for precision, or rather comprehension, of form, is to be found even in those imaginary beings which the artists of Chaldæa and Assyria took such pleasure in multiplying. Although in their fantastic creations they brought together features belonging to animals of totally different classes, they made a point of drawing those features with the greatest precision. This is well illustrated by an object in the Luynes collection (Fig. 87). Nowhere is the arbitrary combination of forms having nothing in common pushed farther than here. A ram’s horns grow on a bull’s head, which, again, has a bird’s beak; the body, the tail, the fore paws are those of a lion, while the hind legs and feet and the wings that spring from the shoulders are borrowed from the eagle.[195]

We have already described the most remarkable of all these composite types, the man-headed bull and lion; we have attempted to explain the intellectual idea which gave them birth; we have yet to point out a variety which is not without importance. The lion has sometimes been given, not only the head, but also the arms and bust of a man. In one of the entrances to the palace of Assurbanipal there was a colossus of this kind (Vol. I., Fig. 114).[196] With one arm this man-lion presses against his body what seems to be a goat or a deer, while the other, hanging at his side, holds a flowering branch. This figure, like almost all of those found in the doorways, is winged. Another example of the same type is to be found in a bas-relief of Assurbanipal; it is, however, simplified, and it looks, on the whole, more probable (Fig. 88). The wings have disappeared; there are but two natures to be joined, and the junction seems to be made without effort; the lion furnishes strength and rapidity, the man the various powers of the arm and hand, and the beauty of the thinking and speaking head. The divine character of the personage thus figured is indicated by the three pairs of horns bent round the dome-like tiara, and also by the place he occupies in the inferior compartment of a relief on which, at the top, appear those lion-headed genii we have already figured (Vol. I., Fig. 6).

In this last composition we have a foretaste of the centaur. Replace the lion by a horse and the likeness is complete. Even now it is very great. At the first moment, before we have time to notice the claws and divided toes, we seem to recognize the fabulous animal of the Greeks upon the walls of an Assyrian palace.

Another composite animal familiar to the imaginations both of Greeks and Mesopotamians was the winged horse, the Hellenic Pegasus (Fig. 89). The example we have chosen is full of grace and nobility. We feel that the wings have given additional lightness and almost a real capacity for leaving the ground.

The whole of the fabulous tribe of griffins, by which we mean an animal with the body of a lion or panther and the wings and head of a bird of prey, is richly represented in Assyrian art. The griffin recurs continually in the embroidery of the royal robes of Assurnazirpal (Fig. 90). The bird with a human head, the prototype of the Greek harpies and sirens, is also to be frequently met with. We find it introduced in those applied pieces which, after being cast and finished with the burin, were used by bronze workers in the decoration of vases of beaten metal. The diameters of the vases may easily be calculated from the inner curve of the applied plaques;[197] the latter were used to strengthen the vessels at the points where the movable handles, like those of a modern bucket, were attached. These handles were hooked to a ring or fastened to the back of the figure on the plaque.[198] The head of the figure gave something to catch hold of when the vessel was upon the table, with its handle down. The form in question (see Fig. 91) was chosen by the artist on account of its fitness for the work to be done; the tail and wings embrace the swelling sides very happily; but yet it would never have been so employed had it not belonged to the ordinary repertory of the ornamentist.

Of all these types the only one that does not seem to have been invented by those who made use of it is that of the winged sphinxes used as supports in the palace of Esarhaddon (Vol. I., Fig. 85). The human-headed lion is certainly found long before, but it is not until the later reigns that he takes the couchant attitude and something of the physiognomy of the Egyptian sphinx.

Under the Sargonids communication with Egypt became so frequent that certain motives from the Nile valley were introduced into the Assyrian system of ornament, but the part they played was always a subordinate one. In creations such as those we have just been studying Chaldæa and Assyria certainly displayed more inventive power than was ever shown by Egypt. Speaking broadly, there was no possible combination they did not attempt. It was from Chaldæo-Assyrian artists that Syria, Judæa, and Phœnicia, as well as Asia Minor, borrowed their imaginary animals; and, thanks to these middle-men, it was also to the artists of the double valley that the early ceramists and modellers of Greece owed not a few of the motives they transmitted to the great periods of classic art, and, through the latter, to the art of the Renaissance and of our own day.

§ 5. Chaldæan Sculpture.

So far we have made no distinction between Chaldæan and Assyrian sculpture. They made, in fact, but one art. In both countries we find the same themes and the same treatment—the same way of looking at nature and the same conventional methods of interpreting it. The common characteristics are numerous enough to justify us in attributing to one and the same school the works produced both in the southern and northern provinces. If we take them en bloc, and put them side by side with the productions of any other great nation of antiquity, we shall be at once struck by the close resemblance between all the monuments from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, whether they come from Sirtella or Babylon, Calah or Nineveh. The connoisseur can point out a Mesopotamian creation at a glance, mingled with works from Egypt, Phœnicia, or Greece though it may be. In order to define the Chaldæo-Assyrian style, he may take the first object that comes to hand, without caring much whether it come from the upper country or the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf.

And yet between those cities of primitive Chaldæa that almost rivalled Memphis in age, and the towns of Assyria which only commenced to flourish in centuries that we may almost call modern, it is impossible that the spirit of the plastic arts and their executive processes can have remained without change. Between the earliest and the latest monuments, between the images of Gudea and those of Assurbanipal, there are, at least, shades of difference. It is certain that the old Chaldæan art and the art of Assyria were not two different arts, but they were two successive movements of the same art—two phases in its development. We have still to distinguish between these two phases by studying, one after the other, the history of Chaldæan and that of Assyrian sculpture.

In the course of this study, and especially in the case of the older civilization, we shall encounter many gaps. The monuments are few, and, even of those that we have, many are not a little embarrassing. They are often uninscribed and we are then without even the help afforded by the language and the style of the character in fixing a date. Fortunately this is not always the case; there are often indications that enable us to form certain groups, and, if not to assign absolute dates, at least to determine their relative places in a chronological series.

Of all these groups the best established and almost the only ones that can be used as the heads of series are those whose elements have been furnished by the explorations undertaken by M. de Sarzec, French vice-consul at Bassorah, at Tello, upon the site of a town which we shall follow the majority of Assyriologists in calling Sirtella. We have written the history of these excavations elsewhere; we have explained how greatly they do honour to the artistic spirit, the perseverance, and the energy of M. de Sarzec;[199] we have given the history of the negotiations and of the vote in Parliament which led to the acquisition by the Louvre of all the objects discovered. It will be sufficient to say here that the works began in the winter of 1876 and came to an end in 1881, and that the purchase of M. de Sarzec’s collection took place in the latter year, under the administration of M. Jules Ferry.

The name of Tello, which has become famous so suddenly, is to be found on no map of Asia to which we have access. The place thus designated by the Arabs in consequence of the numerous mounds, or tells, that are sprinkled about, is situated quite in the desert, on the left bank of the Shat-el-Haï, above Chatra and below Saïd-Hassan, which are on the other side of the channel, and about an hour and a quarter’s march to the east.[200]

This site seems to have been inhabited down to the very last days of antiquity, so that monuments have been found there of all ages; for the moment, however, we are only concerned with those that belong to the early Chaldæan monarchy. Among these there are some that date from the very beginning of Chaldæan civilization. This we know not only from their style; arguments based on such evidence alone might leave room for doubt; some might even contend that the development of art did not proceed equally over the whole of that extensive country; it might be asserted that here and there it was in a far less advanced state than at other centres. The age of these monuments is fixed by much less debateable signs, namely, by the character of the symbols of which their inscribed texts are composed (see Vol I., Fig. 2, and below, Fig. 92).