Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/131

 THE PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT. I I T this singular nation. The king and his lieutenants, his ministers and household officers, the veterans who formed the strength of his legions and the young men from whom their numbers were recruited, did not constitute the whole of the Assyrian nation. There were also the tillers of the soil, the followers of those count- less trades implied by a civilized society the peasants, artisans, and merchants of every kind, who fed, clothed, and equipped the armies ; the men who carried on the useful but modest work with- out which the fighting machine must soon have come to a stand- still. And yet they are entirely absent from the sculptures in which the artist seems to have included everything that to him seemed worthy of interest. We meet them here and there, but FIG. 30. Convoy of prisoners. Kouamujik. Fro:n I.uyard. only by accident. They may be descried now and then in the background of some scene of war, acting as labourers or in some other humble capacity. Otherwise the sculptor ' ignored their existence. They were not soldiers, which was much as to say they were nothing. Can any other instance be cited of an art so well endowed entirely suppressing what we should call the civil element of life ? Neither do ve find women in the bas-reliefs ; that in which the queen of Assurbanipal occurs is quite unique in its way. Except in scenes representing the capture of a town and the carrying off of its inhabitants as prisoners of war, females are almost entirely wanting. On those occasions we sometimes find them carried on mules or in chariots (see Figs. 30 and 31). In