Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/145

 MATERIALS. 125 and unlearned traveller, and a skilful engineer would, no doubt, make further discoveries. 1 Mr. Layard was unable to learn that any gold had been won in our days ; but from objects found in the excavations, from inscriptions in which the Assyrians boast of their wealth and prodigality, from Egyptian texts in which the details of tributes paid by the Roten-nou, that is by the people of Syria and Mesopotamia, are given, it is clear that in the great days of Nineveh and Babylon those capitals possessed a vast quantity of gold, and employed it in a host of different ways. In the course of several centuries of war, victory, and pillage, princes, officers, and soldiers had amassed enormous wealth by the simple process of stripping the nations of Western Asia of every object of value they possessed. These accumulations were continually added to, in the case of Babylon, by the active commerce she carried on with the mineral-producing countries, such as the Caucasus, Bactriana, India, and Egypt. There are some architectures that of the Greeks for example that preserve a rare nobility even when deprived of their metal ornaments and polychromatic decoration. The architects of Babylon and Nineveh were differently situated. Deprived of metals some of their finest effects would have been impossible. The latter could be used at will in flexible threads or long, narrow bands, which could be nailed or riveted on to wood or brick. They may be beaten with the hammer, shaped by the chisel, or engraved by the burin ; their surfaces may be either dead or polished ; the variety of shades of which they are capable, and the brilliance of their reflections, are among the most valuable resources of the decorator, and the colouring principles they contain provide the painter and enameller with some of his richest and most solid tones. In Chaldrea the architect was condemned by the force majcure of circumstances to employ little more than crude or burnt brick and bad timber ; in Assyria he voluntarily condemned himself to the limitations they imposed. By the skillful and intelligent use of metals, he managed to overcome the resulting disadvantages in some degree, and to mask under a sumptuous decoration of gold, silver, and bronze, the deficiencies inherent in the material of which his buildings were mainly composed. 1 LAYARD, Nineveh, vol. i. p. 223, and vol. ii. pp. 415-418.