Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/221

 CONSTRUCTION. 199 countries as Mesopotamia to fly from cities and set up their dwellings amicl the scents and verdure of the fields. Ac-;ain, when <_> O ' the summer heats have dried up the plains and made the streets of a town unbearable, an exodus takes place to the nearest moun- tains, and life is only to be prized when it can be passed among the breezes from their valleys and the shadows of their forest trees. Even in our own day the inhabitants of these regions pass from the house to the tent with an ease which seems strange to us. At o certain seasons some of the nomad tribes betake themselves within the walls of Bagdad and Mossoul and there set up their long black tents of goats' hair. 1 Judging from the bas-reliefs they did the same even in ancient Assyria ; in some of these a few tents may be seen sprinkled over a space inclosed by a line of walls and towers. 2 Abraham and Lot slept in their tents even when they dwelt within the walls of a city. 3 Lot had both his tent and a house at Sodom. 4 Every year the inhabitants of Mossoul and the neighbouring villages turn out in lanre numbers into the o o o <^y neighbouring country, and, during April and May, re-taste for a time that pastoral life to which a roof is unknown. The centuries have been unable to affect such habits as these, because they were suggested, enforced, and perpetuated by nature herself, by the climate of Mesopotamia ; and they have done much to create and develop that light and elegant form of building which we may almost call the architecture of the tent. In these days and in a country into whose remotest corners the decadence has penetrated, the tent is hardly more than a mere shelter ; here and there, in the case of a few chiefs less com- pletely ruined than the rest, it still preserves a certain size and elegance, but as a rule all that is demanded of it is to be suffi- ciently strong and thick to resist the wind, the rain, and the sun. It was otherwise in the rich and civilized society with which we are now concerned. Its arrangement and decoration then called forth inventive powers and a refined taste of which we catch a few glimpses in the bas-reliefs. It gave an opportunity for the employment of forms and motives which could not be 1 LAYARD, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 272. 2 LAYARD, Monuments of Nineveh, first series, plate 77 ; second series, plates 24 and 36. 3 Genesis, xiii. 12. 4 Genesis, xix.