Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/224

 202 A HISTORY OF ART IN CHALD/KA AND ASSYRIA. unequal to the task of showing him full front and seated between the two columns of the facade. The single column thus left visible has been represented with great skill and care ; the sculptor seems to have taken pleasure in dwelling upon its smallest details. Slender as it is, it must have been of wood. The markings upon it suggest the trunk of a palm, but we may be permitted to doubt whether it was allowed to remain in its natural uncovered state. Even in the climate of Chalckea a dead tree trunk exposed to the air would have no great durability. Sooner or later the sun, the rain, the changes of temperature, would give a good account of it, and besides, a piece of rough wood could hardly be made to har- monize with the luxury that must assuredly have been lavished by the people of Sippara upon the sanctuary of their greatest divinity. It is probable, therefore, that the wood was overlaid with plates of gilded bronze, fastened on with nails. This hypothesis is confirmed by one of M. Place's discoveries at Khorsabad. 1 There, in front of the Harem, he found several large fragments of a round cedar-wood beam almost as thick as a man's body. It was cased in a bronze sheath, very much oxydized and resembling- the scales of a fish in arrangement J O o (Fig. 72). The metal was attached to the wood by a large number of bronze nails. Comparing these remains with certain bas-reliefs in which different kinds of trees appear (Fig. 27) we can easily see that the Xinevite sculptors meant to represent the peculiar roughnesses of palm bark. Their usual methods are modified a little by the requirements of the material and the size of the beam upon which it was used. Each scale was about 4! inches high, and according to the calculations of M. Place, the whole mast must have been from five-and-thirty to forty feet high. Working for spectators on a lower level and at some dis- tance, the smith thought well to make his details as regular and strongly marked as he could ; to each scale or leaf he gave a raised edge to mark its contour and distinguish it from the rest. The general effect was thus obtained by deliberate exaggeration of the relief and by a conventionality that was justified by the conditions of the problem to be solved. At a little distance from this broken beam M. Place found 1 PLACE, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 120-122, and vol. iii. plato 73.