Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/228

 >O6 A HISTORY or ART IN CIIALU.KA AND ASSYRIA. We believe then in a bronze capital gilded. Under the volutes three rings, or astragali, may be seen. By their means the capital was allied to the shaft. The former consisted of two volutes between which appeared a vertical point resembling one of the angles of a triangle. The base is the same except that it has no point, and that the rings are in contact with the ground instead of with the shaft. These volutes may also be perceived on the table in front of the tabernacle, where they support the large disk by which the sun-god is symbolized. Before quitting this tablet we may point to another difference between the column of Sippara and the shafts of the same material and proportions that we have encountered in the Assyrian bas-reliefs (Figs. 67, 68, and 69). In the latter the column rises above the canopy, which is attached to its shaft by ?~-~ ;^ ~; "-T' jSli-^i-'-'-* '--. x,' ' ; ^gliiiiiwife^S^^^S S 31 tlG. 73. Interior of a house supported by worden pillars ; fixm the gates of Lalawat. British Museum. brackets or nails. At Sippara the canopy rests upcn the capital itself. The same arrangement may be found in Assyrian repre- sentations of these liTit structures ; it will suffice to o^ive one o o example taken from the gates of Balawat (Fig. 73). Here, too, the proportions of the columns prove them to have been of wood. They do not rise above the entablature. The architrave rests upon them, and, as in Greece and Egypt, its immediate weight is borne by abaci. At present our aim is to prove that Assyria derived from Chaldaia the first idea of those tall and slender columns, the shafts of which were of wood sheathed in metal, and the capitals of the latter material. The graceful and original forms of Chaldean art would have prepared the way for a columnar archi- tecture in stone, had that material been forthcoming. Babylon,