Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/230

 208 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD.KA AND ASSYRIA. Such a combination could not long exist in architectonic systems in which the stone column played its true part. It is a survival from the use of wood. Another characteristic feature is the complete absence both from this fragment and from the columns in the sculptured reliefs of vertical lines or divisions of any kind, no trace of a fluted or polygonal shaft has been found. 1 In writing the history of the Egyptian column we explained how the natural desire for as much light as possible led the archi- tects of Beni- Hassan to transform the square pier, first into an octagonal prism, secondly into one with sixteen sides.' 2 And to this progressive elaboration of the polyhedric shaft the flutes seemed to us to owe their origin. On the other hand, with tall and slender supports such as those afforded by palm trunks no necessity for reduction and for the shaving of angles would arise, and those flutes whose peculiar section is owing to the desire for a happy play of light and shadow, would never have been thought of. If we imitate a natural timber shaft in stone we have a smooth cylindrical column like that seen in Fig. 74. Again, the shafts of the columns in the bas-reliefs, appear slender in comparison with those of Egypt, or with the doric shafts of the oldest Greek temples (see Eig. 41 and 42). In the fragmentary column from Khorsabad (Eig. 74) we have only a small part of the shaft but if we may judge from the feeble salience of the capital, its proportions must have been slender rather than heavy and massive. Wherever the stone column has been used in buildings of mediocre size, the architect seems to have been driven by some optical necessity to make his angle columns more thickset than the other supports. Thus it was in Assyria, in the little temple at Kouyundjik (Eig. 42), where the outer columns are sensibly thicker than those between them; at Khorsabad (Eig. 41) the same result was obtained by rather different means. The edifice represented in this bas-relief bears no little similarity to certain Egyptian temples and to the Greek temple in antis? The 1 M. PLACE, indeed, encountered an octagonal column on the mound of Karamles, but the general character of the objects found in that excavation led him to conclude positively that the column in question was a relic from the Parthian or Sassanide epoch (JVt'nive, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170). 2 History of Art in Ancient J^gypt, vol. ii. p. 95. 3 Ibid. vol. i. p. 397, fig. 230: and vol. ii. p. 105, fig. 84.