Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/235

 THE COLUMN. 21 astragali, the ibex horns and the volutes, may all be easily recognized here. The only stone capital that has come down to us has, indeed no volutes (Fig. 74), but it is characterized by the same taste for flowing 1 lines and rounded forms. Its general section is that of a o o cyma reversa surmounted by a flattened torus, and its appearance that of a vase decorated with curvilinear and geometrical tracery. There is both originality and beauty in the contours of the profile and the arrangement of the tracery ; the section as a whole is not unlike that of the inverted bell-shaped capitals at Karnac. 1 FIG. 81. The Tree of Life ; from Lay ard. This type must have been in frequent use, as we find it repeated in four bases found still in place in front of the palace of Sennacherib by Sir Henry Layard. They were of limestone and rested upon plinths and a pavement of the same material (Fig. 82). 2 In these the design of the ornament is a little more complicated than the festoon on the Khorsabad capital, but the principle is the same and both objects belong to one narrow class. 1 See Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 120, fig. 95. 2 LAYARD forgets to give the height of this base : he is content to tell us that its greatest diameter is 2 feet 7 inches, and its smallest nJ? inches. This latter measure- ment must have been taken at the junction with the shaft {Discoveries, p. 590).