Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/264

 242 A HISTORY OK ART IN CHALD/EA AND ASSYRIA. metal and find out how much of it was solid and how much a mere armour for a softer substance behind. From fragments found at Khorsabacl, M. Place had already divined that the Assyrians covered the planks of their doors with bronze plates, but all doubts on the point have been removed by a recent discovery, which has proved once for all that art profited in the end by what at first was nothing more than a protection against weather and other causes of deterioration. In 1878 Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, the fellow traveller of Sir Henry Layard, found in the course of his excavations in Assyria for the British Museum, some metallic bands covered with repoiissd reliefs and bearing the name of Shalmaneser III. (895 825). The site of this discovery was Balawat, an artificial mound about fifteen miles to the east of Mossoul. 1 As soon as these bands had been examined in London by competent archaeologists, they were recognized as having belonged to the leaves of a wooden door, which must have been nearly twenty-seven feet high and about three inches thick. This latter dimension has been deduced from the length of the nails used to keep the bands in place. At one end these bands were bent with the hammer round the pivot to which each half of the door was attached. These pivots, judging from the bronze feet into which they were " stepped," were about twelve inches in diameter. It is easy to see from their shape how these feet were fixed and how they did their work (Fig. 97). The point of the cone was let into a hollow socket prepared for it in a block cut from the hardest stone that could be found. Such a material would resist friction better and take a higher polish than brick, so that it was 1 An account of the discovery and a short description of the remains, will be found in an article by Mr. Theo. G. PINCHES, published in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archceology, and entitled : The Bronze Gates discovered by Mr. Rassam at Balawat (VQ. vii. part i. pp. 83-1 1 8). The sculptured bronze from these gates is not all, however, in the British Museum. Mr. Rassam's workmen succeeded in appropriating a certain number in the course of the excavations, 'and thus M. Gustave Schlumberger has become possessed of a few pieces, while others of much greater importance have come into the hands of M. de Clercq. M. F. LENORMANT has published in the Gazette Archcologique (1878) a description of the pieces belonging to M. Schlumberger, with two plates in heliogravure. We have already referred to the great work which is now in course of publication by the Society of Biblical Archeology ; it will put an exact reproduction of this interesting monument in the hands of Assyriologists and those interested in the history of art. We shall return to these gates when we come to treat of sculpture.