Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/268

 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD.KA AND ASSYRIA. and would naturally provoke imitation from architects in search of ornament for the bald faces of their clay structures. 1 As to the effect thus obtained, the rough sketch given by Loftus hardly enables us to decide (see Fig. 100). From Assyria, however, come better materials for a judgment We there often find these perpendicular ribs, generally in groups of seven, in buildings that have been carefully studied and illustrated upon a sufficient scale. We give an example from one of the harem gates at Khorsabad (Fig. 101), by which we may see at once that an ornamental motive of no little value was afforded by these huge vertical reeds with their play of alternate light and shadow, and the happy contrast they set up between themselves and the brilliant hues of the painted walls and enamelled bricks. The whole had a certain elegant richness that can hardly be appreciated FIG. 100. Facade of a ruined building at Warka ; from Loftus. without the restoration, in every line and hue, of the original composition. Both at Warka and in the Khorsabad harem, these vertical ribs are accompanied by another ornament which may, perhaps, have been in even more frequent use. We mean those long perpen- dicular grooves, rectangular in section, with which Assyrian and Chaldxan walls were seamed. In the harem wall these grooves o flank the group of vertical reeds right and left, dividing each of the angle piers into two quasi-pilasters. At Warka they appear in the higher part of the facade, above the groups of semi-columns. They serve to mark out a series of panels, of which only the 1 M. PLACE offers a similar explanation of the engaged columns that were found in many parts of the palace at Khorsabad (Ninive, vol. ii. p. 50). He has brought together in a single plate all the examples of pilasters and half columns that he encountered in that edifice. Similar attempts to imitate the characteristic features of a log house are found in many of the most ancient Egyptian tombs. See Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. p. 62 and fig. 37.