Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/283

 DECORATION. 261 cased their walls in stone, an expensive and laborious process, or they covered them with a decoration of many colours. As soon as stone came into use, it must have offered an irresist- ible temptation to the chisel of the sculptor and the ornamentist ; and so we nearly always find it decorated with carvings. Sometimes, as in the lintel and thresholds described above (Figs. 95 and 96), the motives are purely ornamental. Elsewhere, in the gates of the Assyrian palaces, and in the plinths of the walls that surround their courts and halls, we find both figures in the round and in low relief. In a future chapter we shall attempt to define the style of these works and to determine their merit. For the present we must be content with pointing out the part played by sculpture in the general system of decoration. In- Chaldaea sculpture must have played a very feeble part in the ensemble of a building, stone was too costly in consequence of the distance it had to be carried. From the ruins of Chaldaea no colossi, like those which flanked the entrances of the Ninevite palaces, none of those long inscriptions upon alabaster slabs which have been of such value for the student of Assyrian history, have been brought. This latter material and all the facilities it offered to the sculptor was apparently entirely neglected by the Chaldaeans. In Lower Mesopotamia the hard volcanic rocks were chiefly used. They were preferred, no doubt, for their durability, but they were little fitted for the execution of figures of any size, and especially was it impossible to think of using them for such historic bas- reliefs as those upon which the Assyrians marshalled hundreds, or rather thousands, of busy figures. Chaldaean doorways may, however, have been sometimes flanked with lions and bulls, 1 we are indeed tempted to assign to such a position one monument which has been described by travellers, namely, the lion both Rich and Layard saw half buried in the huge ruin at Babylon called the Kasr? It is larger than life. It stands upon a plinth, with its paws upon the figure of a struggling man. There is a circular hole in its jaw bigger than a man's fist. The workman- ship is rough ; so too, perhaps, is that of the basalt lion seen by 1 The cuneiform texts mention the " two bulls at the door of the temple E-schakil," the famous staged tower of Babylon. Fr. LENORMANT, Les Origines de PHistoire, vol. i. p. 114 (and edition, 1880). 2 RICH, Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811, and a Memoir on the Ruins, p. 64. LAYARD, Discoveries, p. 507. According to Rich, this lion was of grey granite ; according to Layard, of black basalt.