Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/290

 268 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD.-I-A AND ASSYRIA. their destined sites, and increased their size so as to give gigantic proportions to his man-headed bulls and lions. Some of the winged bulls are from sixteen to seventeen feet high. 1 In spite of the labour expended upon the carving and putting in place of these huge figures, they are extremely numerous, hardly less so, indeed, than the Osiricle piers of Egypt. 2 In the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, twenty-six pairs have been counted ; in that of Sennacherib at Kouyundjik, there were ten upon a single facade. 3 In those passages, halls, and courtyards, whose destination justified such a luxury, the sculptor utilized the stone lining of the walls with equal skill, but in a slightly different spirit. The figures on the facade had to be seen from a great distance, and were exposed to the full light of the Mesopotamian sun, so that their colossal proportions and the varied boldness of their relief had an obvious justification. The sculptures in the interior were smaller in scale and were strictly bas-reliefs. With the shortening of the distance from which they could be examined, their scale was made to conform more closely to the real stature of human beings. In some very spacious halls a few of the figures are larger than life, while in the narrowest galleries they become very small, the alabaster slabs being divided into two stories or more (see Fig. i is). 4 There is another singularity to be noticed apropos of these sculptures. The themes treated outside are very different from those inside the palaces. The figures in the former position are religious and supernatural, those in the interior historical and anecdotic. There is much variety in the details of these narrative sculptures, but their main theme is always the glorification, and, in a sense, the biography of the sovereign. In the Egyptian temple the figures which form its illumination are spread indifferently over the whole surface of the walls. In a Greek temple, on the other hand, sculpture was confined with rare 1 Those in the Louvre are fourteen feet high ; the tallest pair in the British Museum are about the same. 2 Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 92, fig. 70. 3 On the subject of these winged bulls see Fr. LENORMANT, Les Origines de VHistoire, vol. i. chap. 3. 4 The bas-relief here reproduced comes from the palace of Assurbanipal at Kouyundjik. In the fragment now in the Louvre there are three stories, but the upper story, being an exact repetition of that immediately below it, has been omitted in our engraving.