Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/293

 DECORATION. 271 exceptions to the upper part of the building, to the pediments chiefly, and the frieze. The Assyrian method was neither that of the Egyptians nor that of the Greeks. At Nineveh, the sculptor did not, as in Egypt, sow his figures broadcast over the whole length and breadth of the building, neither did he raise them, as in Greece, above the heads of the crowd ; he marshalled them upon the lowest part of a wall, upon its plinth. Their feet touched the soil, their eyes were on a level with those that looked at them ; we might say that they formed an endless procession round every hall and chamber. The reasons for such an ar- rangement are to be sought for, not in any aesthetic tendency of the Assyrian artist, but in the simple fact that only in the stone cuirass, within which the lower parts of the brick walls were shut up, could he find the kindly material for his chisel. Nowhere else in the whole building could the stone, without which his art was powerless, be introduced. But as the lateral development of Assyrian buildings was great, so too was the field offered to the Assyrian sculptor. It has been calculated that the sculptured slabs found in the palace of Sargon would, if placed in a row, cover a distance of nearly a mile and a half. Their superficies is equal to about an acre and a half. By this it will be seen that sculpture played an important part in the decoration of an Assyrian palace, but as it was confined to the lower part of the walls, some other method had to be invented for ornamenting those surfaces on which the chisel could not be used. In Chaldaea, where there was so little stone, it was practically the whole building that had to be thus contrived for. In both countries the problem was solved in the same fashion by the extensive use of enamelled brick and painted stucco, and the elaboration of a rich, elegant, and withal original system of polychromy. Explorers are unanimous in the opinion that neither burnt nor sun-dried brick was ever left without something to cover its naked- ness. It was always hidden and protected by a coat of stucco. 1 At Nineveh, according to M. Place, this stucco was formed by an intimate mixture of burnt chalk with plaster, by which a sort of white gum was made that adhered very tightly to the clay wall. 2 1 LOFTUS, Travels and Researches, p. 176. LAYARD, Discoveries, pp. 529, 651. BOTTA, Monument de Ninire, vol. v. p. 44. In the book of Daniel the hand that traces the warning words upon the walls of Belshazzar's palace traces them " upon the plaster of the wall" (DANIEL v. 5). 2 PLACE, Ninire, vol. i. p. 77.