Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/303

Rh as to the way in which these enamelled bricks were composed into pictures. No explorer has found anything in the remains of a Chaldæan city that can be compared to the archivolt of enamelled bricks discovered by M. Place over one of the gateways of the city founded by Sargon.

We can hardly doubt however that the art of the enameller was discovered in Chaldæa and thence transported into Assyria. Everything combines to give us that assurance, an examination of the ruins in Mesopotamia and of the objects brought from them as well as the explicit statements of the ancients.

Every traveller tells that there is not a ruin at Babylon in which hundreds of these enamelled bricks may not be picked up, and they are to be found elsewhere in Chaldæa. A certain number of fragments are now in the British Museum and the Louvre with indications upon them leaving no doubt as to whence they came. As for the blocks of the same kind coming from Nineveh and its neighbourhood they are very numerous in our collections. It is easy therefore to compare the products of Chaldæan workshops with those of Assyrian origin. The comparison is not to the advantage of the latter. The enamel on the Babylonian bricks is very thick and solid; it adheres strongly to the clay, and even when brought to our comparatively humid climates it preserves its brilliancy. It is not so with bricks from Khorsabad and Nimroud, which rapidly tarnish and become dull when withdrawn from the earth that protected them for so many centuries. Their firing does not seem to have been sufficiently prolonged.