Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/324

 3O2 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD/KA AND ASSYRIA. walls and coffered ceilings. These chiselled, enamelled, and gilded ivories must have been set in frames of cedar or cypress. The Assyrian texts bear witness in more than one place to the use of those fine materials, and the Hebrew writers make frequent allusion to the luxurious carpentry imitated by their own princes in the temple at Jerusalem. 1 In one of his in- vectives against Nineveh Zephaniah cries : " Desolation shall be in the thresholds : for he shall uncover the cedar work." 2 The more we enter into detail the richer and more varied does the decoration of these buildings appear. In our clay the great ruins are sad and monotonous enough. The rain of many centuries has washed away their paint ; their ornaments of metal and faience, of ivory and cedar, have fallen from the walls ; the hand of man has combined with the slow action of time to reduce them to their elements, and nothing of their original beauty remains but here and there a fragment or a hint of colour. And yet when we bring these scanty vestiges together we find that enough is left to give the taste and invention of the Assyrian ornamentist a very high place in our respect. That artist was richly endowed with the power of inventing happy combinations of lines, and of varying his motives without losing sight for an instant of his original theme. We may show this very clearly by a more careful study of two motives already encountered, the rosette, and the running or- nament -which is known in its countless modifications as the " knop and flower pattern." These two motives are united in those great thresholds which have been found now and then in such marvellous preservation. They also occur in certain bas- reliefs representing architectural decorations, so that we are in possession of all the documents required for the formation of a true idea of their varied beauties. In the Assyrian Basement Room of the British Museum there is a fine slab of gypsum of which we reproduce one corner in our Fig. i3i. 3 Besides the daisy shaped vi. 15; vii. 3. 2 ZEPHANIAH ii. 14. ! The design consists entirely in the symmetrical repetition of the details here given. [In this engraving the actual design of the pavement has been somewhat simplified. Between the knop and flower that forms the outer border and the rosettes there is a band of ornament consisting of the symmetrical repetition of the palmette motive with rudimentary volutes, much as it occurs round the outside of the tree of life figured on page 213. In another detail our cut differs slightly from