Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/326

 304 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALIXKA AND ASSYRIA. ourselves believe rather in the imitation of a motive from the stuffs, the jewels, the furniture, and the pottery that Mesopotamia drew from Egypt at a very early date through the intermediary of the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians themselves appropriated the same motive and introduced it with their own manufactures not only into Mesopotamia but into every country washed by the Mediterranean. Our conjecture is to some extent confirmed by an observation of Sir H. Layard's. This lotus flower is only to be found, he says, in the most recent of Assyrian monuments, in those, namely, that date from the eighth and seventh centuries FIG. 132. Rosette. B.C., centuries during which the Assyrian kings more than once invaded Phoenicia and occupied Egypt. 1 In the more ancient bas-reliefs flowers with a very different aspect copied in all pro- bability directly from nature are alone to be found. Of these some idea may be formed from the adjoining cut. It reproduces a bouquet held in the hand of a winged genius in the palace of Assurnazirpal (Fig. 133). The lotus flower is to be found moreover in monuments much older than those of the Sargonids, but that does not in any way 1 LAYARD, Ninereh. vol. ii. p. 212, note.