Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/359

 NOTIONS AS TO A FUTURE LIFK. What then did the Assyrians do with their dead ? No one has attacked this question more vigorously than Sir Henry Layard. In his attempt to answer it he explored the whole district of Mossoul, but without result ; he pointed out the interest of the inquiry to all his collaborators, he talked about it to the more intelligent among his workmen, and promised a reward to whoever should first show him an Assyrian grave. He found nothing, however, and neither Loftus, Place, nor Rassam have been more successful. Neither texts nor monuments help us to fill up the gap. The excavations of M. de Sarzec have indeed brought to light the fragments of an Assyrian stele in which a funerary scene is represented, but unfortunately its meaning is by no means clear. 1 I cannot point to an Assyrian relief in which the same theme is treated. Among so many battle pictures we do not find a single scene analogous to those so often repeated in the pictures and sculptures of Greece. The death and burial of an Assyrian warrior gave a theme to no Assyrian sculptor. It would appear that the national pride revolted from any confession that Assyrians could be killed like other men. All the corpses in the countless battle-fields are those of enemies, who are sometimes mutilated and beheaded. 2 These despised bodies were left to rot where they fell, and to feed the crows and vultures ; 3 but it is impossible to believe that the people of different religions by whom the Assyrians were succeeded always chose by preference to bury their dead at high levels. Even in our own day it is, as a rule, upon the heights studded over the plains that Christians, Mussulmans, and Yezidis establish their cemeteries ; and these have become grave obstacles to the explorer in consequence of the natural disinclination on the part of the peasantry to disturb what may be the ashes of their ancestors. BENNDORF (Gesicktshelf/ie, plate xiv. figs, i and 2} reproduces two golden masks similar to those found at Mycenae, which were found, the one at Kouyundjik, the other at some unknown point in the same district ; he mentions (pp. 66, 67) a third discovery of the same kind. But the character of the objects found with these masks seems clearly to show that the tombs from which they were taken were at least as late as the Seleucidse, if not as the Roman emperors (Cf. HOFFMANN, in the Archdologische Zeitung for 1878, pp. 25-27). 1 When we come to speak of Chaldnaan sculpture, we shall give a reproduction of this relief. We cannot make much use of it in the present inquiry, because its meaning is so obscure. The stone is broken, and the imperfections of the design are such that we can hardly tell what the artist me'ant to represent. The two figures with baskets on their heads for instance are they bringing funeral offerings, or covering with earth the heaped-up corpses on which they mount ? 2 LAYARD, Monuments, ist series, plates 14, 21, 26, 57, 64, &c. 3 In more than one battle scene do we find these birds floating over the heads of X X