Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/138

 I 20 A History of Art in Chalp.v.a and Assyria confirmed habits and gave a refinement to their touch it had never known before ? Such an idea seems very improbable. We know that their ornamentists borrowed certain motives from the Egyptians, such as the winged globe, the lotus-garland, the sphinx ; but in doing so they stamped them with their own personal and independent taste. It seems likely, therefore, that the more carefully wrought of these ivories were imported from abroad, either from Egypt itself, or from its imitator, Phoenicia. In the fragments we have already figured (Vol. I. Figs. 1 29 and 130) the features and head-dresses are easily recognized as Egyptian. This character is still more marked in another tablet from Nimroud, of which there are several repetitions in the British Museum (Fig. 57). Two womeji are seated opposite to each other. They s :c--At Fig. 57. — Ivory tablet in the British Museum. Drawn by Saint-blme Gautier. are Egyptian in every detail. Their attitudes and symmetrical arrangement ; their robes and head coverings ; the action of their hands, one raised in adoration, the other holding the hare-headed staff; the crux ansata under their chairs, all are continually found in the monuments of the Nile valley. A still more decisive feature is the oval surmounted by two ostrich plumes in the centre of the plaque. This is not inscribed with hieroglyphs taken at random, as in the small objects of Phoenician origin on which those characters are used merely as decoration, but with a royal name, Auben, or Auben-Ra. 1 It is true that no such name 1 We take this transcription from a note sent by Dr. Birch to the Athenœum (14 July, 1877), when the ivory in question, together with many more objects, was