Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/180

 [52 A History of Art in Ciiai.d.t.a and Assyria. Thus the camel that we find in so many pictures is the same as that which now occupies the same region and marches in its slow caravans ; l but on the obelisk of Shalmaneser we find the double-humped Bactrian camel (Fig. 49). 2 The clumsy tribe of the pachyderms is not only represented by the wild boars that still have their lairs in the marshes of the lower Euphrates ; 8 the rhinoceros and the Indian elephant also occur on the obelisk (Vol. I. Fig. iii). 4 The apes shown in our Fig. 64 also seem to belong to an Indian species. 5 The sculptor was not always as happily inspired by these exotic animals as by those of his own country, and in that there is nothing surprising. He only caught a passing glimpse of them as they defiled, perhaps, before the people in some triumphal procession. On the other hand, the fauna of his native land were known to him through long habit, and yet his reproductions of the elephant and the dromedary are very good, much better than those of the semi-human ape. His idea of the rhinoceros is very faulty ; the single horn planted on the nose leaves no doubt as to his meaning, but the lion's mane with which the animal's back is clothed has never belonged to the rhinoceros. The artist may have worked from a description. In these pictures birds hold a very secondary place ; Assyrian sculpture was hardly light enough of hand to render their forms and feathers. For such a task, indeed, painting with its varied handling, its delicate lines and brilliant colours is required. It was with the brush that the Egyptians succeeded, in the frescoes of their tombs, in figuring the principal birds of the Nile Valley with all their elegance of form and brilliant variety of plumage. In Assyria, among a nation of soldiers and in an art whose chief 1 Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 21, Monuments, first series, plate 61 ; second series, plate 50. Botta (Monuments de Ninive, plate 128), reproduces a group of camels sketched with a light hand, but with much truth and judgment. 2 Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 433. All four faces of this obelisk are reproduced on plates 53-56 of the first series of Layard's Monuments. 3 Rawlinsox, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 40 and 350 ; and Layard, Discoveries, p. 109. 4 Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii, pp. 434, 435. 5 Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 436. The Assyrians seem to have been much struck with these apes when they first appeared at Calah. This is shown by the care expended upon them by the sculptor of Shalmaneser's obelisk ; he has reproduced the bas-relief of Assurnazirpal on a smaller scale (Layard, Monuments, first series, plate 55).