Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/228

 19$ A History of Art in Chald.ea and Assyria. stone, which are inscribed with what we should call title-deeds. Two-thirds of their surface is occupied by several columns of close and fine writing, in which the stipulations of the contract securing the rights of the proprietor are recited. On the upper part, and dominated by several stars and by a great serpent stretching across the upper edge, some emblems are grouped, and these are almost exactly the same in all known examples. There are altars upon which the wedge or arrow-head, the primordial element of that writing without which the preserva- tion of the contract would have been impossible, is either laid upon its side or set upon end. Other altars support horned tiaras, a horse-shoe, and another object which has been made unrecog- nizable by an unlucky fracture. With these things are mingled several animals, real and fantastic, and many symbols, no doubt of a sacred character, for we find them hung round the necks of Assyrian kings or placed in front of them on the field of their steles. On one of these monuments, the one we have chosen as the type of the whole series, a double river seems to flow round the stone, and to embrace in its windings the mystic scene we have described. This is the Caillou Michaux, now in the French National Library. In Fig. 1 10 we give a reproduction of it as a whole, and in Figs. 111 and 112 the upper parts of its two faces on a larger scale. 1 The particular value of each symbol here engraved, is still, and perhaps will always remain, an enigma, but the general significance of their introduction into these documents is easily understood. They give a religious character, a sort of divine sanction, to the titles inscribed upon the stone ; they act as witnesses and guarantees. The land-mark thus prepared, was set, no doubt, like the Athenian opot, at the limits of the field whose ownership it declared. It became a kind of talisman. 2 The workmanship of the upper division is very dry and hard ; it is not art. These images were not intended to charm the eye ; 1 According to Millin, who was the first to draw attention to this monument, its material is a black marble ; it would be a mistake to call it basalt {Monuments antique i?ie dits, vol. i. p. 60, note 6). The inscription on the Caillou Michaux has been translated by Oppert (Chronologie des Assyriens et des Babylonians, p. 40), and by Fox Talbot in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xviii. pp. 53-75). [There is a cast of this Caillou in the Assyrian Side Room at the British Museum. — Ed.] 2 The weight of these objects was in itself -sufficient to prevent them being easily removed. The Caillou Michaux weighs rather more than 70 lbs.