Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/246

 2i4 A History of Art in Chald.ea and Assyria. to represent a fortified tête-de-pont* It is abundantly proved that the Assyrians and Chaldseans made great use of the vault. Why should they not have employed it for bridges elsewhere than at Babylon ? and wherever there were bridges on the great roads and near their own frontiers what could be more natural than to defend them by works flanked, like this, with tow r ers ? The horse would then be about to cross the bridge, and his introduction would be explained simply by the sculptor's desire to give all possible clearness to a representation which could never be complete. He seems to advance with some precaution as if the floor of the bridge, which is indicated merely by a straight line, was made of tree trunks or roughly squared planks badly joined. We offer this hypothesis for what it may be worth. Next come two archers, and then chariots. The ground must be difficult, for not only does the driver support his horses with a tightened rein, but a man on foot walks in front and holds them by the head. We find a scene entirely similar but still better treated in the upper division of another plaque (see Fig. 117). 1 Here we may see that the chariots are progressing not without difficulty and even danger, in the very bed of a torrent. The movement of the men who lead the horses is well understood and skilfully rendered ; we feel how carefully they have to conduct their advance among the blocks of stone that encumber the bed of the stream and the tumbling water that conceals the nature of the ground. In the lower division we are presented with one of those scenes that are so common in Assyrian reliefs. The king in his royal robes appears on the left ; a line of prisoners guarded by archers approach him and beg for mercy, while the foremost among them " kiss the dust beneath his feet," to use an oriental expression in its most literal sense. We should have been willing, had it been possible, to make further extracts from this curious series of reliefs ; to have shown, here naked prisoners defiling under the eyes of the conqueror, there Assyrian archers shooting at the heaped-up heads of their slain enemies. But we have perforce been content with giving, by a few carefully chosen examples, a fair idea of the work 1 In order that we might give two interesting subjects on a single page, we have here brought together two divisions that do not belong to the same band in the original.