Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/326

 94 A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria. Backgrounds were nearly always blue (Plates XIII. and XV.), and most of the figures yellow. Certain details were reinforced by touches of black and white. In the brick representing the king followed by his servants (Plate XIV., Fig. i), the royal tiara is white, the hair, beards, bows, and sandals are black. Red only appears in a few ornamental details {Ibid., Fig. 2). Green is still more rare. It has been found at Khorsabad. In a fragment of painting upon stucco it affords the ground against which the figures are relieved ; l and in the enamelled brick decoration on the harem wall (Vol. I., Fig. 101), it is used for the foliage of a tree that looks at first sight like an orange tree ; its leaves however are rather those of an apple (see Plate XV., Fig. 3). According to Sir H. Layard, the blue which was spread in such great quantities on the enamelled bricks was given by an oxide of copper mixed with a little lead, the latter metal being intro- duced in order to render the mixture more fusible. 2 This analysis applies only to the bricks of Nimroud. In the Sargonid period another process, borrowed, perhaps, from Egypt, seems to have been employed. Place tells us that in the course of his excava- tions he found two blocks of colour in one of the offices at Khor- sabad. One of these blocks, weighing some two pounds and a little over, was blue. An artist was at the time engaged in copying in water-colours the decoration of one of the walls covered with enamelled bricks. In order to get as near as possible to the tint of the original the notion occurred to him to make use of the Assyrian blue. But the latter was stubborn and would not mix ; it left a vitreous deposit at the bottom of the cup. At first it was supposed that its long sojourn in the earth had deprived it of some of its qualities, but later analysis explained the difficulty in a more satisfactory manner. Its unfitness for use as water-colour was not the result of any alteration. Being intended for use as a glaze or enamel upon pottery, it was composed of lapis-lazuli reduced to powder. 3 The Chaldaeans made a wide use of lapis, which they imported from central Asia. The fatherland of that mineral is the region now called Badakshan, in Bactriana, whence, in ancient times, came what Theophrastus calls the Scythian stone. The caravans brought it into the upper valley of the Tigris, whence it made its 1 Place, Ninive, plate 32. 2 Layard, Discoveries, p. 166, note. • ; Place, Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 251, 252.