Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/340

 302 A History of Art in Chald.fa and Assyria. formed part of another vase decorated in the same way. We cannot point to a single complete specimen of this work, but by comparing many pieces all from the same place, we may gain some idea of the taste in pottery that prevailed under the Sargonids. Figs. 178 — 180. — Amphorae; from Layard. A vase upon which certain Aramaic characters were traced with the brush was decorated with bands of a reddish-brown pigment turning round the neck and body at irregular intervals (Fig. 183). 1 Fig. 181— Alabastron ; from Layard. FlG. 182. — Fragment of a vase. British Museum. Elsewhere we find a more complicated form of the same orna- ment. The horizontal bands are separated by a kind of trellis- work, in which the lines cross each other, sometimes at right 1 We borrow the figures numbered 183, 184, 186 and 187, from the plate accompanying a remarkable paper by M. Helbig, in which he points out the similarities that exist between this Ninevite pottery, and the oldest pottery of Attica and the ^Egaean islands (Osservazioni sopra la provenienza della decor azione geometrica, in the Annales de V Institut de Correspondance archéologique, 1875, p. 221). The tracings reproduced by M. Helbig (lavola d'aggnmta, H), were made by Mr. Murray. Our figures 182, 185, and 188 were taken from drawings made by myself in the British Museum.