Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/381

 Arms. 343 On the other hand, there are plenty of motives which may just as easily have had their origin in one country as the other. The two vultures, for instance, preparing to devour a hare stretched upon its back, which we figure below (Fig. 219). 1 It may be thought that we have dwelt too long upon these cups ; but the sequel of our history will show why we have examined them with an attention that, perhaps, neither their number nor their beauty may appear to justify. They are first met with in Fig. 219. — Border of a cup; from Layard. Assyria, but they must have existed in thousands among the Greeks and Italiots. Light, solid, and easy to carry, they must have furnished western artists with some of their first models. As we shall see, they not only afforded types and motives for plastic reproduction, but, by inciting them to find a meaning for the scenes figured upon them, they suggested myths to the foreign populations to whom they came. § 5. Anns. We shall not, of course, study Assyrian arms from the military point of view. That question has been treated with all the care it deserves by Rawlinson and Layard. 2 From the stone axes and arrow-heads that have been found in the oldest Chaldaean tombs, to the fine weapons and defensive armour in iron and bronze, used by the soldiers of Nineveh in its greatest years, by the 1 Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 62, B. 2 Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. chapter vii. ; La yard, Nineveh vol. ii. pp. 338-348.