Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/384

 34*> A History of Art in Chald^a and Assyria. or elliptical surfaces divided into concentric zones. 1 A recent discovery enables us to say how these zones were filled, at least in the case of shields belonqincr to kin^s or chiefs. In 1880 Captain Clayton found, on the site of an ancient building at Toprak-Kilissa, in the neighbourhood of Van, four shields, or rather their remains, among a number of other objects. These shields are now in the British Museum. Upon one fragment we may read an inscription of Rushas, king of Urardha, or Armenia, in the time of Assurbanipal. 2 This inscription, which is votive in its tenor, combines with the examination of the objects themselves, to prove that these shields are not real arms, made for the uses of war. The bronze is so thin — not more than a millimetre and a half in thickness — that even if nailed upon wood or backed with leather it could have afforded no serious protection, and its reliefs must have been Fig. 224. — Bronze cube damascened with gold ; from Layard. disfigured and flattened with the least shock. The edge alone is strengthened by a hoop of iron. The shields are votive, and must have been hung on the walls of a temple, like those we see thus suspended in a bas-relief of Sargon (Vol. I. Fig. iqo), a relief in which a temple of this same Armenia is represented. 3 But although they were made for purposes of decoration, these arms were none the less copies of those used in actual war, except in the matter of weight and solidity ; thus they were furnished with loops for the arms, but these were too narrow to allow 1 Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 160. 2 Sayce, The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Van, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xiv. p. 653. Mr. Pinches tells me that there is a similar text on the hollow border of the shield reproduced in our Fig. 225. Nothing is now to be distinguished, however, but characters that may be read, "Great king, king of — " 3 See vol. i. page 394.