Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/394

 OJ 50 A History of Art in Chaff. fa and Assyria people for whom they were made. 1 The forms were not altogether happy. And yet the Assyrian workmen could sometimes turn out lighter and more graceful objects than these. It was, no doubt, when they laboured for the softer sex that they modified their methods of work. The figure of a winged genius in which we ventured to recognise a goddess wears several necklaces, and one of them looks like a chain with alternately thin and Fig. 238. — Necklace ; from Layard. stout members (Fig. 162). Now, at Kouyundjik, a necklace has been found (Fig. 245) bearing no little resemblance to the one here copied by the sculptor. It is composed of slender gold tubes, separated from each other by beads of the same metal. These beads are alternately ribbed and smooth. The workmanship is good and very careful. That these articles of personal jewelry were made in the country is proved by the fact that not a few of the moulds Fig. 239. — Royal necklace ; from Rawlinson. used by the jewellers for the patterns most in favour have been found They are small slabs of serpentine or very hard limestone, in one face of which the desired pattern is cut in intaglio (Figs. 246 and 247). Wherever the pattern com- municates with the outer edge by a small opening, it may have been used to receive the liquid metal ; where no such 1 Many more varieties of the same type will be found in the plate on which Botta reproduced the principal jewels figured in the Khorsabad reliefs (Mo?wment de Ninive, plate 161). See also Layard, Discoveries, p. 597.