Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/120

 The Column. sentations of the sculptures, does not land us high and dry as at first might appear. Did not Persian architecture borrow thence the great winged bulls as guardians of the palace portals (Plates IJ. and III.)? Did it not make constant use of these same animal figures to decorate its edifices, fashioning them with a masterly hand, whether it copied them direct from nature, or combined them with forms derived from various types ? Examination of the scanty remains of the Propylaea shows us that it certainly did insert bulls about the column, but in a different way, interposing them between the shaft and the entablature} Columns were discovered at Koyunjik and NimrQd, whose bases reposed on the back of winged sphinxes ; elsewhere, on a bas- relief from the palace of Asur-nat-sirpal, Hons and griffins play a very similar part.' The device seemingly in common use on the banks of the Tigris, may have opened the way for that the origin of which perplexes us; the primnry idea was taken and applied the other way about ; the conceit was adopted, but the animal, who at Nineveh upheld the whole column, was relieved of part of its burden, having but the entablature to carry. If in Assyrian architecture, where the column holds so small a place, the body of the animal does not appear beneath the archi- trave, at any rate it sometimes furnishes the elements of devices the arrangement of which vividly recalls that of the Persian capital, in such productions as we have termed industrial arts. Reference to those lions represented in couples as ornament to the sword-scabbards of the Assyrian bas-reliefs will show the justness of our remarks.' The lions arc back to back ; the lower part of the bodies is parallel to the sheath ; but in some of these same exemplars, the heads come away at right angles from it. The whole difference is thai in the Assyrian sculptures the horizontal plans yielded by the neck and hollow between the two animals support nothing, the figures being mere surcharges, but their silhouette is identical with that of the double-bull capitals which characterize the Persian order. A still better subject for comparison is afforded in a kind of standard, which may be recognized in a bas-relief from Khorsabad (Fig. 41), and b evidently copied upon a bronze model. It con- sists of a pole fixed upright at the front of a chariot, carrying at the ' Ground occurs in ihe text, but it would seem to be a misprint — Tk^.
 * Hiit. of Art ^ torn. ii. Figs. 83-86. • Ibid.^ Figs. 272, 442, 443.