Part 24 (1/2)

[332] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 68-70.

[333] This character of a tutelary divinity that we attribute to the winged bull is indicated in the clearest manner in the cuneiform texts: ”In this palace,” says Esarhaddon, ”the _sedi_ and _lama.s.si_ (the a.s.syrian names for these colossi) are propitious, are the guardians of my royal promenade and the rejoicers of my heart, may they ever watch over the palace and never quit its walls.” And again: ”I caused doors to be made in cypress, which has a good smell, and I had them adorned with gold and silver and fixed in the doorways. Right and left of those doorways I caused _sedi_ and _lama.s.si_ of stone to be set up, they are placed there to repulse the wicked.” (ST. GUYARD, _Bulletin de la Religion a.s.syrienne_, in the _Revue de l'Histoire des Religions_, vol. i. p. 43, note.)

[334] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii, plate 21.

[335] Those in the Louvre are fourteen feet high; the tallest pair in the British Museum are about the same.

[336] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 92, fig. 70.

[337] On the subject of these winged bulls see Fr. LENORMANT, _Les Origines de l'Histoire_, vol. i. chap. 3.

[338] The bas-relief here reproduced comes from the palace of a.s.surbanipal at Kouyundjik. In the fragment now in the Louvre there are three stories, but the upper story, being an exact repet.i.tion of that immediately below it, has been omitted in our engraving.

[339] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, p. 176. LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp.

529, 651. BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 44. In the book of Daniel the hand that traces the warning words upon the walls of Belshazzar's palace traces them ”_upon the plaster of the wall_” (DANIEL v. 5).

[340] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 77.

[341] At Warka, however, LOFTUS found in the building he calls _Wuswas_ a layer of plaster which was from two to four inches thick. (_Travels_, p.

176.)

[342] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 77, 78.

[343] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 25.

[344] _Ibid._ vol. i. pp. 141-146; vol. ii. pp. 79, 80; vol. iii. plates 36 and 37.

[345] HERODOTUS (Rawlinson's translation), i. 98.

[346] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 32.

[347] G. SMITH, _a.s.syrian Discoveries_, pp. 77, 78. LAYARD (_Nineveh_, vol.

ii. p. 130) also says that some rooms had no other decoration.

[348] In writing thus we allude chiefly to the restorations given by Mr.

James Fergusson in _The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored_ (1 vol.

8vo. Murray), a work that was launched upon the world at far too early a date, namely, in 1851. Sir H., then Mr., LAYARD, had not yet published his second narrative (_Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_) nor the second series of _Monuments of Nineveh_, neither had the great work of MM. Place and Thomas on the palace of Sargon (a work to which we owe so much new and authentic information) appeared. In Mr. Fergusson's restorations the column is freely used and the vault excluded, so that in many respects his work seems to us to be purely fanciful, and yet it is implicitly accepted by English writers to this day. Professor RAWLINSON, while criticising Mr. Fergusson in his text (_The Five Great Monarchies_, vol. i. p. 303, note 6), reproduces his restoration of the great court at Khorsabad, in which a colonnade is introduced upon the principle of the hypostyle halls of Persepolis. Professor Rawlinson would, perhaps, have been better advised had he refrained from thus popularizing a vision which, as he himself very justly declares, is quite alien to the genius of a.s.syrian architecture.

[349] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 187-189.

[350] LOFTUS thinks that the process was very common, at least in Lower Chaldaea. He found cones imbedded in mortar at several other points in the Warka ruins, but the example we have reproduced is the only one in which well-marked designs could still be clearly traced. TAYLOR saw cones of the same kind at Abou-Sharein. They had no inscriptions, and their bases were black (_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 411). They formed in all probability parts of a decoration similar to that described by Loftus. In Egypt we find cones of terra-cotta crowning the facades of certain Theban tombs (RHIND, _Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants_, p.

136). Decoratively they seem allied to the cones of Warka, but the religious formulae they bear connects them rather with the cones found by M.

de Sarzec at Tello, which bear commemorative inscriptions. To these we shall return at a later page.

[351] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 190, 191

[352] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 607. Rich also bears witness to the abundance of these remains in his _Journey to the Ruins of Babylon_. See also OPPERT, _Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. p. 143.

[353] A French traveller of the last century, DE BEAUCHAMP (he was consul at Bagdad), heard an Arab workman and contractor describe a room he had found in the Kasr, the walls of which were lined with enamelled bricks.