Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/125

Tin-: PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT. 105 walls of Shalmanesner and Sargon, of Sennacherib and Assur- banipal, were covered, confines itself mainly to marches, combats, and sieges, it is more realistic than the sculpture of ChalcLnea, a country that had done less, especially upon fields of battle, but had invented more and done more thinking than its bellicose rival. We owe no small debt of gratitude to the swordsmen of Assyria, in spite of the blood they shed and the horrible cruelties they committed and delighted in seeing commemorated in the figured Fir,. 25. Fragment of a bas-relief in alabister. Louvre. Height 23 inches. Drawn l>y Snint-F.lme firuitier. histories of their reigns. The works entrusted to their artists have left us precious documents and the elements for a restoration of a vanished world. Philologists may take their time over the decipherment of the texts inscribed on the reliefs, but the great people of prey who, for at least four centuries, pillaged all Asia without themselves becoming softened by the possession of so much accumulated wealth, live, henceforward, in the long series of pictures recovered for the world by Layarcl and Botta. The stern p