Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/236

214 A HISTOKV OF ART IN CIIALIU-;A AND ASSYRIA. We again encounter this same base with its opposing curves in a curious monument discovered at Kouyundjik by Mr. George Smith. 1 This is a small and carefully executed model, in yellow- stone, of a winged human-headed bull, supporting on his back a vase or base similar in design to that figured above. This little object must have served as a model for the carvers engaged upon the palace walls. We shall not here stop to examine the attributes and ornaments of the bull, they are well shown in our Figs. 83 and 84, and their types are known by many other examples. Our aim is to show that we have rightly described the uses to which it was put. These might have remained obscure but for the discovery, in the south-western palace at Nimroud, of a pair of winged sphinxes, calcined by fire but FIG. 82. Ornamented base, in limestone. still in their places between two huge lions at one of the doors. Before their contours disappeared and they rapidly crumbled away upon contact with the air. Layard had time to make a drawing of the one that had suffered least (Fig. 85). In his description he says that between the two wings was -a sort of plateau, " intended to carry the base of a column." Surprised at not finding any trace of the column itself, he gives out another conjecture : that these sphinxes were altars upon 1 George SMITH, Assyrian Discoveries, sixth edition, 8vo. 1876, p. 431. 2 LAYARD, Nineveh, vol. i. p. 349, at a little distance the explorer found the bodies of two lions placed back to back, which seemed to have formed a pedestal of the same kind. Their heads were wanting, and the whole group had suffered so much from fire, that it was impossible either to carry it off or to make a satisfactory drawing from it (ibid. p. 351).