Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/267

SECONDARY FORMS. 245 We have another example of Assyrian mouldings on the winged sphinx found by Layard at Nimroud (Fig. 85) the sphinx, that is, that bore a column on its back. In section this moulding may be compared to a large scotia divided into two cavcttos by a torus. Its effect is not happy. The Assyrians had too little experience in stone-cutting to enable them to choose the most satisfactory proportions and profiles for mouldings. We may also point to the entablatures upon the small pavilions reproduced in our Figs. 41 and 42. They are greatly wanting in elegance ; in one especially that shown in Fig. 42 the super- structure is very heavy in proportion to the little temple itself and its columns. The only moulding, if we may call it so, borrowed by Assyria from Chaldaea, and employed commonly in both countries, is a brick one. Loftus was the first to point it out. He discovered FIGS. 98, 99. Assyrian moulding*. Section and elevation ; from Ilottn. it in the ruined building, doubtless an ancient temple, in the neighbourhood of Warka, and called by the natives Wuswas. This is his description :- " Upon the lower portion of the building are groups of seven half-columns repeated seven times the rudest perhaps which were ever reared, but built of moulded semicircular bricks, and securely bonded to the wall. The entire absence of cornice, capital, base or diminution of shafts, so characteristic of other columnar architecture, and the peculiar and original disposition of each group in rows like palm logs, suggest the type from which they sprang." l With his usual penetration, Loftus divines and explains the origin of these forms. The idea must have been suggested, he thinks, by the palm trunks that were used set closely together in timber constructions, or at regular intervals in mud walls. In either case half of their thickness would be visible externally, 1 LOKTUS, Trarch and Researches, p. 175.