Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/321

DECORATION. 299 doors were covered with it and there are many signs that both in Chaldaea and Assyria many other surfaces were protected in the same fashion. After the careful examination of its ruins Taylor came to the conclusion that the upper story of a staged tower at Abou-Sharein had gilt walls. He found a great number of small and very thin gold plates upon the plateau that formed the summit of the building, and with them the gilded nails with which they had been fixed. 1 In his life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus gives a description of Babylon that appears taken from authentic sources, and he notices this employment of metal. " The palaces of the King of Babylon are covered with bronze which makes them glitter at a distance ; the chambers of the women, the chambers of the men and the porticoes are decorated with silver, with beaten and even with massive gold instead of pictures. 2 Herodotus speaks of the silvered and gilded battlements of Ecbatana 3 and at O Khorsabad cedar masts incased in gilded bronze were found, 4 o while traces of gold have been found on some crude bricks at Nimroud. 5 Seeing that metal was thus used to cover wide surfaces, and that, as we shall have occasion to show, the forms of sculpture, of furniture, and of the arts allied to them in Mesopotamia, prove that the inhabitants of that region were singularly skilled in the manipulation of metal, whether with the chisel or the hammer, the above conjecture may very well be true ; the sheen of the polished surface would be in excellent harmony with the enamelled faience about it. It has been suggested that some of the carved ivories may 1 J. E. TAYLOR, Notes on Abou-Sharein, p. 407 (in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv. ). 2 PHILOSTRATUS, Life of Apollonius, i. 25. Cf. DIONVSIUS PERIEGETES, who says of Semiramis (v. 1007, 1008) : avrup ITT' a.Kpo'troX'rji /xe'yaj/ SO'/AOV etcraro BryXw ' r/S' l<f)O.VTi /cat dyi'pw dcr/oycracra. 3 HERODOTUS, i. 98. 4 See above, p. 202. ' LAYARD, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 264, note i. Frequent allusions to this use of metal are to be found in the wedges. In M. LENORMANT'S translation of the London inscription (Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 233, 3rd edition) in which Nebuchadnezzar enumerates the great works he had done at Borsippa, I find the following words : " I have covered the roof of Nebo's place of repose with gold. The beams of the door before the oracles have been overlaid with silver ..... the pivot of the door into the woman's chamber I have covered with silver."