Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/349

GRAPHIC PROCESSES. 3-' 7 10. On the Graphic Processes Employed in the Representations of Buildings. The Chaldseans and Assyrians knew as little of perspective as they did of mechanics. When they had to figure a building and its contents, or a landscape background, they could not resist the temptation of combining many things which could not be seen from a single standpoint. Like the painters and sculptors of Thebes they mixed up in the most nai've fashion those graphic processes that we keep carefully apart. All that they cared about was to be understood. We need not here reproduce the observations we made on this subject in the corresponding chapter of Egyptian Art ; T it will suffice to give a few examples of the simultaneous employment by Ninevite sculptors of contradictory systems. FIG. 153. Chaldean plan. Louvre. It is not difficult to cite examples of things that may, with some little ingenuity, be brought within the definition of a plan. The most curious and strongly marked of these is furnished by one of the most ancient monuments that have come down to us ; we mean a statue found at Tello in Lower Chaldaea by M. de Sarzec. It represents a personage seated and holding on his knees an engraved tablet on which two or three different things are represented (Fig. 153). On the right there is one of those styles with which letters or images 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. chapter i. i.