Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/155

DECORATION. '35 is Assyrian rather than Egyptian ; l the Egyptian decorator loved to place his figures back to back ; - the converse arrange- ment, as we may see by turning over the pages of any work on Mesopotamia!! art, was preferred by the Assyrian. 3 He was continually using pairs of human figures and of real or fictitious animals, and he always made them face each other, but with a barrier between in the shape of a vase, an altar, a column, a rosette, or a palmette. 4 This palmette is also to be commonly met with in Phoenicia, but, true to its character as a borrowed motive, it is there even more conventional in form than in Assyria. Its stem is a kind of archi- tectonic column, with rudimentary volutes ; its four or five leaves Vie,. 77. Alabaster slab. Louvre. are very symmetrical, even rigid ; and on the whole it is much farther removed from the vegetable world than its Mesopotamian original. Another favourite motive of the Assyrian ornamentist may be recognized in the cable which here divides the field of the lower relief from the compartment above. 5 1 Art in Chaldaa and Assyria, Vol. II. page 338. 2 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II. Figs. 288, 311, 314, 327, 328. 3 Art in Chaldcea and Assyria, Vol. I. Figs. 8, 124, 138, 139 ; Vol. II. Figs. 120, 123, 141, 152, 153, 158, 209, &c. 4 Ibid. Vol. I. Figs. 8, 81, 137, 138, 139 ; Vol. II. 253, 254, 255. 5 Ibid. Vol. I. Figs. 126 and 137 ; Vol. II. plate xiii.