Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/237

THE COLUMN. 215 which offerings to the gods, or presents to the king were placed. This hypothesis encounters many objections. We may easily account for the disappearance of the column by supposing it to have been of wood. If it was stone, it may have been carried off for use as a roller by the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, before that part of the building to which it belonged was so completely engulfed and hidden by the ruins as it afterwards became. 1 Moreover we can point to a certain number of Assyrian altars, and their shapes are very different from this. FIG. 83. Model of a base, side view. Actual size, FIG. 84. The same, seen from in front. Finally, all our doubts are removed by a bas-relief from the palace of Assurbanipal, which is now in the British Museum (Fig. 86). The upper part of this carved picture is destroyed, but enough remains to show that it reproduced the facade of some richly decorated building. Four columns supported on the backs of so many lions, and two flat pilasters upheld in the same fashion 1 This suggestion seems inconsistent with the state of the ruin at the spot where the discovery was made. Sir Henry Layard describes these sphinxes as buried in charcoal, and so calcined by the fire that they fell into minute fragments soon after exposure to the air. Anything carried on their backs must have fallen at the time of the conflagration, and, if a stone column, it would have been found under the charcoal. Eo,