Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/333

ORIENTATION AND FOUNDATION CEREMONIES. decorators of the great buildings of Babylon and Nineveh seem to have thoroughly understood that it was so ; their rich and FIG. 141. Winged bull upon a rosette ; from Layard. fertile fancy is governed, in every instance to which we can point, with unfailing tact, and to them must be given the credit of having invented not a few of the motives that may yet be traced in the art of the Medes and Persians, in that of the Syrians, the Phoenicians, the peoples of Asia Minor, and above all in that of the Greeks those unrivalled masters who gave immortality to every artistic combination that they chose to adopt. 8. On the Orientation of Buildings and Foundation Ceremonies. The inhabitants of Mesopotamia were so much impressed by celestial phenomena, F and believed so firmly in the influence of the stars over human destiny, that they were sure to establish some connection between those heavenly bodies and the arrange-