Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/172

144 A History of Art in Ciiai.p.i a and Assyria. that of a dog which is still extant, not in Mesopotamia indeed, but in Central Asia. 1 We may seek in it for the portrait of one of those Indian hounds kept, in the time of Herodotus, by the Satrap of Babylon. His pack was so numerous that it took the revenues of four large villages to support it. 2 Similar subjects were represented upon other tablets of the same origin. One of them shows a lion about to devour a bull and disturbed bv a man brandishing a mace. Nothing could be more faithful than the action of the animal ; without letting go his prey he raises a paw, its claws opened and extended and ready to be buried in the side of the rash person who interrupts his meal. 8 Fig. 69. — Terra-cotta tablet. British Museum. Height 3f inches. We may also mention a cylinder which, from its style, M. Menant does not hesitate to ascribe to the first Chaldsean monarchy. It represents two oxen in a field of wheat. The latter, by a convention that also found favour with the Greeks, is indicated by two of those huge ears that so greatly astonished Herodotus. 4 Was it on a similar principle that the Chaldaean engraver gave his oxen but one horn apiece ? In spite of this singularity and the peculiar difficulties offered by work in intaglio on a very hard material, the forms are well understood, and 1 Layard, Discoveries, p. 537. 2 Herodotus, i. 192. '■' Loftus gives a poor reproduction of this monument, which he found at Sinkara {Travels, &c, p. 258). We have not reproduced it, because it is in much worse condition than the terra-cotta dog. 4 Herodotus, i. 193.