Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/205

Chald/EAn Sculpture. 175 This site seems to have been inhabited down to the very last days of antiquity, so that monuments have been found there of all ages ; for the moment, however, we are only concerned with those that belong to the early Chaldaean monarchy. Among these there are some that date from the very beginning of Chaldaean civilization. This we know not only from their style ; arguments based on such evidence alone might leave room for doubt ; some might even contend that the development of art did not proceed equally over the whole of that extensive country ; it might be asserted that here and there it was in a far less advanced state than at other centres. The age of these monuments is fixed by much less debateable signs, namely, by the character of the symbols of which their inscribed texts are composed (see Vol I., Fig 2, and below, Fig. 92). Fig. 92. — Inscription engraved on one of the seated Chaldaean statues. Louvre. We have already explained l that in the monuments from Sir- tella these symbols were not all wedges, or arrow-heads, whose exclusive use did not commence until afterwards ; we have shown how their original ideographic nature is still to be traced in many characters. Compare the inscription here figured with those on our Assyrian monuments. Put it side by side with the narrative that runs across all the reliefs of Assurnazirpal at Nimroud (Vol. I., Fig. 4, and, above, Fig. 64): you will see at once what a pro- found change has taken place and how many centuries must have intervened between such different ways of employing the same alphabet. At Tello the material was less kindly ; it was not, as in Assyria, limestone or gypsum ; it was a diorite or dolerite 1 Vol. I. Chap. I. § 4.