Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/206

i/6 A History of Art in Cuald.ea and Assyria. as stubborn as the hardest rocks of Egypt. 1 The widely-spaced characters are none the less distinct ; their cutting is, in fact, marvellous in its decision and clearness. We feel that the scribe traced each letter with much the same care and respect as he would have shown in performing a religious rite. In the eyes of the people who saw these complicated symbols grow under the chisel, writing still had a beauty of its own as well as a mys- terious prestige ; it was only legible by the initiated, and they were few in number ; it was admired for itself, for the power it possessed of representing the facts of nature and the thoughts of mankind ; it was a precious, almost a magic, secret. By the time that the palaces of the Assyrian monarchs began to be raised on the banks of the Tigris it was no longer so ; writing had gone on for so many centuries that people had become thoroughly accustomed to it and to its merits ; all that one desired, when he took the chisel in hand, was to be understood. The text in which Assurnazirpal celebrates the erection of his palace and claims for it the protection of the great gods of Assyria, is written in very small, closely-set characters, engraved by a skilful and rapid hand in the soft and kindly stone ; the inequalities of the surface, the details of the sculptures and the shadows they cast, make a letter difficult to read here and there. Nowhere, neither here nor in any other of the great Assyrian inscriptions, do we find the signs of care, the look of simple and serious sincerity, that distinguishes the ancient writing of Chaldaea. At Calah and Nineveh we have before us the work of a society already far advanced, a society which lives in the past and makes use, with mere mechanical skill, of the processes created and brought to a first perfection many centuries before. Of all the monuments found at Tello, the oldest, apparently, is a great stele of white stone, both sides of which are covered 1 M. Oppert believes that he has discovered in the inscriptions of Gudea, proof that the stone he employed came from Egypt. We cannot attempt to discuss the phrases which seem to him to bear that sense. We have some difficulty, however, in believing either that they took the trouble to transport such ponderous blocks across the desert, or that they sent them on a voyage round the whole peninsula of Arabia, a voyage that must have lasted some months, and that when similar materials were within reach. See what Mr. Taylor says about the district which is called Hedjra (heap of stones, from Hadjar, stone), from 'the numerous masses of black granite that may be found there. This district is almost opposite Schenafieh, not far from Bahr-ul-nejef (Notes on Abou-Sharein, p. 404, of vol. xv, of the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal).