Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/230

2O0 A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria. art, an art that must have reached its apogee in the days of Xabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar. Speaking broadly, we can show nothing produced by the sculptors, painters, and ornamentists who were employed on the decoration of those great buildings which even the Jewish prophets could not help admiring, while they abused the princes who built them and the gods to whom they were consecrated. The earliest Greek travellers, such as Herodotus and Ctesias, only saw the ruins of these magnificent Tig. hi. — The Caillou Michaux, obverse. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier. structures and of their rich adornment of enamels, frescoes, and sculptured figures ; and yet how great was their wonder ! We can hardly reflect without emotion upon what we have lost in great works in stone and metal carried out in the style of which certain fragments from Tello and a few terra-cotta statuettes give us some faint idea. 1 That such works did once exist we are told by the Greek 1 Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 32.