Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/231

Chald.ean Sculpture. 20Ï historians. Herodotus, after having described the temple of Bel and the sanctuary on its summit in which no image of the deity was set up, goes on, " In this temple at Babylon there is another sanctuary lower down, where a great seated statue of Zeus may be seen} Near this statue there is a large table of gold, the throne and its steps are of the same material. The whole, according to the Chaldaeans, is worth eight hundred talents of gold .... at one time the sacred inclosure also contained a statue of massive gold twelve cubits high. I did not see it. I content myself with repeating what the Chaldaeans told me about it. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, formed a project -to carry it off, but he did not dare Fig. ii2. — The Caillou Michaux, reverse. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier to execute it. Xerxes, the son of Darius, caused the priest to be put to death by whom the enterprise was opposed, and took possession of the statue." We here have the evidence of an eye- witness. The seated statue of Bel, without being of the colossal size ascribed by the Chaldaeans to the image destroyed by Darius, must yet, if we may judge from the expression of Herodotus, have been larger than nature. We may gather some notion as to its pose and general appearance from certain figures carved upon the cylinders (Fig. 40), just as, in Greece, the more famous and venerable of her religious statues were reproduced upon coins and Ecru ôè rov iv ~BafivwvL tpov /cat uÀÀoç koltu) vrjos, evOa ayaÀ/xa /xéya tov Atoç Ivi KarrjfAtvov xpuoreov (i. 183). VOL. II. D D