Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/258

2 2o A History of Art in Chald.ea and Assyria. The valley, which is very narrow, is a cul-de-sac. May we suppose that during the summer heats the king set up his tent in it and passed his time in hunting ? According to Layard's description the scene is charming and picturesque. " The place, from its picturesque beauty and its cool refreshing shade even in the hottest day of summer, is a grateful retreat, well suited to devotion and to holy rites. The brawling stream almost fills the bed of the narrow ravine with its clear and limpid waters. The beetling cliffs rise abruptly on each side and above them tower the wooded declivities of the Kurdish hills. As the valley opens into the plain the sides of the limestone mountains are broken into a series of distinct strata, and resemble a vast flight of steps leading up to the high lands of central Asia. The banks of the torrent are clothed with shrubs and dwarf trees, among which are the green myrtle and the gay oleander bending under the weight of its rosy blossoms." 1 Such a gorge left no room for a palace and its mound, 2 but a subterranean temple may have been cut in the limestone rock for one of the great Assyrian deities, and its entrance may now be hidden, or even its chambers filled up and obliterated, by landslips and falling rocks, and two huge masses of stone that now obstruct the flow of the torrent may be fragments from its decoration. They bear the figures of two winged bulls, standing back to back and separated by the genius who is called the lion-strangler. 3 The principal relief fills up a frame 30 feet 4 inches wide and 29 feet high (see Fig. 120). The bed has been cut away by the chisel to a depth of about 8 inches. Sheltered by the raised edge thus left standing the figures would have been in excellent con- dition but for the unhappy idea that struck some one in later years, immediate successor of M. Botta, at Mossoul (Journal Asiatique, 1846, pp. 280-290). More detailed descriptions will be found in Layard, Discoveries, pp. 207-216, and in Place, JVinive, vol. ii. pp. 1 61-164. The latest and most complete translation of the Bavian inscriptions, or rather of the one inscription that is repeated in three different places, has been given by M. Pognon, under the following title : L'Inscription de Bavian, texte, Traduction et Commentaii'e philologique avec trois Appendices et un Glossaire, 1 vol. 8vo. in two parts, 1879 and 1880 (in the Bibliothèque de V Ecole des Hautes- Etudes). 1 Layard, Discoveries, p. 216. 2 Layard tells us that near the entrance to the gorge, and under the alluvial earth carried down by the stream, he found the remains of carefully-built stone walls, but he is silent as to the character of the building to which they may have belonged. (Discoveries, p. 215.) 3 See the vignette on page 214 of Layard's Discoveries.