Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/264

A History of Art ix Ciiald.ea and Assyria. Without going- so far as northern Syria we might find, if we may believe the natives of the country, plenty of sculptures in the valleys that open upon the Assyrian plain if they were care- fully explored. Near Ghunduk, a village about forty-five miles north-west of Mossoul, Layard noticed two reliefs of the kind, one representing a hunt, the other a religious sacrifice. 1 But after Bavian the most important of all these remains yet dis- covered is that at Malthaï. This village is about seventy-five miles north of Mossoul, in a valley forming one of the natural gateways of Kurdistan. The road by which the traveller reaches Armenia and Lake Van runs through the valley. 2 There, in the fertile stretch of country that lies between two spurs standing out from the main chain, stands a tell, or mound, which seems to have been raised by the hand of man. Place opened trenches in it without result, but he himself confesses that his explorations were not carried far enough, and, the beauty of the site and other things being considered, he persists in believing that the kings of Assyria must have had a palace, or at least a country lodge, in the valley. However this may be, the bas-reliefs, of which Place was the first to make an exact copy, suffice to prove that this site attracted particular attention from the Assyrians (see Fig. 123). They are to be found on the mountain side, at about two-thirds of its total height, or some thousand feet above the level of the valley. In former days they must have been inaccessible without artificial aids. It is only by successive falls of rock that the rough zig- zag path by which we can now approach them has been formed. The figures, larger than nature, are arranged in a long row and information we possess, these steles may be attributed to Tiglath-Pilezer, Assurnazirpal, Shalmaneser IL, and Sennacherib. The remaining figures must be referred to other princes. Quite lately Mr. Boscawen has published an interesting article {The Mo?iuments and Inscriptions on the Rocks at Nahr-el-Kelb) in the seventh volume of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archœology (pp. 331-352). It is accompanied by a general view of the site, and a very careful plan of that part of the valley in which the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions are to be found. Professor Lortet has also paid a recent visit to the valley. We are indebted to one of his photographs for our fig. 122 {Tour du Monde, 1882, p. 415). We should have expected to find traces of these Assyrian rock-sculptures on the shores of Lake Van, where the princes of Nineveh so often appeared as conquerors : so far, however, nothing beyond cuneiform inscriptions has been found. There are no royal effigies (Schulze, Mémoire sur le Lac de Van, in the Journal Asiatique for April-June, 1840, and Layard, Discoveries, chapter xviii.). 1 Layard, Discoveries, p. 369. 2 Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 154.