- jS A History of Art in Chald i
- a and Assyria.
In a store-room of the North-Western Palace at Nimroud, Layard found a great number of them, packed one within another in cauldrons like those mentioned above ; others, of less value no doubt, were stacked against the wall. At first the explorers were inclined to think that they all dated from the reign of Assurnazirpal, the founder of the building ; but many things combined to suggest that the palace was repaired by Sargon and even inhabited by him. 1 He may have lived there until his own house at Khorsabad was finished. It is possible, therefore, that some or all of these cups date from the eighth century b.c. In many instances oxydization had gone so far that the cups could not be lifted without falling to pieces ; others, however, though covered with a thick coat of oxide, were brought away and successfully cleaned. 2 At the British Museum I compiled a catalogue of forty-four plates or cups of this kind, nearly all from the same treasure, while in the store rooms of the same institution there are many more waiting to be cleaned and rendered fit for exhibition. All these, with a few exceptions, are ornamented, the simplest among them having a star or rosette in the centre. Wherever the bronze has not been com- pletely eaten away the decoration may be recovered, and often it is still singularly clear and sharp. A few cups that had been protected by those placed above them showed, when discovered, such brilliant copper tones that the workmen at first thought they were of gold. The mistake was soon recognized, but we may well believe that the conquerors of half Asia numbered gold and silver vessels among the treasures stored in their palaces ; as yet, however, none have been found. All these cups, like the deeper vessels recovered at the same time, were of bronze ; the precious metals only appear in the form of small inlays and incrustations in the alloy. In the centre of the rosettes 1 Layard, Discoveries, p. 197. 2 In the eighth chapter of the Discoveries, Layard gives a sort of inventory, rather desultory in form, perhaps, but nevertheless very instructive and valuable, of the principal objects found in the magazines — we have borrowed largely from these pages. The most important of the cups are reproduced, in whole or in part, in the plates numbered from 57 to 68 of the Monuments, second series. A complete and accurate study of the cups and other objects of the same kind discovered in Western Asia will be found in M. Albert Dumont's Les Céramiques de la Grèce propre (pp. 112-129).
