Page 28

ASSYRIAN AND PERSIAN ORNAMENT.
RICH as has been the harvest gathered by Mons. Botta and Mr. Layard from
the ruins of Assyrian Palaces,
the monuments which they have made known to us do not appear to carry us
back to any remote period
of Assyrian Art. Like the monuments of Egypt, those hitherto discovered belong
to a period of decline,
and of a decline much further removed from a culminating point of perfection.
The Assyrian must have
either been a borrowed style, or the
remains of a more perfect form of art
have yet to be discovered. We are
strongly inclined to believe that the
Assyrian is not an original style, but
was borrowed from the Egyptian, mo-
dified by the difference of the religion
and habits of the Assyrian people.
On comparing the bas-reliefs of
Nineveh with those of Egypt we can-
not but be struck with the many points
of resemblance in the two styles; not
only is the same mode of representa-
tion adopted, but the objects repre-
see     ar orenms so. _iur AA AA A A_ MAtA
sented are ottentimes so similar, that
Egyptian.                             it is difficult to believe that the
same
style could have been arrived at by two
people independently of each other.
The mode of representing a river, a
tree, a besieged city, a group of prison-
ers, a battle, a king in his chariot, are
almost identical,-the differences which
exist are only those which would result
from the representation of the habits of
two different people; the art appears to
us to be the same. Assyrian sculpture
seems to be a development of the
Egyptian, but, instead of being carried
forward, descending in the scale of
perfection, bearing the same relation to
Assyrian.                       the Egyptian as the Roman does to the
Greek. Egyptian sculpture gradually
declined from the time of the Pharaohs to that of the Greeks and Romans;
the forms, which were
at first flowing and graceful, became coarse and abrupt; the swelling of
the limbs, which was at first
28