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Show H6 TTIE NATIONS OF TilE new feature into relievos by trying to combine landscape and natural Fig. 25. EeaARUADDON. Fig. 26. SmmiTE P.ltlSONEii, (Inedited). objects with the groat historical compositions, - were perfectly aware of the differences in the national types also. The two prisoners at the feet of king AssARAKnAL m, are evidently not Assyrians, one of them [26] being a Shemite, the other [27] an inhabitant of the table-lands of Armenia, if not a Kurd. Sir IIemy Rawlinson deems them Susians. Still no bier than EsSA RIIADDON is the SARDAN.APALUS [28] (635 B. o.) of the British Museum, a truly magnificent prince, the father of the king under whom Nineveh was destroyed, and who, in tho Greek histories, is mentioned under the same name. Ilia monuments, lately discovered, Fig. 27. KURDISH PRIBONlm, (Inedited). and brought to England by Mr. Rassam, are so exquisitely modelled, and executed with such a highly-developed sense of beauty, that we must rank them among the best relics of ancient art. The peculiar hair-dress of tho king seems to have served as a model to the Lycian sculptor of the IIarpy monument of Xanthus, in the B1:- M. ; an~ i~ is remarkable that the female head [29] of an archaic com of Veha, m Italy, shows the same arrangement of the hair. V elia was a colony from Phocroa, in Ionia, whoso high-mi11ded citizens profcned abandoning their country, rather than to live under the CUNEIFORM WRITING. 147 sway of the conqueror Crcesus. They carried the traditions of Fig. 28. Fig. 29. SARDANA.l'ALUS. SILVER CoiN FROM VELIA, (Pul3zky coll.) Asiatic art into Italy, at a time when IIellas could not yet boast of eminence in sculpture. But although the hair-dress of the V elian female closely resembles and may be traced back to Assyrian models, which are about two centuries older, still the cast of the features is not the same. It is, as might be expected, thoroughly Greek. Whilst, as a remarkable instance of the constancy of national types, tho likeness between tho modern ?haldeans (Nostorians) and the old Assyrians is unmistakable. To Illustrate this properly we give side by side, sketches of a Chaldean mer-chant of Mosul, an' d a head' from one of the Nineveh scu1 p tu. res. 14J Fig. 80. Fig. 81. MOOJolRN 01IAL01Ul. ANCIENT ABBYRlAN. Babylon, of whose art but few remains have as yet been dis-uo Illusll'atcd London News, Mny 24, 1856. |