[Illustration: FIG. 46.—Enamelled brick relief from Babylon. (After Andrae.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 47.—A (after Andrae); B (after Layard).]
In Fig. 47, A, we have a black and white reproduction of one of the clay relief bulls which adorned the gate of Ishtar at Babylon. The bull is in the act of walking, and exhibits both grace and dignity in his movements, the slightness of his frame only serving to intensify the agility with which he seems to advance. The proportions are excellent and contrast very favourably with the Assyrian bull from Nimrûd (cf. Fig. 47, B). The latter is hard and conventional, while the posture—in itself a sufficiently natural one—is here rendered in a most wooden and inanimate fashion. The body of the animal is white, but the painter has attempted to make his subject stand out upon its pale yellow background, by edging it with an artificial outline of black. When the bull was coloured blue and thrown on to a white background this device was of course unnecessary (cf. Layard. Ser. I, Pl. 87.) The blue bull here alluded to belongs to the same species as the white one reproduced in Fig. 47, B, and is in the same kneeling position, but he is furnished with the wings of an eagle. It will be observed that in the Babylonian bull, as also in both the Assyrian bulls, the artist has evaded the difficulty of drawing the two horns in perspective by portraying only one, the other being theoretically concealed from view by the horn near the spectator.
But the palace of Nebuchadnezzar itself contained a large number of these coloured reliefs, many pieces of the glazed tiles of which they were composed having been found by Koldewey. The fragments recovered, number literally thousands, and Koldewey says that apparently when the bricks were stolen by later builders, the glazed portions were knocked off in order to make them more useful for the common purposes for which they were destined, and we to-day are the beneficiaries of that lack of appreciation. Amongst the animals portrayed on the palace and temple walls may be mentioned the bull, a mythical monster compounded of “parts of a bird of prey,” scorpions, serpents, panthers and steers, as well as the ubiquitous lion, while some of the fragments recovered show parts of the human body, and birds are also sometimes encountered. The lions form the most interesting study: there are two main types, (1) lions walking to the left, with white skins and yellow manes; and (2) lions walking to the right (_a_) with white skins and yellow manes, and (_b_) yellow skins and green manes; while there is a third type characterized by lions running to right or left. Sometimes the tail is portrayed standing out straight behind, sometimes it assumes a curved and less rigid form. Great difficulty has been experienced in fitting the various fragments together, but the assiduous efforts of the Germans have not been without success.