the
king, with explanatory inscriptions, marked the site of the springs,
and formed a kind of monumental facade to the ravine in which they took
their rise.**

* Mount Tas is the group of hills enclosing the ravine of
Bavian. These works were described in the Bavian
inscription, of which they occupy the whole of the first
part.

** The Bavian text speaks of six inscriptions and statues
which the king had engraved on the Mount of Tas, at the
source of the stream.

It would be hard to account for the rapidity with which these great
works were completed, did one not remember that Sargon had previously
carried out extensive architectural schemes, in which he must have
employed all the available artists in his empire. The revolutions which
had shattered the realm under the last descendants of Assur-nazir-pal,
and the consequent impoverishment of the kingdom, had not been without a
disastrous effect on the schools of Assyrian sculpture.

[ Illustration: 068.jpg UNKNOWN SUBJECTS FROM THE FIFTH TOMB]

[Illustration: 069.jpg GREAT ASSYRIAN STELE AT BAVIAIT.]

Drawn by Boudior, from Layard.

Since the royal treasury alone was able to bear the expense of those
vast compositions in which the artistic skill of the period could have
free play, the closing of the royal workshops, owing to the misfortunes
of the time, had the immediate effect of emptying the sculptors'
studios. Even though the period of depression lasted for the space of
two or three generations only, it became difficult to obtain artistic
workmen; and those who were not discouraged from the pursuit of art by
the uncertainty of employment, no longer possessed the high degree of
skill attained by their predecessors, owing to lack of opportunity to
cultivate it. Sculpture was at a very low ebb when Tiglath-pileser
III. desired to emulate the royal builders of days gone by, and the
awkwardness of composition noticeable in some of his bas-reliefs, and
the almost barbaric style of the stelae erected by persons of even so
high a rank as Belharran-beluzur, prove the lamentable deficiency of
good artists at that epoch, and show that the king had no choice but to
employ all the surviving members of the ancient guilds, whether good,
bad, or indifferent workmen. The increased demand, however, soon
produced an adequate supply of workers, and when Sargon ascended the
throne, the royal guild of sculptors had been thoroughly reconstit