This volute is found all over Assyria and Chaldaea. It decorates the angles
of the small temple represented on the stone known as Lord Aberdeen's Black
Stone (Fig. 79). It occurs also on many of the ivories, but these, perhaps,
are for the most part Phoenician. But in any case the Assyrians made
constant use of it in the decoration of their furniture. In an ivory
plaque, of which the British Museum possesses several examples, we find a
man standing and grasping a lotus stem in his left hand (Fig. 80). This
stem rests upon a support which bears a strong resemblance to the Sippara
capital (Fig. 71); it has two volutes separated by a sharp point. The
fondness of the Assyrians for these particular curves is also betrayed in
that religious and symbolic device which has been sometimes called the
_Tree of Life_. Some day, perhaps, the exact significance of this emblem
may be explained, we are content to point out the variety and happy
arrangement of the sinuous lines which surround and enframe the richly
decorated pilaster that acts as its stem. We gave one specimen of this tree
in Fig. 8; we now give another (Fig. 81). The astragali, the ibex horns
and the volutes, may all be easily recognized here.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--Capital; from a small temple.]

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Capital.]

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Chaldaean tabernacle.]

[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Ivory plaque found at Nimroud. Actual size.
British Museum.]

The only stone capital that has come down to us has, indeed, no volutes
(Fig. 74) but it is characterized by the same taste for flowing lines and
rounded forms. Its general section is that of a cyma reversa surmounted by
a flattened torus, and its appearance that of a vase decorated with
curvilinear and geometrical tracery. There is both originality and beauty
in the contours of the profile and the arrangement of the tracery; the
section as a whole is not unlike that of the inverted bell-shaped capitals
at Karnak.[265]

[Illustration: FIG. 81.--_The Tree of Life_; from Layard.]

This type must have been in frequent use, as we find it repeated in four
bases found still in place in front of the palace of Sennacherib by Sir
Henry Layard. They were of limestone and rested upon plinths and a pavement
of the same material (Fig. 82).[266] In these the design of the ornament is
a little more complicated than the festoon on the Khorsabad capital, but
the principle is the same and both objects belong to one