narrow class.

We again encounter this same base with its opposing curves in a curious
monument discovered at Kouyundjik by Mr. George Smith.[267] This is a small
and carefully executed model, in yellowstone, of a winged human-headed
bull, supporting on his back a vase or base similar in design to that
figured above. This little object must have served as a model for the
carvers engaged upon the palace walls. We shall not here stop to examine
the attributes and ornaments of the bull, they are well shown in our Figs.
83 and 84, and their types are known by many other examples. Our aim is to
show that we have rightly described the uses to which it was put. These
might have remained obscure but for the discovery, in the south-western
palace at Nimroud, of a pair of winged sphinxes, calcined by fire but still
in their places between two huge lions at one of the doors. Before their
contours disappeared--and they rapidly crumbled away upon contact with the
air--Layard had time to make a drawing of the one that had suffered least
(Fig. 85). In his description he says that between the two wings was a sort
of plateau, "intended to carry the base of a column."[268]

[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Ornamented base, in limestone.]

Surprised at not finding any trace of the column itself, he gives out
another conjecture: that these sphinxes were altars upon which offerings
to the gods, or presents to the king were placed. This hypothesis
encounters many objections. We may easily account for the disappearance of
the column by supposing it to have been of wood. If it was stone, it may
have been carried off for use as a roller by the inhabitants of the
neighbouring villages, before that part of the building to which it
belonged was so completely engulfed and hidden by the ruins as it
afterwards became.[269] Moreover we can point to a certain number of
Assyrian altars, and their shapes are very different from this.

[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Model of a base, side view. Actual size.]

[Illustration: FIG. 84.--The same, seen from in front.]

Finally, all our doubts are removed by a bas-relief from the palace of
Assurbanipal, which is now in the British Museum (Fig. 86). The upper part
of this carved picture is destroyed, but enough remains to show that it
reproduced the facade of some richly decorated building. Four columns
supported on the backs of so many lions, and two flat pilasters upheld in
the same fashion by winged griffins, may read