uth in
the assertion that most of the glazed bricks that have come down to us
belonged to the restorations of Nebuchadnezzar; but even supposing that to
be so, they show a technical skill so consummate and sure of itself that it
must then have been very far removed from its infancy. The fatherland of
the enameller is Southern Mesopotamia and especially Babylonia, where
enamelled bricks seem to have been used in extraordinary quantities.

The wall of Dour-Saryoukin, the town built by Sargon, has been found intact
for a considerable part of its height. As in the retaining wall of the
palace, coloured brick has there been used with extreme discretion. It is
found only over the arches of the principal doors and, perhaps, in the form
of rosettes at the springing of the battlements. The remainder of the great
breadths of crude brick was coated with white plaster.[357]

It was otherwise at Babylon. Ctesias, who lived there for a time, thus
describes the palace on the right bank of the Euphrates: "In the interior
of the first line of circumvallation Semiramis constructed another on a
circular plan, upon which there are all kinds of animals stamped on the
bricks while still unburnt; nature is imitated in these figures by the
employment of colours[358].... The third wall, that in the middle, was
twenty stades round ... on its towers and their curtain-walls every sort
of animal might be seen imitated according to all the rules of art, both as
to their form and colour. The whole represented the chase of various
animals, the latter being more than four cubits (high)--in the middle
Semiramis on horseback letting fly an arrow against a panther and, on one
side, her husband Ninus at close quarters with a lion, which he strikes
with his lance."[359]

Diodorus attributes all these buildings to his fabulous Semiramis. He was
mistaken. It was the palace built by Nebuchadnezzar that he had before him;
his eyes rested upon the works of those sovereigns of the second Chaldee
empire who presided at a real art renaissance--at the re-awakening of a
civilization that was never more brilliant than in the years immediately
preceding its fall. The historian's mistake is of little importance here.
We are mainly interested in the fact that he actually saw the walls of
which he speaks and saw them covered with pictures, the material for which
was furnished by enamelled brick.

These bricks must have been manufactured in no small quantity to permit of