rem at Khorsabad. This plinth was about twenty-three feet long, and
rather more than three feet high. Its ornament was repeated on both sides
of the doorway.[377] It consisted of a lion, an eagle, a bull, and a plough
(Plate XV). Upon the returning angles the king appears, standing, on the
one side with his head bare, on the other covered with a tiara. The
background is blue, as in the city gates; green was only used for the
leaves of the tree, in which some have recognized a fig-tree.

[Illustration: FIG. 124.--Detail from enamelled archivolt. Khorsabad. From
Place.]

In these two examples the decoration is of an extreme simplicity; the
figures are not engaged in any common action; there is, in fact, no
picture. The artist sometimes appears to have been more ambitious. Thus
Layard found at Nimroud the remains of a decoration in which the painter
had apparently attempted to rival the sculptor: he had represented a battle
scene analogous to those we find in such plenty in the bas-reliefs.[378] A
similar motive may be found in a better preserved fragment belonging to the
same structure (Plate XIV, Fig. 1).[379] A single brick bears four
personages, a god, whose arms only are left, the king, his patera in hand,
offering a libation, an eunuch with bow and quiver, and finally an officer
with a lance. George Smith also found a fragment of the same kind at
Nimroud (see Fig. 125). It shows the figure of a soldier, from the knees
upwards, armed with bow and lance, and standing by the wheel of a chariot.
Above his head are the remains of an inscription which must have been
continued on the next brick. The word _warriors_ may still be
deciphered.[380] This figure may have formed part of some attempt on the
part of the decorator to narrate in colour some of the exploits of the king
for whom the palace was built.

[Illustration: FIG. 125.--Enamelled brick in the British Museum.]

There is a difference between such fragments as this and the glazed tiles
of the Khorsabad gates. In the latter the enamelled edges of several bricks
were required to make a single figure. In the bricks from Nimroud on the
other hand, whole figures are painted on their surface, and in fact a
single brick had several figures upon it which were, therefore, on a much
smaller scale. A decoration in which figures were some two and three feet
high, was well suited for use in lofty situations where those restricted to
the surface of a single brick would have bee