s of the artist, however, are perfectly obvious; his process is
childish, but it is quite clear.

None of these plans or pictures have, any more than those of Egypt, a scale
by which the proportions of the objects introduced can be judged. The men,
who were more important in the eye of the artist than the buildings, are
always taller than the houses and towers. This will be seen still more
clearly in the figure we reproduce from the Balawat gates (Fig. 158). It
represents a fortress besieged by Shalmaneser II., three people stand upon
the roof of the building; if we restore their lower limbs we shall see that
their height is equal to that of the castle itself.[418]

[Illustration: FIG. 158.--Fortress with its defenders; from the Balawat
gates.]

This short examination of the spirit and principles of Assyrian figuration
was necessary in order to prevent embarrassment and doubt in speaking of
the architectural designs and other things of the same kind that we may
find reproduced in the bas-reliefs. Unless we had thoroughly understood the
system of which the sculptors made use, we should have been unable to base
our restorations upon their works in any important degree; and, besides, if
there be one touchstone more sure than another by which we may determine
the plastic genius of a people, it is the ingenuity, or the want of it,
shown in the contrivance of means to make lines represent the thickness of
bodies and the distances of various planes. In this matter Chaldaea and
Assyria remained, like Egypt, in the infancy of art. They were even
excelled by the Egyptians, who showed more taste and continuity in the
management of their processes than their Eastern rivals. Nothing so absurd
is to be found in the sculptures of the Nile valley as these hills and
trees turned upside down, and we shall presently see that a like
superiority is shown in the way figures are brought together in the
bas-reliefs. In our second volume on Egyptian art we drew attention to some
Theban sculptures in which a vague suspicion of the true laws of
perspective seemed to be struggling to light. The attempt to apply them to
the composition of certain groups was real, though timid. Nothing of the
kind is to be found in Assyrian sculpture. The Mesopotamian artist never
seems for a moment to have doubted the virtues of his own method, a method
which consisted in placing the numerous figures, whose position in a space
of more or less depth he wished to su