was suspended at the same time. However this may have been, it should
be carefully noticed that both of its faces were meant to be seen.

The face we call the obverse is entirely occupied by the body of a
fantastic quadruped, partly chiselled in slight relief, partly engraved.
This monster is upright on his hind feet; his back is turned to the
spectator, while the lower part of his body is seen almost in profile. He
clings with his two fore feet to the upper edge of the plaque, and looks
over it as over a wall. His fore paws and his head are modelled in the
round. He has four wings; two large ones with imbricated feathers grow from
his shoulders, while a smaller pair are visible beneath them. This
arrangement we have already encountered in undoubted Assyrian monuments
(see Figs. 8, 29, and 123). If we turn the plaque, we find ourselves face
to face with the beast. His skull is depressed, his features hideous, his
grinning jaws wrinkled like those of a lion or panther. His feline
character is enforced by his formidable claws.

The body, lithe and lean as that of a leopard, is covered with a
reticulated marking. His upturned tail nearly touches his loins, while
another detail of his person exactly reproduces the contours of a
snake.[440] The hind feet are those of a bird-of-prey.

[Illustration: FIG. 161.--Plaque of chiselled bronze. Obverse. From the
_Revue archeologique_.]

We must now describe the reverse of this singular monument (Fig. 162). In
the first place its upper edge is surmounted by the claws and face of the
beast just described, which thus dominates, as it were, the scenes depicted
below.

These scenes are divided by horizontal bands into four divisions, and those
divisions are by no means arbitrary; they show us what the sculptor thought
as to the four regions into which the Assyrian universe was divided. Those
regions are the _heavens_, the _atmosphere_, the _earth_, and _hell_ or
_hades_.

The highest division is the narrowest of all. It only contains the stars
and a few other symbols grouped almost exactly as we find them on not a few
monuments of Mesopotamia.[441] The non-sidereal emblems in this division
are, no doubt, the attributes of gods who live beside the stars in the
depths of the firmament.

[Illustration: FIG. 162.--Plaque of chiselled bronze. Reverse.]

In the second division we find seven animal-headed personages passing from
right to left. We need not stop to describe their appearan