[Illustration:  PLATE 64]

Small figures of animals in terra cotta have also been found.  They consist chiefly of dogs and ducks.  A representation of each has been given in the chapter on the productions of Assyria.  The dogs discovered are made of a coarse clay, and seem to have been originally painted.  They are not wanting in spirit; but it detracts from their merit that the limbs are merely in relief, the whole space below the belly of the animal being filled up with a mass of clay for the sake of greater strength.  The ducks are of a fine yellow material, and represent the bird asleep, with its head lying along its back.

Of all the Assyrian works of art which have come down to us, by far the most important are the bas-reliefs.  It is here especially, if not solely, that we can trace progress in style; and it is here alone that we see the real artistic genius of the people.  What sculpture in its full form, or in the slightly modified form of very high relief, was to the Greeks, what painting has been to modern European nations since the time of Cimabue, that low relief was to the Assyrians—­the practical mode in which artistic power found vent among them.  They used it for almost every purpose to which mimetic art is applicable; to express their religious feelings and ideas, to glorify their kings, to hand down to posterity the nation’s history and its deeds of prowess, to depict home scenes and domestic occupations, to represent landscape and architecture, to imitate animal and vegetable forms, even to illustrate the mechanical methods which they employed in the construction of those vast architectural works of which the reliefs were the principal ornamentation.  It is not too much to say that we know the Assyrians, not merely artistically, but historically and ethnologically, chiefly through their bas reliefs, which seem to represent to us almost the entire life of the people.

The reliefs may be divided under five principal heads:—­1, War scenes, including battles, sieges, devastations of an enemy’s country, naval expeditions, and triumphant returns from foreign war, with the trophies and fruits of victory; 2.  Religious scenes, either mythical or real; 3.  Processions generally of tribute-bearers, bringing the produce of their several countries to the Great King; 4. hunting and sporting scenes, including the chase of savage animals, and of animals sought for food, the spreading of nets, the shooting of birds, and the like; and 5.  Scenes of ordinary life, as those representing the transport and erection of colossal bulls, landscapes, temples, interiors, gardens, etc.