The colors actually found upon the bas-reliefs are four only—­red, blue, black, and white.  The red is a good bright tint, far exceeding in brilliancy that of Egypt.  On the sculptures of Khorsabad it approaches to vermilion, while on those of Nimrud it inclines to a crimson or a lake tint.  It is found alternating with the natural stone on the royal parasol and mitre; with blue on the crests of helmets, the trappings of horses, on flowers, sandals, and on fillets; and besides, it occurs, unaccompanied by any other color, on the stems and branches of trees, on the claws of birds, the shafts of spears and arrows, bows, belts, fillets, quivers, maces, reins, sandals, flowers, and the fringe of dresses.  It is uncertain whence the coloring matter was derived; perhaps the substance used was the suboxide of copper, with which the Assyrians are known to have colored their red glass.

The blue of the Assyrian monuments is an oxide of copper, sometimes containing also a trace of lead.  Besides occurring in combination with red in the cases already mentioned, it was employed to color the foliage of trees, the plumage of birds, the heads of arrows, and sometimes quivers, and sandals.

White occurs very rarely indeed upon the sculptures.  At Khorsabad it was not found of all; at Nimrud it was confined to the inner part of the eye on either side of the pupil, and in this position it occurred only on the colossal lions and bulls, and a very few other figures.  On bricks and pottery it was frequent, and their (sp.) it is found to have been derived from tin; but it is uncertain whether the white of the sculptures was not derived from a commoner material.

Black is applied in the sculptures chiefly to the hair, beards, and eyebrows of men.  It was also used to color the eyeballs not only of men, but also of the colossal lions and bulls.  Sometimes, when the eyeball was thus marked, a line of black was further carried round the inner edge of both the upper and the lower eyelid.  In one place black bars have been introduced to ornament an antelope’s horns.  On the older sculptures black was also the common color for sandals, which however were then edged with red.  The composition of the black is uncertain.  Browns upon the enamelled bricks are found to have been derived from, iron; but Mr. Layard believes the black upon the sculptures to have been, like the Egyptian, a bone black mixed with a little gum.

The ornamental metallurgy of the Assyrians deserves attention next to their sculpture.  It is of three kinds, consisting, in the first place, of entire figures, or parts of figures, cast in a solid shape; secondly, of castings in a low relief; and thirdly, of embossed work wrought mainly with the hammer, but finished by a sparing use of the graving tool.

[Illustration:  PLATE 74]

The solid castings are comparatively rare, and represented none but animal forms.  Lions, which seem to have been used as weights, occur most frequently, [PLATE LXXIV., Fig. 1.] None are of any great size; nor have we any evidence that the Assyrians could cast large masses of metal.  They seem to have used castings, not (as the Greeks and the moderns) for the greater works of art, but only for the smaller.  The forms of the few casts which have come down to us are good, and are free from the narrowness which characterizes the representations in stone.