Of Assyrian stone sculpture in the round nothing has yet been said.  A few pieces exist, but their style is so essentially like that of the bas-reliefs that they call for no separate discussion.  More interesting is the Assyrian work in bronze.  The most important specimens of this are some hammered reliefs, now in the British Museum, which originally adorned a pair of wooden doors in the palace of Shalmaneser III. at Balawat.  The art of casting statuettes and statues in bronze was also known and practiced, as it had been much earlier in Babylonia, but the examples preserved to us are few.  For the decorative use which the Assyrians made of color, our principal witnesses are then enameled bricks.  These are ornamented with various designs—­men, genii, animals, and floral patterns—­in a few rich colors, chiefly blue and yellow.  Of painting, except in the sense of mural decoration, there is no trace.

Egypt and Mesopotamia are, of all the countries around the Mediterranean the only seats of an important, indigenous art, antedating that of Greece.  Other countries of Western Asia—­Syria, Phrygia, Phenicia, Persia, and so on—­seem to have been rather recipients and transmitters than originators of artistic influences.  For Egypt, Assyria, and the regions just named did not remain isolated from one another.  On the contrary, intercourse both friendly and hostile was active, and artistic products, at least of the small and portable kind, were exchanged.  The paths of communication were many, but there is reason for thinking that the Phenicians, the great trading nation of early times, were especially instrumental in disseminating artistic ideas.  To these influences Greece was exposed before she had any great art of her own.  Among the remains of prehistoric Greece we find, besides some objects of foreign manufacture, others, which, though presumably of native origin, are yet more or less directly inspired by Egyptian or oriental models.  But when the true history of Greek art begins, say about 600 B. C., the influences from Egypt and Asia sink into insignificance.  It may be that the impulse to represent gods and men in wood or stone was awakened in Greece by the example of older communities.  It may be that one or two types of figures were suggested by foreign models.  It may be that a hint was taken from Egypt for the form of the Doric column and that the Ionic capital derives from an Assyrian prototype.  It is almost certain that the art of casting hollow bronze statues was borrowed from Egypt.  And it is indisputable that some ornamental patterns used in architecture and on pottery were rather appropriated than invented by Greece.  There is no occasion for disguising or underrating this indebtedness of Greece to her elder neighbors.  But, on the other hand, it is important not to exaggerate the debt.  Greek art is essentially self-originated, the product of a unique, incommunicable genius.  As well might one say that Greek literature is of Asiatic origin, because, forsooth, the Greek alphabet came from Phenicia, as call Greek art the offspring of Egyptian or oriental art because of the impulses received in the days of its beginning. [Footnote:  This comparison is perhaps not original with the present writer.]