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The sacred pools spread out shimmering like polished metal; the human-headed and the ram-headed sphinxes aligned along the avenues, stretched out their hind-quarters; and the flat roofs were multiplied infinitely, white under the moonlight, in masses cut here and there into great slices by the squares and the streets.
The transport of a bull. The block of alabaster that we saw a moment ago on a boat towed by hundreds of human arms has been delivered to the sculptors and has put on, under their hands, the rough form of a mitred, human-headed bull.
One of the workmen, on catching the first glimpse of the monster, had thrown down his basket, and had run off towards Mosul as fast as his legs could carry him." The marvellous fidelity and power with which this, and the colossal human-headed bull are executed, must astonish the most uninstructed observer.
The dresses of those engaged in sacred functions seem to have been elaborately embroidered, for the most part with religious figures and emblems, such as the winged circle, the pine-cone, the pomegranate, the sacred tree, the human-headed lion, and the like.
The only novelty is the incised line which marks the iris of the eye. A constant and striking feature of the Assyrian palaces was afforded by the great, winged, human-headed bulls, which flanked the principal doorways. The peculiar methods of Assyrian sculpture are not ill suited to this fantastic creature, an embodiment of force and intelligence.
In this type we see a combination of the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles, in the commencement of the Trachiniæ. In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is united at the waist with the shoulders of a bull's body, in which it terminates. This occurs on an early vase.
Such mixed forms were, indeed, frequently borrowed by early decorative art, and on "Orientalising" vases we constantly find human-headed and bird-headed quadrupeds, usually winged, and human-headed birds. The delight in winged figures generally, which was mainly decorative in early times, also finds its origin in Oriental woven stuffs.
NEFER ATUM: Human-headed, and crowned with the pschent. This god represented the nocturnal sun, or the sun lighting the lower world. Local deity of Heliopolis. THOTH: In form a man, ibis-headed, generally depicted with the pen and palette of a scribe. Was the god of the moon, and of letters. Local deity of Sesoon, or Hermopolit. SEB: The "Father of the Gods," and deity of terrestrial vegetation.
The most casual wanderer in the British Museum can hardly fail to notice two pairs of massive sculptures, in the one case winged bulls, in the other winged lions, both human-headed, which guard the entrance to the Egyptian hall, close to the Rosetta Stone. Each pair of these weird creatures once guarded an entrance to the palace of a king in the famous city of Nineveh.
A considerable number of instances occur in which a human figure, with the head of a hawk or eagle, threatens a winged human-headed lion the emblem of Nergal with a strap or mace. If we pass from the objects to the mode of worship in Assyria, we must notice at the outset the strongly idolatrous character of the religion.
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