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After Sennacherib's time we find but few alterations in the equipment of the foot soldiers. Esarhaddon has left us no sculptures, and in those of his son and successor, Asshur-bani pal, the costumes of Sennacherib are for the most part reproduced almost exactly.
No sooner were they all placed, and the due libation made of wine, with an offering of salt, to the domestic Gods—a silver group of statues occupying the centre of the board, where we should now place the plateau and epergne, than a louder burst of music ushered in three beautiful female slaves, in succinct tunics, like that seen in the sculptures of Diana, with half the bosom bare, dancing and singing, and carrying garlands in their hands of roses and myrtle, woven with strips of the philyra, or inner bark of the linden tree, which was believed to be a specific against intoxication.
This process was still going on, when either Esarhaddon died and the works were stopped, or the palace was destroyed by fire. Scarcely any of the new sculptures had been executed.
The originality, strength and beauty of its design set it above anything else of the sort yet seen in America; and the symbolism of its sculptures, which are the work of Chester Beach, is of almost equal interest with the tower itself. At the base, on the gable above the arch, rude of face and form, with beasts low in the scale, are the people of the Stone Age.
Proceeding thus cautiously, in about a quarter of an hour he became aware of a faint glimmer of greenish light on the walls of the tunnel on either hand, and a few minutes later emerged into what appeared to be a great chamber, or cavern, the interior of which was just sufficiently illuminated by the light entering through another tunnel on its opposite side, to reveal the fact that the vertical walls of the chamber were, like the cliff which was occupying Earle's attention, covered with sculptures from the floor upward as high as the light had power to reach.
It was much more than a painting, though, because it stood out from the dome like a group of completely independent sculptures, but placed so as to tell the combined story with a sort of native ease, not stressed or artificial, yet seeming as natural and beautiful as water in its flowing grace.
This grandson of the Alexandrian Archias afterward became the master who taught the generation of artists who created the Pergamenian works, in examining which the question forced itself upon the narrator of this story: How do these sculptures possess the qualities which distinguish them so strongly from the other statues of later Hellenic antiquity?
Much of the old-time decorations and furniture remains. The library, a long gallery, forms the eastern wing, and contains a valuable collection, including many manuscripts and autographs. There are fine pictures and sculptures, with old clocks, vases, cabinets, and carvings, and also a celebrated collection of miniatures.
There would seem, then, to be no escape from the conclusion that the animal sculptures which have passed current as manatees do not really resemble that animal, which is so extraordinary in all its aspects and so totally unlike any other of the animal creation as to render its identification in case it had really served as a subject for sculpture, easy and certain.
The Bel of the Assyrians was certainly not their Fish-god; nor had his epithet Da-gaga any real connection with the word dag, "a fish." To speak of "Bel-Dagon" is thus to mislead the ordinary reader, who naturally supposes from the term that he is to identify the great god Belus, the second deity of the first Triad, with the fish forms upon the sculptures. HEA, or HOA.
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