eoples, who grew rapidly by virtue of favorable
climate and soil, and eventually developed into great nations headed
by kings absolute in power. The king was the state in Egypt, and in
Assyria the monarch was even more dominant and absolute. For the
Pharaohs shared architecture, painting, and sculpture with the gods;
but the Sargonids seem to have arrogated the most of these things to
themselves alone.

Religion was perhaps as real in Assyria as in Egypt, but it was less
apparent in art. Certain genii, called gods or demons, appear in the
bas-reliefs, but it is not yet settled whether they represent gods or
merely legendary heroes or monsters of fable. There was no great
demonstration of religion by form and color, as in Egypt. The
Assyrians were Semites, and religion with them was more a matter of
the spirit than the senses--an image in the mind rather than an image
in metal or stone. The temple was not eloquent with the actions and
deeds of the gods, and even the tomb, that fruitful source of art in
Egypt, was in Chaldaea undecorated and in Assyria unknown. No one knows
what the Assyrians did with their dead, unless they carried them back
to the fatherland of the race, the Persian Gulf region, as the native
tribes of Mesopotamia do to this day.

ART MOTIVES: As in Egypt, there were two motives for art--illustration
and decoration. Religion, as we have seen, hardly obtained at all. The
king attracted the greatest attention. The countless bas-reliefs, cut
on soft stone slabs, were pages from the history of the monarch in
peace and war, in council, in the chase, or in processional rites.
Beside him and around him his officers came in for a share of the
background glory. Occasionally the common people had representations
of their lives and their pursuits, but the main subject of all the
valley art was the king and his doings. Sculpture and painting were
largely illustrations accompanying a history written in the
ever-present cuneiform characters.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--ENAMELLED BRICK. NIMROUD. (FROM PERROT AND
CHIPIEZ.)]

But, while serving as history, like the picture-writings of the
Egyptians, this illustration was likewise decoration, and was designed
with that end in view. Rows upon rows of partly colored bas-reliefs
were arranged like a dado along the palace-wall, and above them
wall-paintings, or glazed tiles in patterns, carried out the color
scheme. Almost all of the color has now disappeared, but it must