e.

[Illustration: Fig. LXXI.]

In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river with
papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag lines arranged
vertically and in parallel lines, so as to resemble herring-bone
masonry, thus. There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, and in
both each fish is drawn very distinctly, not as it would appear to the
eye viewed through water. The mode of representing this element in
Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic writing,
where the sign of water is a zigzag line; this line is, so to speak, a
picture of water written in short hand. In the Egyptian Pantheon there
was but one aquatic deity, the god of the Nile; his type is, therefore,
the only figurative representation of water in Egyptian art. (Birch,
"Gallery of British Museum Antiquities," Pl. 13.) In Assyrian sculpture
we have very curious conventionally imitative representations of water.
On several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men are seen
crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses swimming
(see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is represented by masses
of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses of hair, and terminating in
curls or volutes; these wavy lines express the general character of a
deep and rapid current, like that of the Tigris. Fish are but sparingly
introduced, the idea of surface being sufficiently expressed by the
floating figures and boats. In the representation of these there is the
same want of perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just
cited.

In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been discovered, the god
Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish's tail. Of the character
and attributes of this deity we know but little.

The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag line, occurs
on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a war galley (see
Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably struck in Assyria, not
long after the conquest of it by the Persians.

In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more varied. Two
conventional imitations, the wave moulding and the Maeander, are well
known. Both are probably of the most remote antiquity; both have been
largely employed as an architectural ornament, and subordinately as a
decoration of vases, costume, furniture and implements. In the wave
moulding we have a conventional representation of the small crisping