style known as Empire when
revived by Napoleon I was at that time in vogue. Even more remarkable
is the fact that parts of legs and rails of furniture were turned as
perfectly (I quote Litchfield) as if by a modern lathe. The variety
of beautiful woods used by the Egyptians for furniture included ebony,
cedar, sycamore and acacia. Marquetry was employed as well as
wonderful inlaying with ivory, from both the elephant and
hippopotamus. Footstools had little feet made like lion's claws or
bull's hoofs. According to Austin Leyard, the very earliest Assyrian
chairs, as well as those of Egypt, had the legs terminating in the
same lion's feet or bull's hoofs, which reappear in the Greek, Roman,
Empire and even Sheraton furniture of England (eighteenth century).

The first Assyrian chairs were made without backs and of beautifully
wrought gold and bronze, an art highly developed at that time. In
Egypt we find the heads of animals capping the backs of chairs in the
way that we now see done on Spanish chairs.

The pilasters shown on the Empire furniture, Plate XVI, capped by
women's heads with little gold feet at base, and caryatides of a kind,
were souvenirs of the Egyptian throne seats which rested on the backs
of slaves--possibly prisoners of war. These chairs were wonderful
works of art in gold or bronze. We fancy we can see those interiors,
the chairs and beds covered with woven materials in rich colours and
leopard skins thrown over chairs, the carpets of a woven palm-fibre
and mats of the same, which were used as seats.

Early Egyptian rooms were beautiful in line because simple; never
crowded with superfluous furnishings. It is amusing to see on the very
earliest bas-reliefs Egyptian belles and beaux reclining against what
we know to-day as Empire rolls,--seen also on beds in old French
prints of the fourteenth century. Who knows, even with the Egyptians
this may have been a revived style!

One talks of new notes in colour scheme. The Bakst thing was being
done in Assyria, 700 B.C.! Sir George Green proved it when he opened
up six rooms of a king's palace and found the walls all done in
horizontal stripes of red, yellow and green! Also, he states that each
entrance had the same number of pilasters. Oh wise Assyrian King and
truly neutral, if as is supposed, those rooms were for his six wives!

In furniture, the epoch-making styles have been those showing _line_,
and if decorated, then only with such decorations as