appeared when exposed to the air after their long burial from the
sight and knowledge of the world.

Speaking of these pictures, the writer on art, J. Oppert, says that some
paintings were found in the Palace of Sargon; they represented gods,
lions, rosettes, and various other designs; but when he reached Nineveh,
one year after these discoveries, the pictures had all disappeared--the
colors which had been buried twenty-five hundred years lasted but a few
days after they were uncovered.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--FRAGMENT OF AN ASSYRIAN TILE-PAINTING.]

Assyrian tile-painting was more durable than the wall-painting; but in
all the excavations that have been made these have been found only in
fragments, and from these fragments no complete picture has been put
together. The largest one was found at Nimrud, and our illustration is
taken from it. It represents a king, as we know by the tiara he wears, and
two servants who follow him. The pictures to which the existing fragments
belong could not have been large: the figures in our picture are but nine
inches high. A few pieces have been found which must have belonged to
larger pictures, and there is one which shows a part of a face belonging
to a figure at least three feet high; but this is very unusual.

The Assyrian paintings have a broad outline which is of a lighter color
than the rest of the picture; it is generally white or yellow. There are
very few colors used in them. This does not accord with our notions of the
dresses and stuffs of the Assyrians, for we suppose that they were rich
and varied in color--probably they had so few pigments that they could not
represent in their paintings all the colors they knew.

No one can give a very satisfactory account of Assyrian painting; but,
judging from the little of it which remains, and from the immense number
of Assyrian sculptures which exist, we may conclude that the chief aim of
Assyrian artists was to represent each object they saw with absolute
realism. The Dutch painters were remarkable for this trait and for the
patient attention which they gave to the details of their work, and for
this reason Oppert has called the Assyrians the Dutchmen of antiquity.

BABYLON.

In Babylon, in the sixth century B.C., under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar,
the art of tile-painting reached a high state of perfection. The
Babylonians had no such splendid alabaster as had the Assyrians, neither
had they lime-stone; so they could not