Folder Name: 1371
Book Name: 4196.pdf
Summary:  creations. The Assyrian artist, on the other hand, was free to represent whatever subjects he pleased, and he did so with a vigour and realism that are unmatched in the ceramics of any other nation. The beakers and dishes bearing representations of war, the hunt, or the chase, have their parallels in the ivories and alabasters of the same people, in the bas-reliefs of their palaces and the cylinders of their seals. These subjects are frequently repeated, with but little variation; modification and adaptation of well-known types being preferred to the invention of new motives. On the other hand, we rarely meet with geometrical designs, a taste for which was only developed in Assyria a little before the fall of the empire. The early myths and legends do not seem to have been forgotten, for the figures of gods, divinities, and genii are still numerous, as are also composite beings of the class of those we have already described. The human form predominates even where it is allied with that of the lion or bull. All that remains to us from Assyrian potteries at Warka belongs to a period long anterior to the inscriptions of the palace of Sargon, which proves that Abou-Sharein was abandoned by the potters about the same time as by architects and sculptors. At Khorsabad, as at Nineveh, no refuse heaps were met with, but the rim of a jar and the fragments of a few small bottles served to show that the place was used in the manufacture of pottery, if only for the immediate wants of the garrison and court. Its inhabitants had probably 
nothing in common with the ancient settlers on the bank of the Shatt en-Nil, and their work may have been confined to the making of a few vessels of a patterns still in use among the tribes of Mesopotamia. At the village of Niffer this would seem to have been the case, but the character of the few fragments recovered at Mugheir is different. These are very fine, and bear the trace of a more advanced art, an art, however, that is not yet entirely free of the imperfections of makeshift. It is interesting to note that no name has as yet been found upon these specimens, nor any royal cartouche such as is so common elsewhere. Some few possess some marks that may reveal the origin of the pottery. The figures employed are a spiral, a triangle, and a sign like the Greek A with a horizontal bar above it. We have no means of knowing what these signs stand for, but we may perhaps be allowed to guess that they represent not only the potter's name but the nature and destination of his work. There are other things to make out. The mixtures of the paste, the colour of which passes from light red to dark red and to almost black, show that the workers were not always careful in the choice of their material or in its mixture. The paste they used may, no doubt, have varied greatly, and its composition has yet to be examined. It may have been charged with calcareous and siliceous particles, with powdered quartz, or with some other substance, to give it strength, to make it porous, to hinder the destruction of the colours in the furnace, or to prevent the glaze from blistering. All that is necessary at present is that an attempt should be made to classify the as yet isolated facts which we have brought together in this chapter The day will perhaps come when some student with the ambition and the leisure to take up the task will reduce them to order and draw from them the instructive conclusions of which they are capable.