ASSYRIAN MONUMENTS. 103 



The Assyrian and Egyptian artists each appear to 

 have had a different plant as a prevalent ornament. 

 The Assyrians had the palmette, ^ supported by luck- 

 horns, and the Egyptians had the lotus leaf, flower, bud, 

 and seed-pod. Although these two nations may have 

 had a separate development, yet, as is well known, 

 they subsequently became intimately related, and indeed 

 Assyriologists, and among them Prof. Hommel, say that 

 Assyria became the teacher of Egypt. And so we have 

 the palmette and horns of the Assyrians interwoven 

 with the lotus, as shown in pi. 10, fig. i of the 

 ' Grammar of the Lotus,' where we see above the 

 palmette, with the horns tied on to it, and below, an 

 expanded lotus flower. 



I confess I cannot agree with Mr. Goodyear in con- 

 sidering every ornament as derived from some part of 

 a lotus plant. Even the Assyrian palmette, he derives, 

 if I read him rightly, from the Egyptian palmette, 

 which again he thinks is only half a rosette, and this 

 again is the stigma of the lotus ovary. 



Now we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the 

 Assyrians had in their midst in great abundance a most 

 important and useful tree — the date-palm — the fruit of 

 which must, at times, have saved them from famine ; 

 and that their palmette is wicomuioiily like the plumose 



^ The plumose head of leaves of the date-palm. The two nations met 

 at Sinai for the stone of their statues about 600 years B.C. 



