

° By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 53 
in Egypt, have all described the process as it is still exhibited in 
bas-reliefs or paintings on the walls; and I proceed at once to 
extract from their respective writings a short epitome of the des- 
criptions they have given of these most interesting illustrations 
of the mechanical skill of the ancients. 
With regard to Assyria, Mr. Layard! has elaborately represented 
in his “Monuments of Nineveh,” and Mr. Rawlinson? has detailed 
with considerable minuteness, from the bas-reliefs discovered at 
Koyunjik, all the particulars with reference to the transport of the 
colossal bulls from the quarry to the palace gateways. The very 
fact that they were able to transport masses of stone many tons in 
weight, over a considerable space of ground, and to place them on 
the summits of artificial platforms from thirty to eighty or ninety 
feet high, would alone indicate considerable mechanical power. 
The further fact, now made clear from the bas-reliefs, that they 
wrought all the elaborate carving of the colossi before they pro- 
ceeded to raise them or put them in place,’ is an additional argu- 
ment of their skill, since it shows that they had no fear of any 
accident happening in the transport. It appears from the repre- 
sentations, that they placed their colossus in a standing posture, 
not on a truck of any kind, but on a huge wooden sledge, and 
cased it with an openwork of spars;* and then by means of well 
adjusted ropes attached to various portions of the framework, the 
workmen were enabled to steady the bulky mass, while large gangs 
of men dragged the sledge along in front, as I have already des- 
cribed in a former paper.5 
_ This is godt and conclusive evidence as regards the transport of 
colossal stones in Assyria. Let us now see what the paintings on 

1 Layard’s Monuments of Nineveh, 2nd series, plates x. to xvii. 
*Rawlinson’s Five great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, vol. i. 
pp. 495—499. 
$Mr, Layard at first imagined that the contrary was the case [Nineveh and 
its Remains, vol. ii., p. 318], but his Koyunjik discoveries convinced him of his 
error. [Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 105, 106.] 
‘The nineteenth century could make no improvement upon this: Mr. Layard 
tells us that ‘‘precisely the same framework was used for moving the great 
‘sculptures now in the British Museum. [Nineveh and Babylon, p. 112, note.] 
5 Magazine, vol. ix., p. 131, 
