176 '’. G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R,A.S., ON ASSUR AND NINEVEH. 
least 2000 years. What the skill of the later Celtic artificers in 
bronze and iron (and gold) was, is well known. No fools (as many 
moderns airily suppose) were those ancients, who could apply the 
malleability of native copper (as in the copper-plated chariot of 
Sennacherib) or the alloying of tin with copper for casting purposes ; 
nor were those, who, as simple observers of nature, could detect the 
lasting nature of the slab of diorite, on which Hammurabi’s portrait 
and laws were incised, more than a millennium earlier. 
(5) Then again the artistic power of the men, who drew and 
cast those figures on the bronze tablet of Sennacherib’s time, strikes 
one as something surprising ; and the more so when one looks at 
them more closely, and perceives the expression of agility, elegance 
of figure, nerve, and accuracy of detail in figure after figure of the 
horses thereon delineated. They bring out the qualities of the 
‘wild horse of the mountains,” to which Professor Maspero refers 
in his account of the ‘“frenzies of Ishtar,” and with that vigour of 
expression which we are learning to see in the early drawings of 
the horse by our palolithic ancestors (see Boyd-Dawkins’ Cave 
Hunting ; and the writings of Professor J. Cossar Ewart). 
A. Irvine, D.Sc. 
NOTE ON THE ABOVE BY Dr. PINCHES. 
References to the animal and vegetable remains in Babylonian 
and Assyrian ruins are rare, and for this reason any that I may 
have come across in the descriptions I used escaped my notice. 
Gabled roofs seem to have occurred in Armenia (Botta, Pl. 141; 
Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, 1878, p. 186). 
There is no doubt that both the Babylonians and the Assyrians 
were most intelligent and energetic sections of the human race, and 
had made really good progress in arts and crafts at an exceedingly 
early date. Babylonian sculpture was probably hampered by 
dearth of stone, but the fragments which did fall into their hands 
were used with excellent effect and considerable success. The 
Assyrians were originally less advanced than the Babylonians, but the 
sculptures which have come down to us show that they speedily made 
up for lost time. About 640 B.C. marks the zenith of Assyrian art. 
I am exceedingly obliged to the Rev. A. Irving for his most 
interesting and appreciative notes upon my paper.—T. G, P. 
