600 
ANCIENT BAS-RELIEFS AT THE 
argument conclusive against the idea. Ahriman is invariably 
described, when assuming a visible appearance, as under the form 
of a serpent or a dragon, clearly pourtraying the subtilty and 
fierceness of the character. But in this bas-relief, we find the 
bull is in the grasp of a lion, the usual symbol for only the 
most royal virtues: and as Cyrus himself was typified in the 
East, under the form of “ a lion with a man’s heart;” and the 
Assyrian empire under the form of an ox, or a bull; it does not 
seem improbable that the conquest of Cyrus over the two great 
empires of Assyria and Babylonia, united at Babylon, should be 
typified on each side of this ingress to his palace, by the lion’s 
seizure of the one-horned bull; the single horn being so large and 
twisted, as very well to symbolise the union of a double power. 
But to return to the description of the subject as a piece of art. 
The more it is examined, the more distinctly we see that the 
sculptor, whether native or foreign, was master of his business. 
With an admirable ingenuity, he has adapted his group to the 
form of the space, by placing the bull in a rearing posture, as if 
from the pain occasioned by his antagonist’s double grasp; the 
lion having seized him by the back and loins, not only with his 
teeth, but by his claws. The fire, beauty, and truth, with which 
these quadrupeds are hewn, may appear hardly credible to one 
who has not beheld them on the spot; for no artist of Greece or 
Rome could have been more faithful to the proportions of nature, 
or shewn more knowledge of the anatomy of their forms. But it 
must be remarked, that wherever any of the brute creation are 
represented amongst these relics, we always find their limbs, 
muscles, and actions, given in a more perfect style than when 
the same sculptor attempts the human form. The same ob¬ 
servation will be found to hold good with regard to the 
