Decoration. 157 Thanks to the rich booty brought home by Dieulafoy, a very fair notion may now be gained of the character and aspect of the decoration which embellished the buildings of Susa during the Persian monarchy, the principal elements of which are deposited in the Louvre. Fire is at once a great destroyer and preserver. The confused and shapeless mass of the enormous tumulus, out of which so many unexpected objects have come, must still contain in its depths thousands of bricks wherein enamel has preserved all its freshness^ the modelling all the precision of its contour and relief. On the contrary, scarcely anything has been found, and but little can remain, of the material which formed what may be called the sheathing of the constructions; we mean to say metal applied to wood. Of these rev^tements a notable fragment alone has been recovered; it consists of bronze laminae that covered the valves of the huge gateway leading to the area where rose the Susian palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon (Fig. 73). "The design is simple, happy, frankly deducible from the material employed. Imagine a sheeting composed of square plaques one foot each way. Each square is joined to its neighbour by three bronze fillets, which fit corresponding grooves or channellings, cut in the wood frame, so dear to the Assyrian decorator. The centre of each square is adorned by a double daisy, whose contours are hammered up. The bronze laminse were riveted and fixed to the boards by iron clamps or knobs thickly studded ; whilst every petal, as well as the centre of the daisy, had a nail driven in to make them fast. The fragment that has been found is a complete square, and offers, therefore, all the elements for the decoration of the doorways." * Diversity of materials employed, either in the body of the edifice or as embellishment to surfaces, gave opportunity to the Persian architect, of which he was not slow to avail himself, of imparting to the ornament that variety and warmth of colour so ' dear to Orientals, and which we have encountered in the valleys of the Nile and the Ti^^ris, as well as on Mount Sion. How far did he venture in that direction? Was he content, like the Egyptians and the yet more judicious Greeks, to overlay stone, mouldings, and sculpture with one coat of colour ? Among all the travellers not have been invented in Chaldsea, and cubsequently adopted by the Fefsians, and despite its presence at Susa, valid reasons do not exist for canying the tablet in dispute to the account of the plastic art of ChaldsBO.
- Dieulafoy, A Sustf p. 285.
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