We have now reached the end of our inquiry into the history of Mesopotamian sculpture--an inquiry that we have endeavoured to make as complete as the existing remains would allow. So far as Chaldæa is concerned, these are very few in number. On the other hand, the three centuries over which the Assyrian power extended are pictured in such a vast number of reliefs that we are embarrassed by their number as much as by their want of variety. Our difficulty in the case of Assyria has been to make a selection from a vast quantity of objects that tell us the same thing again and again, while, in the case of Chaldæa, it has been to insure that none of the scanty salvage from so great a wreck should be lost. We have more than once had to make induction and conjecture take the place of examination and assertion before we could complete even a rough sketch of the development of Chaldæan art. There is one question that must have been asked by many of our readers before these pages came in their way, but is now, we venture to hope, fully answered, and that is, whether the Semites of Chaldæa drew their first inspiration from a foreign source, or whether it was an original result from the natural aptitudes of the race. Ancient as civilization may have been in the Euphrates valley, it was still more ancient, to all appearance, in the valley of the Nile. And yet all who have examined the figures we have placed before them must acknowledge the originality and independence of Chaldæan art. No; the sculptors of Memphis and Thebes were not the masters of those of Babylon and Nineveh; they preceded them indeed, but they left them no teaching and no models to copy. This is proved in the first place by the difference, we might say the opposition, between the two styles. The Egyptian sculptor simplifies, abridges, and summarizes form; the Assyrian amplifies it and accents its details. The former seems to see the human body through a veil of gauze, which hides the accidents of the surface and the secondary forms, allowing nothing to be clearly grasped but the contour and the great leading lines. One would say that the second studied nature through a magnifying-glass; he insists upon what the first slurs over. This is not the only difference between the two methods and the two interpretations. The Egyptian artist can seize the character of a movement with much justice and vivacity, but he endeavours to ennoble it by giving it a general and typical value. This he does, for example, in the gesture of the king who brandishes his mace or sword over the head of his conquered enemy while he holds him by the hair with his other hand.[341]