The use of sculpture in relief was also most happily employed for the decoration of basins or fountains. The most elaborate of those recovered, unhappily represented by mutilated fragments only, was decorated on the outside with a chain of female figures passing from hand to hand vases of spouting water.[28] Better preserved are the remains of another basin, which was set up by Gudea in Ningirsu's temple at Lagash. Rectangular in shape, each corner was decorated with a lion. The head, drawn in the accompanying block, is a fine piece of sculpture, and almost stands out from the corner, while the body, carved in profile on the side of the basin, is in low relief. In this portrayal of a lion turning its head, the designer has formed a bold but decorative combination of relief with sculpture in the round. [Illustration: Fig. 22.--Limestone head of a lion which decorated the corner of a basin set up by Gudea in Ningirsu's temple at Lagash (Shirpurla).--Déc., pl. 24, Fig. 3.] The most famous examples of Sumerian sculpture are the statues of Gudea, and the rather earlier one of Ur-Bau, which, however, lose much of their character by the absence of their heads. It is true that a head has been fitted to a smaller and more recently found figure of Gudea;[29] but this proves to be out of all proportion to the body--a defect that was probably absent from the larger statues. The traditional attitude of devotion, symbolized by the clasping of the hands over the breast, gives them a certain monotony; but their modelling is superior to anything achieved by the Babylonians and Assyrians of a later time.[30] Thus there is a complete absence of exaggeration in the rendering of the muscles; the sculptor has not attempted by such crude and conventional methods to ascribe to his model a supernatural strength and vigour, but has worked direct from nature. They are carved in diorite, varying in colour from dark green to black, and that so hard a material should have been worked in the large masses required, is in itself an achievement of no small importance, and argues great technical skill on the part of the sculptors of the later period. [Illustration: Fig. 23.--Upper part of a female statuette of diorite, of the period of Gudea or a little later.--_Déc_., pl. 24 _bis_, Fig. 2.]