+ORNAMENT.+ The only structural decorations seem to have been the panelling of exterior walls in a manner resembling the Chaldæan terrace-walls, and a form of parapet like a stepped cresting. There were no characteristic mouldings, architraves, capitals, or cornices. Nearly all the ornament was of the sort called _applied_, _i.e._, added after the completion of the structure itself. Pictures in low relief covered the alabaster revetment. They depicted hunting-scenes, battles, deities, and other mythological subjects, and are interesting to the architect mainly for their occasional representations of buildings and details of construction. Above this wainscot were friezes of enamelled brick ornamented with symbolic forms used as decorative motives; winged bulls, the “sacred tree” and mythological monsters, with rosettes, palmettes, lotus-flowers, and _guilloches_ (ornaments of interlacing bands winding about regularly spaced buttons or eyes). These ornaments were also used on the archivolts around the great arches of palace gates. The most singular adornments of these gates were the carved “portal guardians” set into the deep jambs--colossal monsters with the bodies of bulls, the wings of eagles, and human heads of terrible countenance. Of mighty bulk, they were yet minutely wrought in every detail of head-dress, beard, feathers, curly hair, and anatomy. [Illustration: FIG. 20.--ASSYRIAN ORNAMENT.] The purely conventional ornaments mentioned above--the rosette, guilloche, and lotus-flower, and probably also the palmette, were derived from Egyptian originals. They were treated, however, in a quite new spirit and adapted to the special materials and uses of their environment. Thus the form of the palmette, even if derived, as is not unlikely, from the Egyptian lotus-motive, was assimilated to the more familiar palm-forms of Assyria (Fig. 20). Assyrian architecture never rivalled the Egyptian in grandeur or constructive power, in seriousness, or the higher artistic qualities. It did, however, produce imposing results with the poorest resources, and in its use of the arch and its development of ornamental forms it furnished prototypes for some of the most characteristic features of later Asiatic art, which profoundly influenced both Greek and Byzantine architecture. +MONUMENTS+: The most important Chaldæan and Assyrian monuments of which there are extant remains, have already been enumerated in the text. It is therefore unnecessary to duplicate the list here. CHAPTER V. PERSIAN, LYCIAN AND JEWISH ARCHITECTURE.