For, in these old Eastern civilisations which held sway over the world before Greece and Rome, only two streams of artistic influence are really to be traced--that which rises in Egypt and that which issues from Assyria. Often they took a parallel course, side by side, sharing like brothers the empire of the arts; sometimes they opposed or obstinately excluded one another; or else they joined forces, mingled closely with one another, and united their original capacities in a common fund. But if these varying conditions produced in certain countries a local and indigenous art which is neither purely Egyptian nor purely Assyrian, we can always decompose its elements and make a chemical analysis of it, so to speak; and, when we have restored to Egypt that which properly belongs to her, and to Assyria all that has been borrowed from her, we perceive that nothing remains at the bottom of the crucible. Thus it may be said that, properly speaking, there is no Persian art, or Hittite art, or Jewish art, or Phœnician or Carthaginian art; everywhere we find the forms of Egypt or those of Assyria grouped, mixed, perhaps altered, in proportions which vary according to time, environment, and political conditions. Leaving Egypt on one side, it is the Asiatic, or, more strictly, the Chaldæo-Assyrian stream that we have undertaken to study exclusively. We see it at its source, almost on the site of that Garden of Eden where Genesis and the Chaldæan legends place the ancestors of mankind; we follow it into Assyria, and observe its progress and transformations. Before long it overflows and passes on all sides beyond the limits of the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates; on one side, in Persia, it invades the palaces of Susa and Persepolis; on the other side, among the Hittites, the Aramæan populations of Syria, and the Jews, it spreads and divides into many rivulets, until it arrives at the frontier of Egypt and the heart of Asia Minor. Far from losing itself in the waves of the Mediterranean, it reaches all the shores of that great lake, Cyprus, Sicily, Africa, Spain; even passing beyond the Pillars of Hercules.