It seemed to us, then, that it would be a work of interest to draw a picture of Chaldæo-Assyrian art not only in its native country where it develops at its ease, but in its many ramifications among the neighbouring nations where it comes into collision with its rival and is interpreted by foreigners, until the day when Greece snatches the torch of the arts from the failing hand of the East. This Asiatic art, as we shall see, has no cause to be ashamed by the side of the Egyptian art. Chaldæa possesses a genius as spontaneous as that of Egypt, and the valley of the Euphrates is not less fertile than that of the Nile. The ambitions of her architects and sculptors were as high and noble as those of the artists who flourished at the court of the Pharaohs, and the staged towers were the equals of the Pyramids. Both nations pursued an ideal which contains a part of the truth, for in making a building colossal and imposing by its size, they thought that they attained to supreme greatness and perfection. The Greeks, through their greater refinement, did not fall into these excesses. But who will ever be able to say how much the powerful originality of the Hellenic genius borrowed from the imperfect models furnished by Egypt and Assyria? Who will ever be able to define with clearness and precision the kind of influence which Chaldæo-Assyrian art, in particular, imported by the ships of Phœnicia into all maritime countries, had on the origin of art in that younger civilisation of which Athens was the centre? The ancient peoples of Asia, which form a compact group from the point of view of the history and development of the arts, are also akin in the complete destruction which has overtaken their architectural monuments. As if by a providential chastisement, from the table-land of Iran to the Pillars of Hercules, at Susa, at Babylon, at Nineveh, as at Jerusalem, Tyre, Carthage, and Gades, nothing is left of those temples, palaces, and towers which threw a challenge in the face of Heaven, and which wore out so many generations of slaves in the building of them. While the Pyramids still rise opposite to the Parthenon, and our astonishment is still excited by the imposing ruins of Egypt, Greece and Rome, nothing remains of the grand monuments which were the pride of the capitals of Asia. Everywhere we have to dig into the bowels of the earth and uncover the base of crumbled walls. Everything is reduced to dust like the image with the feet of clay, and a shroud of ashes covers that world the material culture of which is to be brought to life again, as far as possible, in the following pages. * * * * * In the first English edition, M. Babelon’s work was somewhat enlarged, and occasionally revised by the translator--Mr. B.T.A. Evetts, then of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum. In the present edition will be found a new chapter by the author on the recent finds at Susa. A.S.G.