Assyrian obelisks, which have nothing in common with the gigantic Egyptian monoliths to which this name is given, are, like the stelæ, large boundary stones set up in honour of the exploits of some prince, sometimes on the very field of battle, or on the ruins of a conquered town. The most complete and best preserved of these monuments is the obelisk of Shalmaneser III. (B.C. 857-822) found at Nimroud. This is a monolith scarcely more than 6½ feet high; it is a square pillar, slightly pyramidal in form. The upper part is arranged in steps which recede from one another on all sides; the summit forms a platform, and has nothing to surmount it: perhaps a statuette of the king or his favourite deity formerly stood there. The four faces of the obelisk are covered with inscriptions and bas-reliefs arranged in rows one above the other. The lower part, which is entirely bare, must have been buried up to a certain point in the ground. As we see, the stelæ and obelisks, which take the place of statues, are in a technical point of view derived from the bas-reliefs. If any Assyrian statues are brought us by future discoveries, they will always be few in number, and poor and timid in style; there is nothing among them to be compared to the Chaldæan statues, and above all nothing to be placed side by side with the innumerable Egyptian statues, the style of which sometimes almost attains to the perfection of Greek art; Assyria also was destined to approach this ideal, but only in bas-relief. Such was the logical consequence of the natural difference of the environments in which the empires of Egypt and Assyria, those two poles around which the whole of the ancient East gravitates, were evolved. On the banks of the Nile, stone suited for sculpture exists in profusion, and as there was abundant material in the hands of the artist, he was able to devote himself to incessant experiments, essays and trials, which, progressively repeated from generation to generation, only stopped at the threshold of Greek art. In Mesopotamia there was little or no stone to carve; it was only rarely and at great expense that precious blocks were brought with much trouble from a long distance, and these were too dear and too scarce to allow of numerous experiments. § II. BAS-RELIEFS. To conceal the poverty of the material of their brick or clay structures, the Assyrians, as we have said, conceived the idea of lining the walls with thin slabs of limestone or gypseous alabaster of a yellowish shade, which they extracted at small expense from the neighbouring mountains of Nineveh. These slabs could be sculptured and polished with marvellous ease. [Illustration: Fig. 66.--Assur-nasir-pal sacrificing a bull (Bas-relief in the British Museum).]