the result of the varying talent of the artists. We seem to be able to distinguish in Assyrian art, as we learn to know it in the bas-reliefs, three periods or three successive developments. Under Assur-nasir-pal the figures are already bold and powerful, but thick-set, and they appear in small numbers in the scenes represented; their motions are sober, but full of truth. The artist has the singular habit, only observed in Assyrian art, of covering a portion of his figures with long inscriptions explaining the scenes which he intends to portray (see fig. 83); we have already seen that the Chaldæan statues of Gudea are covered with inscriptions, and Herodotus’ statement[40] that the figures of “Sesostris” in Ionia, doubtless the Hittite figures described below, bore inscriptions across their breasts is probably based on a confusion with the Assyrian figures in Syria and elsewhere. Under Sargon and Sennacherib, the sculptors became more experienced and more ambitious. In their works the figures are far more numerous, and concur more visibly in a common action; they have more life and movement; the scenes representing battles, hunting expeditions, the worship of the gods, or slaves engaged in public works are more varied; the gestures of the figures are more marked and more energetic, the muscles of the legs and arms more deeply outlined; lastly, the human forms are no longer covered with inscriptions; these are placed at the side, as explanatory legends. [Illustration: Fig. 86.--Deer hunt. Bas-relief from Khorsabad (after Place).] In the time of Assurbanipal, a more natural art, and one which conformed more to the true principles of sculpture in bas-relief, came into being. Instead of giants, we find on the contrary small figures forming a series of pictures, containing the greatest variety of scene, and full of freshness and action. This art reaches its apogee in the figure of the lioness which we have cited (fig. 81). It must be added that all the parts of the same bas-relief are seldom sculptured by the same artist, and that figures of very unequal merit are met with. The master’s chisel reserved for itself the principal personages, the royal train and the officers who surrounded it; the disciples worked at the secondary portions, the corpses of the enemy, the processions of prisoners, the background of the landscape. Matters were not managed differently with regard to the sculptures of the Parthenon. § III. PAINTING AND ENAMELLING.