Enamelled brick played the same part as painting in fresco, only it was more solid and was better able to resist the action of damp. In Chaldæa, where it rains oftener than in Assyria, greater use has been made of enamelled brick than in the latter country. The Ninevite artists scarcely ever employed this method of decoration, except round the principal doorways and to make an elegant border for the archivolt. The bricks of brilliant colours, which are conspicuous from a distance, are ornamented with floral designs and rosettes in exquisite taste. In Sargon’s palace [Illustration: Fig. 89.--Enamelled brick, Nimroud (after Layard).] V. Place found nearly all the bricks of the archivolt of a door. Between two borders of white rosettes is a broad frieze containing winged genii and symbolical animals bearing the same attributes as the similar figures in the bas-reliefs (fig. 88). On the lower plinth of the chief door of the hareem there figured on the enamelled bricks a lion, an eagle, a bull, and a plough; at the turn of the angle stood the king. At Nimroud most remarkable enamelled fragments were also discovered depicting portions of soldiers, weapons and chariots, and even parts of inscriptions. On a single brick, found by Layard, a king is seen offering a libation and attended by two warriors (fig. 89). But in general each figure was made up of a large number of bricks, since the restricted dimensions of a baked brick did not allow more than a part of the subject to be placed upon it. The design was executed and the vitrifiable colours applied before the baking; the artist had to apportion to each brick the different parts of a figure in such a manner that when they were put together there might be perfect agreement in the lines which had to join; the marks to indicate their position, set on the backs of the tiles, made this operation, which required great technical skill, much easier. At Babylon, where enamelled brick played a far greater part in the decoration of buildings than at Nineveh, the device was adopted, in order to replace coloured sculpture in stone, of stamping bricks with figures or parts of figures in relief. Imagine a slab of soft clay several square yards in size; on the surface of this the whole picture was modelled in relief as it might have been carved on stone. When this operation was finished, the slab of clay was cut into rectangular pieces of the size of ordinary bricks. These pieces, provided with a mark to indicate their position, were then separately coated with colour and varnish, and afterwards baked. Subsequently they were joined together with bitumen, which formed a strong mortar, and in this work of reconstructing the design the workman was guided by the position-marks. This was the first origin of the mosaics in relief made by the Greeks and Romans. The Achæmenid palaces of Susa were decorated by the same methods, and Persian artists imitated the Babylonians in