world for the beauty of their varied tints, and above all for the marvellous embroideries which the chisel of the Assyrian sculptor has so delicately reproduced? All this decoration, in which we find figures in adoration before the sacred tree or the symbol of the supreme deity, genii struggling with lions, fights between animals, the mystical pinecone, flowers, and a hundred other varied designs elegantly and symmetrically arranged, reveals extraordinary manual skill. History, mythology, botany, and real or fanciful zoology are turned to profit with inimitable perfection, and we are forced to take everything literally that has been related by ancient authors about the tapestries which adorned the palace-chambers. In the banqueting-hall of Ahasuerus, king of Persia, there were, according to the [Illustration: Fig. 113.--Richly caparisoned horse and rider (Bas-relief in the Louvre).] Book of Esther, white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble. In the description of a picture portraying the adventures of Themistocles, Philostratus the Elder also speaks of the various subjects embroidered by the Babylonians upon their stuffs, and of the golden threads skilfully mingled with the tissue; we have seen that the Babylonian stuff called _kaunakes_, and characterised by rows of long fringes, was still celebrated among the Persians and the Greeks. Pliny, the natural historian, claims for the tapestry-weavers of Babylon the honour of having been superior to all their rivals in other countries in the art of harmonising colours and representing figures. “In fact,” says M. E. Müntz, “the words, Babylonian tapestries,--_Babylonica peristromata_, recur constantly in the Latin poets, who are never satisfied with praising them. Roman connoisseurs bought such hangings for their weight in gold. Metellus Scipio spent 800,000 sesterces in _triclinaria Babylonica_. Nero paid, for the same stuffs, an even higher price: 4,000,000 sesterces.”[50] Thus the East, which remains to our days the classical land of embroidery and tapestry, has only perpetuated the traditions bequeathed to her by Nineveh and Babylon when they ceased to exist.