Assyria was in some ways the natural home of the bas-relief, for she contained a plentiful supply of alabaster and limestone, the softness of which facilitated the work of the artist and reduced his difficulties to a minimum: Babylonia on the other hand yielded practically no stone, and all that was used had to be quarried at a distance and transported at great cost and labour, and that fact makes the early efforts of the Babylonians in this direction all the more praise-worthy, and the proficiency to which those efforts gave birth, as seen for example in Narâm-Sin’s stele of Victory, the more astonishing. But this notwithstanding, the bas-relief was more highly developed in the northern country, where it played an all-important part in the artistic life of the people. The general object of these bas-reliefs was to commemorate the king’s victories over his enemies and his conquests in the chase, rather than to produce a purely æsthetic effect. In other words they are pictorial records rather than artistic products, and that fact is further borne witness to by the cuneiform texts with which they are generally inscribed. At the same time however, they afford material for the study of Assyrian sculpture. The art of sculpture in Assyria suffered all the drawbacks which befall every art once it becomes professionalized; it lacks spontaneity which is the very connotation of art, it is made to order, and therefore it inevitably knows no freedom but is the dull slave of conventionalism. But in spite of all this, the bas-reliefs of Ashur-naṣir-pal and his successors, hampered as they are by those universal enemies of human art, professionalism and conventionalism, still enshrine, or imprison if you will, the artistic genius of the people, and on this account, if for no other, are deserving of careful attention.