With Ashur-bani-pal Assyrian art as well as her literature reached its climax; with him the limits of the empire were extended further than ever before; but after his reign no slow decadence, but a swift collapse set in which was alike tragic in its significance and momentous in its consequences. It is however not altogether unfitting, either in the case of empires, or in that of individuals, that when the climax is reached, and the highest possibilities are realized, life should not be prolonged for retrogressive purposes, and Assyria was in a large degree saved from this misfortune. The memory of her greatness and of her wide influence was in no way marred by a long period of decline, her time was up and her end came, but the reason was to be found rather in those indomitable circumstances of fate and external environment than in a radical and internal demoralization. We have no reliefs of the Neo-Babylonian period worth recording, with the exception of the coloured clay reliefs which we shall consider in the chapter on painting. _PLATE XXI_ [Illustration: ASHUR-BANI-PAL, RECLINING AT MEAT] [Illustration: _Photos. Mansell_ _British Museum_ MUSICIANS AND ATTENDANTS] SCULPTURE IN THE ROUND [Illustration: FIG. 32. (_A. J. S. L._, XXI, pp. 59, ff.)] For the study of early Sumerian sculpture in the round, we unfortunately have not much material at hand. As has been already stated, both the Babylonians and Assyrians excelled in bas-relief work rather than in full rounded sculpture, and what they excelled in, that they practised most; in spite of this fact however, both peoples were alive to the superiority of sculpture in the round, but the difficulties involved in producing work of this kind prevented such work being undertaken save for exceptional purposes, hence they never attained a very high degree of excellence in this department of art. Of the earlier Sumerian period we have hardly any complete statues, and the paucity of such makes those that have survived the more valuable. One of the most interesting of these is that of Esar king of Adab (Bismâya), which was discovered during the course of the American excavations on that site,[97] and is now preserved in the Imperial Ottoman Museum, Constantinople (cf. Fig. 32). It is made of marble and weighs two hundred pounds. In height it measures just under thirty-five inches, the circumference of the skirt being close upon thirty-two inches. The latter is heavily plaited and is a replica of the garment in which the Sumerians portrayed on the earliest monuments are always clad. The type of face in like manner attests its great antiquity; the bald head, the aquiline nose forming a straight line with the forehead, the triangular eye-sockets which were at one time inlaid with ivory, all being characteristic features of the most ancient Sumerian attempts at human portraiture. The king bears an inscription upon his right shoulder written in a very archaic and