In Pl. XXIII, D, however, we have the upper part of a diorite figure of a woman belonging to about the same period as Gudea, which has to a great extent lost the heavy and massive appearance so noticeable in the statues of the patesi, and possesses both grace and beauty. The dress will be considered in a subsequent chapter, and it will be sufficient to here call attention to the singularly natural manner in which the folds of the garment are represented. During the interval between the epoch associated with the name of Gudea and that rendered illustrious by Ashur-naṣir-pal and the Assyrian kings, the practice of sculpturing in the round appears to have fallen largely into desuetude, if we may judge from the extreme paucity of the material that has come down to us, and it is not till the time of the Assyrian Empire that we are able again to make a detailed study of the sculptor’s art in Mesopotamia. One of the earliest examples of Assyrian sculpture in the round is reproduced in Pl. XXIV, B. It is a torso of a female figure, who bears upon her back an inscription of Ashur-bêl-kala, king of Assyria, whose reign may be assigned to the first half of the eleventh century B.C. It was discovered at Kouyunjik, and is now in the British Museum. The size is somewhat below that of life; but in spite of the fact that the proportions are bad, the body between the legs and arms being too short, this sculpture, when compared with the generality of Assyrian attempts to reproduce human beings, is at once striking for the natural manner in which the artist’s conception of feminine beauty is realized, and as such is entirely unique in the realm of Assyrian sculpture. The remains of another very early Assyrian sculpture[99] in the round were discovered in the course of the German excavations at Ashur. Unfortunately the head, hands and feet of this statue are missing, but the small part of the head which is preserved, though having an abundance of hair shows no trace of the elaborate curls of later days, the beard being represented by a series of twelve or more corrugated strands, thereby recalling the Babylonian statues of the Khammurabi period. The clothing consists of a close-fitting garment made of a simple fine-textured material, and is decorated with a fringe.