British Museum, which originally adorned a pair of wooden doors in
the palace of Shalmaneser III. at Balawat. The art of casting
statuettes and statues in bronze was also known and practiced, as
it had been much earlier in Babylonia, but the examples preserved
to us are few. For the decorative use which the Assyrians made of
color, our principal witnesses are then enameled bricks. These are
ornamented with various designs--men, genii, animals, and floral
patterns--in a few rich colors, chiefly blue and yellow. Of
painting, except in the sense of mural decoration, there is no
trace.

Egypt and Mesopotamia are, of all the countries around the
Mediterranean the only seats of an important, indigenous art,
antedating that of Greece. Other countries of Western Asia--Syria,
Phrygia, Phenicia, Persia, and so on--seem to have been rather
recipients and transmitters than originators of artistic
influences. For Egypt, Assyria, and the regions just named did not
remain isolated from one another. On the contrary, intercourse
both friendly and hostile was active, and artistic products, at
least of the small and portable kind, were exchanged. The paths of
communication were many, but there is reason for thinking that the
Phenicians, the great trading nation of early times, were
especially instrumental in disseminating artistic ideas. To these
influences Greece was exposed before she had any great art of her
own. Among the remains of prehistoric Greece we find, besides some
objects of foreign manufacture, others, which, though presumably
of native origin, are yet more or less directly inspired by
Egyptian or oriental models. But when the true history of Greek
art begins, say about 600 B. C., the influences from Egypt and
Asia sink into insignificance. It may be that the impulse to