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The temple was not eloquent with the actions and
deeds of the gods, and even the tomb, that fruitful source of art in
Egypt, was in Chaldaea undecorated and in Assyria unknown. No one knows
what the Assyrians did with their dead, unless they carried them back
to the fatherland of the race, the Persian Gulf region, as the native
tribes of Mesopotamia do to this day.
ART MOTIVES: As in Egypt, there were two motives for art--illustration
and decoration. Religion, as we have seen, hardly obtained at all. The
king attracted the greatest attention. The countless bas-reliefs, cut
on soft stone slabs, were pages from the history of the monarch in
peace and war, in council, in the chase, or in processional rites.
Beside him and around him his officers came in for a share of the
background glory. Occasionally the common people had representations
of their lives and their pursuits, but the main subject of all the
valley art was the king and his doings. Sculpture and painting were
largely illustrations accompanying a history written in the
ever-present cuneiform characters.


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