In the Frontispiece of that work, and in the second Plate, containing the restoration of a palace interior, the entire bas-reliefs were represented as strongly colored.

A jet-black was assigned to the hair and beards of men and of all human-headed figures, to the manes and tails of horses, to vultures, eagle heads, and the like: a coarse red-brown to winged lions, to human flesh, to horses' bodies, and to various ornaments, a deep yellow to common lions, to chariot wheels, quivers, fringes, belts, sandals, and other portions of human apparel; white to robes, helmets, shields.
tunic's, towns, trees, etc.; and a dull blue to some of the feathers of winged lions and genii, and to large portions of the ground from which the sculptures stood out.

This conception of Assyrian coloring, framed confessedly on the assumption of a close analogy between the ornamentation of Assyria and that of Egypt, was at once accepted by the unlearned, and naturally enough was adopted by most of those who sought to popularize the new knowledge among their countrymen.

Hence the strange travesties of Assyrian art which have been seen in so-called "Assyrian Courts," where all the delicacy of the real sculpture has disappeared, and the spectator has been revolted by grim figures of bulls and lions, from which a thick layer of coarse paint has taken away all dignity, and by reliefs which, from the same cause, have lost all spirit and refinement.
It is sufficient objection to the theory here treated of, that it has no solid basis of fact to rest upon.

Color has only been _found_ on portions of the bas-reliefs, as on the hair and beards of men, on head-ornaments, to a small extent on draperies, on the harness of horses, on sandals, weapons, birds, flowers, and the like.