A representation of each has been given in the chapter on the productions of Assyria.

The dogs discovered are made of a coarse clay, and seem to have been originally painted.
They are not wanting in spirit; but it detracts from their merit that the limbs are merely in relief, the whole space below the belly of the animal being filled up with a mass of clay for the sake of greater strength.

The ducks are of a fine yellow material, and represent the bird asleep, with its head lying along its back.
Of all the Assyrian works of art which have come down to us, by far the most important are the bas-reliefs.

It is here especially, if not solely, that we can trace progress in style; and it is here alone that we see the real artistic genius of the people.

What sculpture in its full form, or in the slightly modified form of very high relief, was to the Greeks, what painting has been to modern European nations since the time of Cimabue, that low relief was to the Assyrians--the practical mode in which artistic power found vent among them.