Here is a manifest reference to those wonderful mural sculptures which, after being buried for centuries amid the ruins of the palaces and temples whose walls they once adorned, have been brought to light by the perseverance and skill of modern explorers. It is not at all improbable that Ezekiel himself once saw the very marbles that the eyes of this generation are permitted to behold.
The Assyrian and Chaldean sculptures were colored. Traces of red, blue, and black still remain on the beard and hair, and on some of the head-coverings. The Assyrian red was more brilliant than the Egyptian. It is almost vermilion in the sculptures of Khorsabad, and a brilliant crimson or lake-tint in those of Nimroud. Bonomi and some others suppose that there were originally other colors used on the sculptures, but that, being more destructible than those which remain, they have disappeared in the lapse of time. There is no positive evidence of this, though it is highly probable.