The idea of the Assyrian artist has, indeed, been borrowed; but Persian fancy has worked it out in its own way, adding, modifying, and subtracting in such a manner as to give to the form produced a quite peculiar, and (so to speak) native character.
[Illustration: PLATE LV.] Persian gems abound with monstrous forms, of equal, or even superior grotesqueness.

As the Gothic architects indulged their imagination in the most wonderful combinations to represent evil spirits or the varieties of vice and sensualism, so the Persian gem-engravers seem to have allowed their fancy to run riot in the creation of monsters, representative of the Powers of Darkness or of different kinds of evil, The stones exhibit the king in conflict with a vast variety of monsters, some nearly resembling the Persepolitan, while others have strange shapes unseen elsewhere.

Winged lions, with two tails and with the horns of a ram or an antelope, sphinxes and griffins of half a dozen different kinds, and various other nondescript creatures, appear upon the Persian gems and cylinders, furnishing abundant evidence of the quaint and prolific fancy of the designers.
The processional subjects represented by the Persian artists are of three kinds.

In the simplest and least interesting the royal guards, or the officers of the court, are represented in one or more lines of very similar figures, either moving in one direction, or standing in two bodies, one facing the other, in the attitude of quiet expectation.

In these subjects there is a great sameness, and a very small amount of merit.