The date-tree finds a place on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, but it must be confessed that the artistic products of the Babylonians and Assyrians do not afford us so much information as might be expected regarding the flora and fauna of the country. Vines and palms are of frequent occurrence on the later bas-reliefs, while oaks and terebinths were also known, for Esarhaddon uses them as material in his building operations at Babylon, and cedar trees were regularly procured for the same purpose.
Of the various trees represented on early seals, hardly any can be identified with any degree of certainty, the date-palm perhaps being excepted: the reed of the marshes appears fairly soon, but the fig-tree on the other hand occurs only in later times, which accords with Herodotus’ intimation that they were not grown in Mesopotamia in his day; this notwithstanding, they must have been known and presumably cultivated sufficiently early, for amongst the offerings made by Gudea (2450 B.C.) to the goddess Bau, figs are enumerated, while the olive-tree must also have been known at an early date, for objects in clay in the form of an olive belonging to the time of Urukagina are still extant.
The Lotus is sometimes engraved on a seal, always in the hand of a god, and with other Egyptian elements it is frequently found on the ivories and bronze dishes from Nimrûd.
Millet and other cereals have been the subject of artistic delineation; flowers of a nondescript character appear in later times, though the conventional designs of the rosettes, so familiar in Assyrian art, an example of which is to be found in Pl. XXX, without doubt owed its origin to an actual attempt to reproduce a living flower, while ivy only occurs on a late Græco-Egyptian cylinder, and on a Syro-Hittite cylinder we find a representation of the thistle.
Reeds are found more often than any other tree or plant, alike on cylinder-seals and bas-reliefs. They were in great demand for the construction of huts and light boats, but the clay of their native soil furnished an all-availing and all-abundant material for the building operations of their palaces, temples and houses; its possibilities were recognized at a very early date, and were made use of accordingly. Stone is practically unknown in the low-lying plain of Babylonia,and when required, it had to be quarried far away in the mountains and transported at great cost and labour, hence it was comparatively seldom used for artistic or decorative effects pure and simple, but was rather employed where the desire for durability rendered it necessary; for this reason the stone used in Babylonia is generally basalt, diorite, dolerite or some other hard stone of volcanic origin. In Assyria on the other hand, both alabaster and various kinds of limestone were easily procurable, and were used largely for building purposes, while they both, also, adapted themselves readily to the chisel of the sculptor whose duty it was to record the chief events of the king’s reign in pictorial form upon the walls of his palace.