Note 105 — Chapter II · SCULPTURE.
Walter Armstrong translation
In the great stone torso of which we shall speak presently (p. 98), these details seem to have been omitted; at least no trace of them is to be found on the stone; but they may have been added in paint. In figures of men the Assyrians very rarely indicated the male organs. One of the personages sculptured on the Balawat gates affords an exception to this general practice, but he is a prisoner about to be put to death, and the detail in question is a kind of indignity meant by the sculptor to show that the man in question was a savage who fought in puris naturalibus.