or gigantic reeds to which we have already alluded as strongly
characteristic of Chaldaean architecture, and one of the most certain signs
of its origin. The chevrons, the spiral lines and lozenges of the coloured
decoration with which the semi-columns, and the salient buttress by which
they are divided into two groups, are covered, should be curiously noticed.
The ornament varies with each structural division. Loftus, however, was
chiefly struck by the process used to build up the design. The whole face
of the wall is composed of terra-cotta cones (Fig. 120) engaged in a mortar
composed of mud mixed with chopped straw. The bases of these cones are
turned outwards and form the surface of the wall. Some preserve the natural
colour of the terra-cotta, a dark yellow, others have been dipped--before
fixing no doubt--in baths of red and black colouring matter. By the aid of
these three tints an effect has been obtained that, according to Loftus, is
far from being disagreeable. The process may be compared to that of mosaic,
cones of terra-cotta being substituted for little cubes of coloured stone
or glass.[350]
[Illustration: FIG. 120.--Cone with coloured base; from Loftus.]
Upon the same site M. Loftus found traces of a still more singular
decoration. A mass of crude brick had its horizontal courses divided from
each other by earthenware vases laid so that their open mouths were flush
with the face of the wall. Three courses of these vases were placed one
upon another, and the curious ornament thus made was repeated three times
in the piece of wall left standing. The vases were from ten to fifteen
inches long externally, but inside they were never more than ten inches
deep, so that their conical bases were solid.[351] The dark shadows of
their open mouths afforded a strong contrast with the white plaster which
covered the brickwork about them. The consequent play of light and shadow
unrelieved by colour was pleasing enough. In spite, however, of their thick
walls, these vases could hardly resist successfully the weight of the
bricks above and the various disintegrating influences set up by their
contraction in drying. Most of the vases were broken when Loftus saw them,
though still in place.
Cone mosaics and the insertion of vases among the bricks afforded after
all but a poor opportunity to the decorative architect. Had the builders of
Chaldaea possessed no more efficient means than these of obtaining beauty,
their structures would hardly have imposed themselves as models upon their
rich and powerful neighbours of Assyria so completely as they did. Some
process was required which should not restrict the decorator to the curves
and straight lines of the simpler geometrical figures, which should allow
him to make use of motives furnished by the animal and vegetable kingdom,
by man and those fanciful creations of man's intellect that resulted from
his attempts to figure the gods. We can hardly doubt that the Chaldaeans,
like their northern neighbours, made frequent use of paint in the
decoration of the wide plaster walls that offered such a tempting surface
to the brush. No fragment of such work has come down to us, but we have
every reason to believe that the arrangement of motives and the choice of
lines were the same as in Assyria. We may look upon the mural paintings in
the Ninevite palaces as copies preserving for us the leading
characteristics of their Chaldaean originals.
Even in Chaldaea, which had a drier climate than Assyria, paintings in
distemper could not have had any very long life on external walls. They had
not to do with the sky of Upper Egypt where years pass away without the
fall of a single shower. Some means of fixing colour so that it should not
be washed away by the first rain was sought, and it was found in the
invention of enamel, in the coating of the bricks with a coloured material
that when passed with them through the fire would be vitrified and would
sink to some extent into their substance. A brick thus coated could never
lose its colour; the latter became insoluble, and so intimately combined
with the block to which it was attached that one could hardly be destroyed
without the other. Sir H. Layard tells us that many fragments of brick
found in the Kasr were covered with a thick glaze, the colours of which had
in no way suffered with time. Fragments of ornaments and figures could be
distinguished on some of them. The colours most often found were a very
brilliant blue, red, dark yellow, white, and black.[352]
We have again to look to the Assyrian ruins for information as to the way
in which these enamelled bricks were composed into pictures. No explorer
has found anything in the remains of a Chaldaean city that can be compared
to the archivolt of enamelled bricks discovered by M. Place over one of the
gateways of the city founded by Sargon.[353]
We can hardly doubt however that the art of the enameller was discovered in
Chaldaea and thence transported into Assyria. Everything combines to give us
that assurance, an examination of the ruins in Mesopotamia and of the
objects brought from them as well as the explicit statements of the
ancients.
Every traveller tells that there is not a ruin at Babylon in which hundreds
of these enamelled bricks may not be picked up, and they are to be found
elsewhere in Chaldaea.[354] A certain number of fragments are now in the
British Museum and the Louvre with indications upon them leaving no doubt
as to whence they came.[355] As for the blocks of the same kind coming from
Nineveh and its neighbourhood they are very numerous in our collections. It
is easy therefore to compare the products of Chaldaean workshops with those
of Assyrian origin. The comparison is not to the advantage of the latter.
The enamel on the Babylonian bricks is very thick and solid; it adheres
strongly to the clay, and even when brought to our comparatively humid
climates it preserves its brilliancy. It is not so with bricks from
Khorsabad and Nimroud, which rapidly tarnish and become dull when withdrawn
from the earth that protected them for so many centuries. Their firing does
not seem to have been sufficiently prolonged.[356]
Necessity is the mother of invention, the proverb says. If there be any
country in which clay has been compelled to do all that lay in its power it
must surely be that in which there was no other material for the
construction and decoration of buildings. The results obtained by the
enameller were pretty much the same in Assyria and Chaldaea, and we are
inclined to look upon the older of the two nations as the inventor of the
process, especially as it could hardly have done without it so well as its
younger rival, and in this opinion we are confirmed by the superior quality
of the Babylonian enamel. It is possible that there may be some truth in
the assertion that most of the glazed bricks that have come down to us
belonged to the restorations of Nebuchadnezzar; but even supposing that to
be so, they show a technical skill so consummate and sure of itself that it
must then have been very far removed from its infancy. The fatherland of
the enameller is Southern Mesopotamia and especially Babylonia, where
enamelled bricks seem to have been used in extraordinary quantities.
The wall of Dour-Saryoukin, the town built by Sargon, has been found intact
for a considerable part of its height. As in the retaining wall of the
palace, coloured brick has there been used with extreme discretion. It is
found only over the arches of the principal doors and, perhaps, in the form
of rosettes at the springing of the battlements. The remainder of the great
breadths of crude brick was coated with white plaster.[357]
It was otherwise at Babylon. Ctesias, who lived there for a time, thus
describes the palace on the right bank of the Euphrates: "In the interior
of the first line of circumvallation Semiramis constructed another on a
circular plan, upon which there are all kinds of animals stamped on the
bricks while still unburnt; nature is imitated in these figures by the
employment of colours[358].... The third wall, that in the middle, was
twenty stades round ... on its towers and their curtain-walls every sort
of animal might be seen imitated according to all the rules of art, both as
to their form and colour. The whole represented the chase of various
animals, the latter being more than four cubits (high)--in the middle
Semiramis on horseback letting fly an arrow against a panther and, on one
side, her husband Ninus at close quarters with a lion, which he strikes
with his lance."[359]
Diodorus attributes all these buildings to his fabulous Semiramis. He was
mistaken. It was the palace built by Nebuchadnezzar that he had before him;
his eyes rested upon the works of those sovereigns of the second Chaldee
empire who presided at a real art renaissance--at the re-awakening of a
civilization that was never more brilliant than in the years immediately
preceding its fall. The historian's mistake is of little importance here.
We are mainly interested in the fact that he actually saw the walls of
which he speaks and saw them covered with pictures, the material for which
was furnished by enamelled brick.
These bricks must have been manufactured in no small quantity to permit of
decorations in which there were figures nearly six feet high.[360] We may
form some idea of this frieze of animals from one in the palace of Sargon
at the foot of the wall on each side of the harem doorway (plate xv.).[361]
As for the hunting incidents, we may imagine what they were like from the
Assyrian sculptures (Fig. 5).
At Babylon as at Nineveh the palette of the enameller was very restricted.
Figures were as a rule yellow and white relieved against a blue ground.
Touches of black were used to give accent to certain details, such as the
hair and beard, or to define a contour. The surface of the brick was not
always left smooth; in some cases it shows hollow lines in which certain
colours were placed when required to mark distinctive or complementary
features. As a rule motives were modelled in relief upon the ground, so
that they were distinguished by a gentle salience as well as by colour, a
contrivance that increased their solidity and effect.[362] This may be
observed on the Babylonian bricks brought to Europe by M. Delaporte,
consul-general for France at Bagdad. They are now in the Louvre. On one we
see the three white petals belonging to one of those Marguerite-shaped
flowers that artists have used in such profusion in painted and sculptured
decoration (Figs. 22, 25, 96, 116, 117). Another is the fragment of a wing,
and must have entered into the composition of one of those winged genii
that are hardly less numerous in Assyrian decoration (Figs. 4, 8, and 29).
Upon a third you may recognize the trunk of a palm-tree and on a fourth the
sinuous lines that edge a drapery.[363] M. de Longperier calculated from
the dimensions of this latter fragment that the figure to which it belonged
must have been four cubits high, exactly the height assigned by Ctesias to
the figures in the groups seen by him when he visited the palace of the
ancient kings.[364]
M. Oppert also mentions fragments which had formed part of similar
important compositions. Yellow scales separated from one another by black
lines, reminded him of the conventional figure under which the Assyrians
represented hills or mountains; on others he found fragments of trees, on
others blue undulations, significant, no doubt, of water; on others, again,
parts of animals--the foot of a horse, the mane and tail of a lion. A
thick, black line upon a blue ground may have stood for the lance of a
hunter. Upon one fragment a human eye, looking full to the front, might be
recognized.[365] We might be tempted to think that in these remains M.
Oppert saw all that was left of the pictures which excited the admiration
of Ctesias.
Inscriptions in big letters obtained by the same process accompanied and
explained the pictures. The characters were white on a blue ground. M.
Oppert brought together some fifteen of these monumental texts, but he did
not find a single fragment upon which there was more than one letter. The
inscriptions were meant to be legible at a considerable distance, for the
letters were from two to three inches high. In later days Arab architects
followed the example thus set and pressed the elegant forms of the cufic
alphabet into their service with the happiest skill.[366]
For the composition of one of these figures of men or animals a large
number of units was required, and in order that it might preserve its
fidelity it was necessary not only that the separate pieces should exactly
coincide but that they should be fixed and fitted with extreme nicety. At
Babylon they were attached to the wall with bitumen. On the posterior
surface of several enamelled bricks in the Louvre a thick coat of this
substance may be seen; it has preserved an impression of all the
roughnesses on the surface of the crude mass to which it was applied. It is
impossible to decide whether this natural mortar was allowed to fill the
joints between one enamelled square and another or not. None of these
bricks have been found in place, and none, so far as we know, unbroken. The
coat at the back may have rendered the adherence so complete that no
further precaution was necessary. In Assyria, so far at least as Khorsabad
is concerned, they were content with less trouble. The bricks forming the
enamelled archivolt of which we have spoken are attached to the wall with a
mortar in which there is but little adhesive power.[367] It offered no
resistance when M. Place stripped the archway in order that he might enrich
his own country with the spoils of Sargon. But for an accident that sent
his boats to the bottom of the Tigris not far from Bassorah this beautiful
gateway would have been rebuilt in Paris.[368]
To fit all these squares into their proper places was a delicate operation,
but it was rendered easy by long practice. Signs, or rather numbers, for
the guidance of the workmen, have been noticed upon the uncovered faces of
the crude brick walls.[369] Still more skill was required for the proper
distribution of a figure over the bricks by whose apposition it was to be
created. No retouches were possible, because the bricks were painted before
firing. The least negligence would be punished by the interruption of the
contours, or by their malformation through a failure of junction between a
line upon one brick and its continuation on the next. There was but one way
to prevent such mistakes, and that was by preparing in advance what we
should call a cartoon. On this the proposed design would be traced over a
network of squares representing the junctions of the bricks. The bricks
were then shaped, modelled, and numbered; each was painted according to the
cartoon with its due proportion of ground or figure as the case might be,
and marked with the same number as that on the corresponding square in the
drawing.[370] The colour was laid separately on each brick; this is proved
by the existence on their edges of pigment that has overflowed from the
face and been fired at the same time as the rest.
Thus were manufactured those enamelled bricks upon which the modern visitor
to the ruins of Babylon walks at every step. Broken, ground almost to
powder as they are, they suffice to show how far the art of enamelling was
pushed in those remote days, and how great an industry it must have been.
We can have no doubt that colours fixed in the fire must have formed the
chief element in the decoration of the buildings of Nebuchadnezzar, of that
Babylon whose insolent prosperity so impressed the imagination and provoked
the anger of the Jewish prophets. It was to paintings of this kind that
Ezekiel alluded when he reproved Jerusalem under the name of Aholiba for
its infidelity and its adoption of foreign superstitions: "For when she saw
men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldaeans portrayed with
vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire
upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the
Babylonians of Chaldaea, the land of their nativity."[371]
The "paintings in the temple of Belos," described by Berosus, were in all
probability carried out in the same way. They decorated the walls of the
great temple of Bel Merodach at Babylon, where "all kinds of marvellous
monsters with the greatest variety in their forms" were to be seen.[372]
We see therefore, that both by sacred and profane writers is the important
part played by these paintings in the palaces and temples of the capital
affirmed. And Ctesias, who is not content with allusions, but enters into
minute details, tells us how the work was executed, and how its durability
was guaranteed. The modern buildings of Persia give us some idea as to the
appearance of those of Babylon. No doubt the plan of a mosque differs
entirely from that of a temple of Marduk or Nebo, but the principle of the
decoration was the same. If the wand of an enchanter could restore the
principal buildings of Babylon we should, perhaps, find more than one to
which the following description of the great mosque of Ispahan might be
applied with the change of a word here and there: "Every part of the
building without exception is covered with enamelled bricks. Their ground
is blue, upon which elegant flowers and sentences taken from the Koran are
traced in white. The cupola is blue, decorated with shields and arabesques.
One can hardly imagine the effect produced by such a building on an
European accustomed to the dull uniformity of our colourless buildings; he
is filled with an admiring surprise that no words can express."[373]
If we should set about making such a comparison, the principal difference
to be noticed would be that arising out of the prohibitions of the Koran.
The Persian potter had to content himself with the resources of pure
ornament, resources upon which he drew with an exquisite skill that forbids
us to regret the absence of men and animals from his work. The coloured
surfaces of the Babylonian buildings must have had more variety than those
of the great mosque at Ispahan or the green mosque at Broussa. But the same
groups and the same personages were constantly repeated in the same
attitudes and tints, so that their general character must have been purely
decorative. Even when they were combined into something approaching a
scene, care was taken to guard, by conventionality of treatment and the
frequent repetition of familiar types and groups, against its attracting to
itself the attention that properly belonged to the composition of which it
formed a part. The artist was chiefly occupied with the general effect. His
aim was to give a certain rhythm to a succession of traditional forms whose
order and arrangement never greatly varied, to fill the wide surfaces of
his architecture with contrasts and harmonies of colour that should delight
the eye and prevent its fatigue.
Were the colours as soft and harmonious as we now see them in those
buildings of Persia and Asia Minor that will themselves soon be little more
than ruins? It is difficult to answer this question from the very small
fragments we possess of the coloured decorations of the Babylonian temples
and palaces, but the conditions have remained the same; the wants to be
satisfied and the processes employed a century ago were identical with
those of Babylon and Nineveh; architect and painter were confronted by the
same dazzling sun, and, so far as we can tell, taste has not sensibly
changed over the whole of the vast extent of country that stretches from
the frontiers of Syria to the eastern boundaries of the plateau of Iran.
New peoples, new religions, and new territorial divisions have been
introduced, but industrial habits have remained; in spite of political
revolutions the workman has transmitted the secrets of his trade to his
sons and grandsons. Oriental art is now threatened with death at the hands
of Western competition. Thanks to its machines Europe floods the most
distant markets with productions cheaper than those turned out by the
native workman, and the native workman, discouraged and doubtful of
himself, turns to the clumsy imitation of the West, and loses his hold of
the art he understood so well. Traditions have become greatly weakened
during the last half century, but in the few places where they still
preserve their old vitality they may surely be taken as representative of
the arts and industries of many centuries ago, and as the lineal
descendants of those early products of civilization on which we are
attempting to cast new light. If, as everything leads us to believe, the
colours and patterns worked by the women of Khorassan and Kurdistan on
their rugs and carpets are identical with those on the hangings in the
palaces of Sargon, of Nebuchadnezzar, and of Darius, why should we not
allow that the tints that now delight us on the mosques of Teheran and
Ispahan, of Nicaea and Broussa, are identical with those employed by the
Chaldaean potter?
There is no doubt that both had a strong predilection for blue--for the
marvellous colour that dyed the most beautiful flower of their fields, that
glowed on their distant mountains, in their lakes, in the sea, and in the
profound azure of an almost cloudless sky. Nature seems to have chosen blue
for the background of her changing pictures, and like the artists of modern
Persia those of antique Mesopotamia understood the value of the hint thus
given. In the fragments of Babylonian tiles brought home by travellers blue
is the dominant colour; and blue furnishes the background for those two
compositions in enamelled brick that have been found _in situ_. The blue of
Babylon seems however to have had more body and to have been darker in
shade than that of the Khorsabad tiles.
We have already referred to this inferiority in the Assyrian enamel. It may
be explained by the fact that the Assyrian architect looked to sculpture
for his most sumptuous effects; he used polychromatic decoration only for
subordinate parts of his work, and he would therefore be contented with
less careful execution than that required by his Babylonian rival. The
glazed tiles of Assyria were not, as in Chaldaea, quasi bas-reliefs. Their
tints were put on flat; the only exception to this being in the case of
those rosettes that were made in such extraordinary numbers for use on the
upper parts of walls and round doorways; in these the small central boss is
modelled in low relief (see Figs. 121 and 122).
[Illustration: FIGS. 121, 122.--Rosettes in glazed pottery. Louvre.]
These glazed bricks were chiefly used by the Assyrian architect upon
doorways and in their immediate neighbourhood.[374] M. Place found the
decoration of one of the city gates at Khorsabad almost intact.[375] The
enamel is laid upon one edge of the bricks, which are on the average three
inches and a half thick. Figures are relieved in yellow, and rosettes in
white against the blue ground. A band of green marks the lower edge of the
tiara.[376] The same motives and the same figures were repeated for the
whole length of the band. The figures are winged genii in different
postures of worship and sacrifice. They bear in their hands those metal
seals and pine cones that we so often encounter in the bas-reliefs.
Distributed about the entrance these genii seem to be the protectors of the
city, they are beneficent images, their gesture is a prayer, a promise, a
benediction. On each side of the arch, at its springing, there is one of
greater stature than his companions (Fig. 123). His face is turned towards
the vaulted passage. Upon the curve of the archivolt smaller figures face
one another in couples; each couple is divided from its neighbours by
rosettes (Fig. 124).
[Illustration: FIG. 123.--Detail of enamelled archivolt. Khorsabad. From
Place.]
The other composition is to be found on a plinth in the doorway of the
harem at Khorsabad. This plinth was about twenty-three feet long, and
rather more than three feet high. Its ornament was repeated on both sides
of the doorway.[377] It consisted of a lion, an eagle, a bull, and a plough
(Plate XV). Upon the returning angles the king appears, standing, on the
one side with his head bare, on the other covered with a tiara. The
background is blue, as in the city gates; green was only used for the
leaves of the tree, in which some have recognized a fig-tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 124.--Detail from enamelled archivolt. Khorsabad. From
Place.]
In these two examples the decoration is of an extreme simplicity; the
figures are not engaged in any common action; there is, in fact, no
picture. The artist sometimes appears to have been more ambitious. Thus
Layard found at Nimroud the remains of a decoration in which the painter
had apparently attempted to rival the sculptor: he had represented a battle
scene analogous to those we find in such plenty in the bas-reliefs.[378] A
similar motive may be found in a better preserved fragment belonging to the
same structure (Plate XIV, Fig. 1).[379] A single brick bears four
personages, a god, whose arms only are left, the king, his patera in hand,
offering a libation, an eunuch with bow and quiver, and finally an officer
with a lance. George Smith also found a fragment of the same kind at
Nimroud (see Fig. 125). It shows the figure of a soldier, from the knees
upwards, armed with bow and lance, and standing by the wheel of a chariot.
Above his head are the remains of an inscription which must have been
continued on the next brick. The word _warriors_ may still be
deciphered.[380] This figure may have formed part of some attempt on the
part of the decorator to narrate in colour some of the exploits of the king
for whom the palace was built.
[Illustration: FIG. 125.--Enamelled brick in the British Museum.]
There is a difference between such fragments as this and the glazed tiles
of the Khorsabad gates. In the latter the enamelled edges of several bricks
were required to make a single figure. In the bricks from Nimroud on the
other hand, whole figures are painted on their surface, and in fact a
single brick had several figures upon it which were, therefore, on a much
smaller scale. A decoration in which figures were some two and three feet
high, was well suited for use in lofty situations where those restricted to
the surface of a single brick would have been hardly visible. The latter
must, then, have been fixed on the lower parts of the wall, but as none of
them have yet been found in place we cannot say positively that it was so.
Such representations were, moreover, quite exceptional. Most of the pieces
of glazed brick that have been found in the ruins show nothing but the
remains of figures and motives ornamental rather than historical in their
general character.[381] Besides the rosettes of which we have had occasion
to speak so often we encounter at every step a spiral ornament the design
of which remains without much modification, while a certain variety is
given to its general effect by changing the arrangement of its colours. In
the example reproduced in Fig. 126 large black disks, like eyes, are
embraced by a double spiral in which blue and yellow alternate.[382]
[Illustration: FIG. 126.--Ornament upon enamelled brick. British Museum.]
There is one curious class of glazed tiles in which this motive continually
reappears. These tiles are thinner than the ordinary brick. Their shape is
sometimes square but with their sides slightly concave (Fig. 127),
sometimes circular, in the form of a quoit (Fig. 128). In each case similar
designs are employed, flowers, palmettes, &c. These are carried out in
black upon a white ground and arranged symmetrically about a round hole in
the middle of the tile. These things must have been manufactured for some
special purpose, and the name of Assurnazirpal, that may be read upon our
first fragment (Fig. 127), shows that they belonged to some great work of
decoration whose main object was to glorify the name of that sovereign. It
has been guessed that they formed centres for a coffered ceiling, and there
is nothing to negative the conjecture. The opening in the centre may have
been filled with a boss of bronze or silver gilt. As we have already shown,
applique work of this kind played a great part in Assyrian decoration;
doors were covered with it and there are many signs that both in Chaldaea
and Assyria many other surfaces were protected in the same fashion.
[Illustration: FIG. 127.--Fragment of a glazed brick. Width 14 inches.
British Museum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 128.--Fragment of a glazed brick. Diameter 17 inches.
British Museum.]
After the careful examination of its ruins Taylor came to the conclusion
that the upper story of a staged tower at Abou-Sharein had gilt walls. He
found a great number of small and very thin gold plates upon the plateau
that formed the summit of the building, and with them the gilded nails with
which they had been fixed.[383] In his life of _Apollonius of Tyana_,
Philostratus gives a description of Babylon that appears taken from
authentic sources, and he notices this employment of metal. "The palaces of
the King of Babylon are covered with bronze which makes them glitter at a
distance; the chambers of the women, the chambers of the men and the
porticoes are decorated with silver, with beaten and even with massive gold
instead of pictures."[384] Herodotus speaks of the silvered and gilded
battlements of Ecbatana[385] and at Khorsabad cedar masts incased in gilded
bronze were found,[386] while traces of gold have been found on some crude
bricks at Nimroud.[387] Seeing that metal was thus used to cover wide
surfaces, and that, as we shall have occasion to show, the forms of
sculpture, of furniture, and of the arts allied to them in Mesopotamia,
prove that the inhabitants of that region were singularly skilled in the
manipulation of metal, whether with the chisel or the hammer, the above
conjecture may very well be true; the sheen of the polished surface would
be in excellent harmony with the enamelled faience about it.
It has been suggested that some of the carved ivories may have been used
to ornament the coffers. This suggestion in itself seems specious enough,
but I failed to discover a single ivory in the rich collection of the
British Museum whose shape would have fitted the openings in the
tiles.[388] It is certain, however, that ivory was used in the
ornamentation of buildings. "I incrusted," says Nebuchadnezzar, "the
door-posts, the lintel, and threshold of the place of repose with ivory."
The small rectangular plaques with which several cases and many drawers are
filled in the British Museum may very well have been used for the
decoration of doors, and the panels of ceilings and wainscots. They were so
numerous, especially in the palace of Assurnazirpal at Nimroud, that we
cannot believe them all to have come off small and movable pieces of
furniture. We are confirmed in this idea by the fact that none of these
ivories are unique or isolated works of art. In spite of the care and taste
expended on their execution they were in no sense gems treasured for their
rarity and value; they were the products of an active manufactory
delivering its types in series, we might almost say in dozens. The more
elegant and finished among them are represented three, four, and five times
over in the select case in the British Museum. We may safely say that the
examples preserved of any one model are by no means all that were made; in
fact, in the drawers in which the smaller fragments are preserved, we
noticed the remains of more than one piece which had once been similar to
the more perfect specimens exhibited to the public.
Thus there are in the Museum four replicas of the little work shown in our
Fig. 129.[389] The head of a woman, full face, and with an Egyptian
head-dress, is enframed in a narrow window and looks over a balcony formed
of columns with the curious capitals already noticed on page 211. Beside
these four more or less complete examples, the Museum possesses several
detached heads (Fig. 130) which once, no doubt, belonged to similar
compositions.
[Illustration: FIG. 129.--Ivory tablet in the British Museum. Drawn by
Saint-Elme Gautier.]
The beauty of the ivory surface was often enhanced by the insertion of
coloured enamels and lapis-lazuli in the hollows of the tablet. Traces of
this inlay may be seen on many of the Museum ivories, especially on those
recently brought from Van, in Armenia. The tablets also show traces of
gilding.
[Illustration: FIG. 130.--Fragment of an ivory tablet.]
All this proves that the Mesopotamian decorator had no contemptible
resources for the ornamentation of his panelled walls and coffered
ceilings. These chiselled, enamelled, and gilded ivories must have been set
in frames of cedar or cypress. The Assyrian texts bear witness in more than
one place to the use of those fine materials, and the Hebrew writers make
frequent allusion to the luxurious carpentry imitated by their own princes
in the temple at Jerusalem.[390] In one of his invectives against Nineveh
Zephaniah cries: "Desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall
uncover the cedar work."[391]
The more we enter into detail the richer and more varied does the
decoration of these buildings appear. In our day the great ruins are sad
and monotonous enough. The rain of many centuries has washed away their
paint; their ornaments of metal and faience, of ivory and cedar, have
fallen from the walls; the hand of man has combined with the slow action of
time to reduce them to their elements, and nothing of their original beauty
remains but here and there a fragment or a hint of colour. And yet when we
bring these scanty vestiges together we find that enough is left to give
the taste and invention of the Assyrian ornamentist a very high place in
our respect. That artist was richly endowed with the power of inventing
happy combinations of lines, and of varying his motives without losing
sight for an instant of his original theme.
We may show this very clearly by a more careful study of two motives
already encountered, the rosette, and the running ornament which is known
in its countless modifications as the "knop and flower pattern." These two
motives are united in those great thresholds which have been found now and
then in such marvellous preservation. They also occur in certain
bas-reliefs representing architectural decorations, so that we are in
possession of all the documents required for the formation of a true idea
of their varied beauties. In the Assyrian Basement Room of the British
Museum there is a fine slab of gypsum of which we reproduce one corner in
our Fig. 131.[392] Besides the daisy shaped rosette which is so
conspicuous, there is one of more elaborate design which we reproduce on a
larger scale and from another example in our Fig. 132. It is inclosed in a
square frame adorned with chevrons. This frame with the rosette it incloses
may be taken as giving some idea of the ceiling panels or coffers.
[Illustration: FIG. 131.--Threshold from Kouyundjik. From Layard.]
In this rosette it should be noticed that beyond the double festoon about
the central star appears the same alternation of bud and flower as in the
straight border. That flower has been recognized as the Egyptian lotus, but
Layard believes its type to have been furnished, perhaps, by a scarlet
tulip which is very common towards the beginning of spring in
Mesopotamia.[393] We ourselves believe rather in the imitation of a motive
from the stuffs, the jewels, the furniture, and the pottery that
Mesopotamia drew from Egypt at a very early date through the intermediary
of the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians themselves appropriated the same motive
and introduced it with their own manufactures not only into Mesopotamia but
into every country washed by the Mediterranean. Our conjecture is to some
extent confirmed by an observation of Sir H. Layard's. This lotus flower is
only to be found, he says, in the most recent of Assyrian monuments, in
those, namely, that date from the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.,
centuries during which the Assyrian kings more than once invaded Phoenicia
and occupied Egypt.[394] In the more ancient bas-reliefs flowers with a
very different aspect--copied in all probability directly from nature--are
alone to be found. Of these some idea may be formed from the adjoining cut.
It reproduces a bouquet held in the hand of a winged genius in the palace
of Assurnazirpal (Fig. 133).
[Illustration: FIG. 132.--Rosette.]
The lotus flower is to be found moreover in monuments much older than those
of the Sargonids, but that does not in any way disprove the hypothesis of
a direct plagiarism. The commercial relations between the valleys of the
Nile and the Euphrates date from a much more remote epoch, and about the
commencement of the eighteenth dynasty the Egyptians seem to have occupied
in force the basin of the Khabour, the principal affluent of the Euphrates.
Layard found many traces of their passage over and sojourn in that
district, among them a series of scarabs, many of which bore the
superscription of Thothmes III.[395] So that the points of contact were
numerous enough, and the mutual intercourse sufficiently intimate and
prolonged, to account for the assimilation by Mesopotamian artists of a
motive taken from the flora of Egypt and to be seen on almost every object
imported from the Nile valley. This imitation appears all the more probable
as in the paintings of Theban tombs dating from a much more remote period
than the oldest Ninevite remains, the pattern with its alternate bud and
flower is complete. Many examples may be found in the plates of Prisse
d'Avennes' great work;[396] one is reproduced in our Fig. 134.
[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Bouquet of flowers and buds; from Layard.]
[Illustration: FIG. 134.--Painted border; from Thebes, after Prisse.]
The Assyrians borrowed their motive from Egypt, but they gave it more than
Egyptian perfection. They gave it the definitive shapes that even Greece
did not disdain to copy. In the Egyptian frieze the cones and flowers are
disjointed; their isolation is unsatisfactory both to the eye and the
reason. In the Assyrian pattern they are attached to a continuous
undulating stem whose sinuous lines add greatly to the elegance of the
composition. The distinctive characters of the bud and flower are also very
well marked by the Assyrian artists. The closed petals of the one the open
ones of the other and the divisions of the calix are indicated in a
fashion that happily combines truth with convention. In our Fig. 135 we
reproduce, on a larger scale, a part of the slab already illustrated at
page 240, so that the merits of its workmanship may be better appreciated.
[Illustration: FIG. 135.--Fragment of a threshold; from Khorsabad. Louvre.
Drawn by Bourgoin.]
[Illustration: FIG. 136.--Door ornament; from Kouyundjik. After Rawlinson.]
The painter also made use of this motive. In a bas-relief from the palace
of Assurbanipal we find the round-headed doorway illustrated in Fig. 136.
Its rich decoration must have been carried out in glazed bricks, similar to
those discovered by M. Place on one of the gates of Khorsabad. Here,
however, the figures of supernatural beings are replaced by rosettes and by
two lines of the knop and flower ornament.
[Illustration: FIG. 137.--Palmette; from Layard.]
[Illustration: FIG. 138.--Goats and palmette; from Layard.]
Vegetable forms brought luck to the Assyrian decorator. Even after taking a
motive from a foreign style of ornament he understood, so to speak, how to
naturalize a plant and to make its forms expressive of his own
individuality. Our only difficulty is to make a choice among the numerous
illustrations of his inventive fertility; we shall confine ourselves to
reproducing the designs embroidered upon the royal robes of Assurnazirpal.
We need hardly say that these robes do not now exist, but the Ninevite
sculptor copied them in soft alabaster with an infinite patience that does
him honour. He has preserved for us every detail with the exception of
colour. The lotus is not to be found in this embroidery; its place is taken
by the palmette or tuft of leaves (Fig. 137), through which appear stems
bending with the weight of the buds they bear. Animals, real and imaginary,
are skilfully mingled with the fan-shaped palmettes; in one place we find
two goats (Fig. 138), in another two winged bulls (Fig. 139). Bulls and
goats are both alike on their knees before the palmette, which seems to
suggest that the latter is an abridged representation of that sacred tree
which we have already encountered and will encounter again in the
bas-reliefs, where it is surrounded by scenes of adoration and sacrifice.
This motive has the double advantage of awakening religious feeling in the
spectators, and of provoking a momentary elegance of line and movement in
the two pairs of animals. On the other hand we can hardly explain the
motive represented in our Figs. 140 and 141--a motive already met with in
the figured architecture of the bas-reliefs and in the glazed tiles--by
anything but an artistic caprice. In some cases the rosette and the
palmette are introduced in a single picture (142).
[Illustration: FIG. 139.--Winged bulls and palmette; from Layard.]
We have ventured to supplement the scanty remains of architectural
decoration by these illustrations from another art, because all Babylonian
ornament, whether for carpets, hangings, or draperies, for works in beaten
metal, in paint or enamelled faience, is governed by the same spirit and
marked by the same taste. In every form impressed upon matter by the
ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia the same symbols, the same types, and
the same motives are repeated to infinity. The examples we have brought
together suffice to show the principal characteristics of that decoration.
It had doubtless one great defect, it was too easily separated from the
building to which it belonged; it was fragile, apt to fall, and therefore
unlikely to have any very long duration. But the architect was not to blame
for that. The defect in question was consequent on the poverty of the
material with which he had to work. Given the conditions under which he
laboured, and we cannot deny that he showed great skill in making the best
of them. He understood how to contrast wide unbroken surfaces with certain
important parts of his _ensemble_, such as cornices, plinths, and
especially doorways. Upon these he concentrated the efforts of the painter
and sculptor; upon these he lavished all the hues of the Assyrian palette,
and embellished them with the carved figures of men and gods, of kings and
genii, of all the countless multitudes who had fought and died for Assyria
and its divine protector, the unconquered and unconquerable Assur.
[Illustration: FIG. 140.--Stag upon a palmette; from Layard.]
[Illustration: FIG. 141.--Winged bull upon a rosette; from Layard.]
If, not content with this general view of Assyrian decoration, we enter
into it in detail, we shall find its economy most judiciously arranged and
understood. When the sculptor set himself to carve the slabs that enframe a
door or those that protect the lower parts of a wall, he sought to render
what he saw or imagined as precisely and definitely as possible. He went to
nature for inspiration even when he carved imaginary beings, and copied
her, in fragments perhaps, but with a loyal and vigorous sincerity.
Everywhere, except in certain pictures with a strictly limited function, he
obeyed an imagination over which a sure judgment kept unsleeping watch. His
polychromatic decorations fulfilled their purpose of amusing and delighting
the eye without ever attempting to deceive it. Such is and must always be
the true principle of ornament, and the decorators of the great buildings
of Babylon and Nineveh seem to have thoroughly understood that it was so;
their rich and fertile fancy is governed, in every instance to which we can
point, with unfailing tact, and to them must be given the credit of having
invented not a few of the motives that may yet be traced in the art of the
Medes and Persians, in that of the Syrians, the Phoenicians, the peoples of
Asia Minor, and above all in that of the Greeks--those unrivalled masters
who gave immortality to every artistic combination that they chose to
adopt.
[Illustration: FIG. 142.--Stag, palmette, and rosette; from Layard.]
NOTES:
[326] The cuneiform texts mention the "two bulls at the door of the temple
E-schakil," the famous staged tower of Babylon. Fr. LENORMANT, _Les
Origines de l'Histoire_, vol. i. p. 114 (2nd edition, 1880).
[327] RICH, _Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811, and a
Memoir on the Ruins_, p. 64. LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 507. According to
Rich, this lion was of grey granite; according to Layard, of black basalt.
[328] LOFTUS says nothing of this lion in those _Travels and Researches_
which we have so often quoted. It was, perhaps, on a later occasion that he
found it. We came upon it in a collection of original sketches and
manuscript notes (_Drawings in Babylonia by W. K. Loftus and H. Churchill_)
in the custody of the keeper of Oriental antiquities at the British Museum.
We have to express our acknowledgments to Dr. Birch for permission to make
use of this valuable collection.
[329] PERROT, GUILLAUME ET DELBET, _Exploration archeologique de la
Galatie_, vol. ii. pl. 32.
[330] _Exploration archeologique_, vol. ii. pl. 11.
[331] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 508.
[332] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 68-70.
[333] This character of a tutelary divinity that we attribute to the winged
bull is indicated in the clearest manner in the cuneiform texts: "In this
palace," says Esarhaddon, "the _sedi_ and _lamassi_ (the Assyrian names for
these colossi) are propitious, are the guardians of my royal promenade and
the rejoicers of my heart, may they ever watch over the palace and never
quit its walls." And again: "I caused doors to be made in cypress, which
has a good smell, and I had them adorned with gold and silver and fixed in
the doorways. Right and left of those doorways I caused _sedi_ and
_lamassi_ of stone to be set up, they are placed there to repulse the
wicked." (ST. GUYARD, _Bulletin de la Religion assyrienne_, in the _Revue
de l'Histoire des Religions_, vol. i. p. 43, note.)
[334] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii, plate 21.
[335] Those in the Louvre are fourteen feet high; the tallest pair in the
British Museum are about the same.
[336] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 92, fig. 70.
[337] On the subject of these winged bulls see Fr. LENORMANT, _Les Origines
de l'Histoire_, vol. i. chap. 3.
[338] The bas-relief here reproduced comes from the palace of Assurbanipal
at Kouyundjik. In the fragment now in the Louvre there are three stories,
but the upper story, being an exact repetition of that immediately below
it, has been omitted in our engraving.
[339] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, p. 176. LAYARD, _Discoveries_, pp.
529, 651. BOTTA, _Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 44. In the book of Daniel
the hand that traces the warning words upon the walls of Belshazzar's
palace traces them "_upon the plaster of the wall_" (DANIEL v. 5).
[340] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 77.
[341] At Warka, however, LOFTUS found in the building he calls _Wuswas_ a
layer of plaster which was from two to four inches thick. (_Travels_, p.
176.)
[342] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. pp. 77, 78.
[343] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 25.
[344] _Ibid._ vol. i. pp. 141-146; vol. ii. pp. 79, 80; vol. iii. plates 36
and 37.
[345] HERODOTUS (Rawlinson's translation), i. 98.
[346] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plate 32.
[347] G. SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, pp. 77, 78. LAYARD (_Nineveh_, vol.
ii. p. 130) also says that some rooms had no other decoration.
[348] In writing thus we allude chiefly to the restorations given by Mr.
James Fergusson in _The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored_ (1 vol.
8vo. Murray), a work that was launched upon the world at far too early a
date, namely, in 1851. Sir H., then Mr., LAYARD, had not yet published his
second narrative (_Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_) nor
the second series of _Monuments of Nineveh_, neither had the great work of
MM. Place and Thomas on the palace of Sargon (a work to which we owe so
much new and authentic information) appeared. In Mr. Fergusson's
restorations the column is freely used and the vault excluded, so that in
many respects his work seems to us to be purely fanciful, and yet it is
implicitly accepted by English writers to this day. Professor RAWLINSON,
while criticising Mr. Fergusson in his text (_The Five Great Monarchies_,
vol. i. p. 303, note 6), reproduces his restoration of the great court at
Khorsabad, in which a colonnade is introduced upon the principle of the
hypostyle halls of Persepolis. Professor Rawlinson would, perhaps, have
been better advised had he refrained from thus popularizing a vision which,
as he himself very justly declares, is quite alien to the genius of
Assyrian architecture.
[349] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 187-189.
[350] LOFTUS thinks that the process was very common, at least in Lower
Chaldaea. He found cones imbedded in mortar at several other points in the
Warka ruins, but the example we have reproduced is the only one in which
well-marked designs could still be clearly traced. TAYLOR saw cones of the
same kind at Abou-Sharein. They had no inscriptions, and their bases were
black (_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 411). They
formed in all probability parts of a decoration similar to that described
by Loftus. In Egypt we find cones of terra-cotta crowning the facades of
certain Theban tombs (RHIND, _Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants_, p.
136). Decoratively they seem allied to the cones of Warka, but the
religious formulae they bear connects them rather with the cones found by M.
de Sarzec at Tello, which bear commemorative inscriptions. To these we
shall return at a later page.
[351] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 190, 191
[352] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 607. Rich also bears witness to the
abundance of these remains in his _Journey to the Ruins of Babylon_. See
also OPPERT, _Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. p. 143.
[353] A French traveller of the last century, DE BEAUCHAMP (he was consul
at Bagdad), heard an Arab workman and contractor describe a room he had
found in the Kasr, the walls of which were lined with enamelled bricks.
Upon one wall, he said, there was a cow with the sun and moon above it. His
story must, at least, have been founded on truth. No motive occurs oftener
in the Chaldaean monuments than a bull and the twin stars of the day and
night. (See RENNELL, _History of Herodotus_, p. 367.)
[354] LOFTUS collected some fragments of these enamelled bricks at Warka,
"similar to those found," he says, "at Babylon in the ruins of the Kasr"
(_Travels and Researches_, p. 185). TAYLOR also tells us that he found
numerous fragments of brick enamelled blue at Mugheir (_Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 262).
[355] The most interesting of these fragments, those that allow the subject
of which they formed a part to be still divined, have been published by M.
DE LONGPERIER, _Musee Napoleon III._ plate iv.
[356] I examined at the British Museum the originals of the glazed bricks
reproduced by Layard in his first series of _Monuments_, some of which we
have copied in our plates xiii. and xiv. The outlines of the ornament are
now hardly more than distinguishable, while the colour is no more than a
pale reflection.
[357] LOFTUS believes that the external faces of Assyrian walls were not,
as a rule, cased in enamelled bricks. He disengaged three sides of the
northern palace at Kouyundjik without finding any traces of polychromatic
decoration. (_Travels and Researches_, p. 397. note.)
[358] Kath' hon en omais eti tais plinthois dietetupoto theria, pantodapa
te ton chromaton philotechnia ten aletheian apomimoumena (DIODORUS, ii. 8,
4.) Diodorus expressly declares that he borrows this description from
Ctesias (hos Ktesias phesin), _ibid._ 5.
[359] Enesan de en tois purgois kai teichesi zoa pantodapa philotechnos
tois te chromasi kai tois ton tupon apomimasi kataskeuasmena. (DIODORUS,
ii. 8, 6.)
[360] Pantoion therion ... hon esan ta megethe pleion e pechon tettaron.
Four cubits was equal to about five feet eight inches. At Khorsabad the
tallest of the genii on the coloured tiles at the door are only 32 inches
high; others are not more than two feet.
[361] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plates 24 and 31.
[362] "The painting," says M. OPPERT, "was applied to a kind of roughly
blocked-out relief." (_Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. p. 144.)
[363] De Longperier, _Musee Napoleon III._, plate iv.
[364] This palace was then inhabited for a part of the year by the
Achemenid princes, of whom Ctesias was both the guest and physician.
[365] OPPERT, _Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. pp. 143, 144.
[366] Two of these enamelled letters are in the Louvre. See also upon this
subject, PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 86. I have also seen some in the
collection of M. Piot.
[367] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 236.
[368] Only two rafts arrived at Bassorah; eight left Mossoul, so that only
about a fourth of the antiquities collected reached their destination in
safety. The cases with the objects despatched by the Babylonian mission,
that is by MM. Fresnel, Oppert, and Thomas, were included in the same
disaster. But for this the Assyrian collections of the Louvre would be less
inferior than they are to those of the British Museum.
[369] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 253.
[370] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. ii. p. 253. These marks were recognized upon
many fragments found at Babylon by MM. Oppert and Thomas (OPPERT,
_Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. pp. 143, 144). LOFTUS has transcribed
and published a certain number of marks of the same kind which he found
upon glazed bricks from the palace at Suza. These are sometimes cut in the
brick with a point, sometimes painted with enamel like that on the face.
(_Travels and Researches_, p. 398.)
[371] EZEKIEL xxiii. 14, 15.
[372] BEROSUS, fragment i. Sec. 4, in vol. ii. of the _Fragmenta Historicorum
Graecorum_ of Ch. MUeLLER.
[373] TEXIER, _Armenie et Perse_, vol. ii. p. 134. In the same work the
details of the magnificent decoration upon the mosque of the Sunnites at
Tauris (which afforded a model for that at Ispahan) will be found
reproduced in their original colours. It is strange that this art of
enamelled faience, after being preserved so long, should so recently have
become extinct in the East. "At the commencement of the last century," says
M. TEXIER (vol. ii. p. 138), "the art of enamelling bricks was no less
prosperous in Persia than in the time of Shah-Abbas, the builder of the
great mosque at Ispahan (1587-1629); but now the art is completely extinct,
and in spite of my desire to visit a factory where I might see the work in
progress, there was not one to be found from one end of Ispahan to the
other." According to the information I gathered in Asia Minor, it was also
towards the beginning of the present century that the workshops of Nicaea
and Nicomedia, in which the fine enamelled tiles on the mosques at Broussa
were made, were finally closed. In these _fabriques_ the plaques which have
been found in such abundance for some twenty years past in Rhodes and other
islands of the Archipelago were also manufactured. [The manufacture of
these glazed tiles is by no means extinct in India, however. At many
centres in Sindh and the Punjab, glazed tiles almost exactly similar to
those on the mosque at Ispahan, so far as colours and ornamental motives
are concerned, are made in great numbers and used for the same purposes as
in Persia and ancient Mesopotamia. There is a tradition in India that the
art was brought from China, through Persia, by the soldiers of Gingiz-Khan,
but a study of the tiles themselves is enough to show that they are a
survival from the art manufactures of Babylon and Nineveh. For detailed
information on the history and processes used in the manufacture of these
tiles, see Sir George BIRDWOOD'S _Industrial Arts of India_, part ii. pp.
304-310, 321, and 330; also Mr. DRURY FORTNUM'S report on the Sindh pottery
in the International Exhibition of 1871.--ED.]
[374] Sir H. LAYARD noticed this at the very beginning of his explorations:
"Between the bulls and the lions forming the entrances in different parts
of the palace were invariably found a large collection of baked bricks,
elaborately painted with figures of animals and flowers, and with cuneiform
characters" (_Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 13).
[375] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 234; vol. iii. plates 9 and 17.
[376] _Ibid._ vol. iii. plate 14. We should have reproduced this
composition in colour had the size of our page allowed us to do so on a
proper scale. M. Place was unable to give it all even in a double-page
plate of his huge folio.
[377] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. iii. plates 23-31.
[378] Layard, _Monuments_, 2nd series, plates 53, 54. Elsewhere
(_Discoveries_, pp. 166-168) Layard has given a catalogue and summary
description of all these fragments, of which only a part were reproduced in
the plates of his great collection.
[379] _Ibid._ plate 55.
[380] GEO. SMITH, _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 79.
[381] Botta gives examples of some of these bricks (_Monument de Ninive_,
plates 155, 156). Among the motives there reproduced there is one that we
have already seen in the bas-reliefs (fig. 67). It is a goat standing in
the collected attitude he would take on a point of rock. The head of the
ibex is also a not uncommon motive (LAYARD, _Monuments_, first series,
plate 87, fig. 2; see also BOTTA).
[382] Fig. 1 of our Plate XIV. reproduces the same design, but with a more
simple colouration.
[383] J. E. TAYLOR, _Notes on Abou-Sharein_, p. 407 (in the _Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv.).
[384] PHILOSTRATUS, _Life of Apollonius_, i. 25. Cf. DIONYSIUS PERIEGETES,
who says of Semiramis (v. 1007, 1008):
autar ep' akropolei megan domon eisato Beloi
chrusoi t' ed' elephanti kai aguroi askesasa.
[385] HERODOTUS, i. 98.
[386] See above, p. 202.
[387] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 264, note 1. Frequent allusions to
this use of metal are to be found in the wedges. In M. LENORMANT'S
translation of the London inscription (_Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. p.
233, 3rd edition) in which Nebuchadnezzar enumerates the great works he had
done at Borsippa, I find the following words: "I have covered the roof of
Nebo's place of repose with gold. The beams of the door before the oracles
have been overlaid with silver ... the pivot of the door into the woman's
chamber I have covered with silver."
[388] Among the fragments of tiles brought from Nimroud by Mr. George
Smith, and now in the British Museum, there are two like those reproduced
above, to which bosses or knobs of the same material--glazed
earthenware--are attached. The necks of these bosses are pierced with holes
apparently to receive the chain of a hanging lamp, and are surrounded at
their base with inscriptions of Assurnazirpal stating that they formed part
of the decoration of a temple at Calah.--ED.
[389] The size of our engraving is slightly above that of the object
itself.
[390] 1 _Kings_ vi. 15; vii. 3.
[391] ZEPHANIAH ii. 14.
[392] The design consists entirely in the symmetrical repetition of the
details here given. [In this engraving the actual design of the pavement
has been somewhat simplified. Between the knop and flower that forms the
outer border and the rosettes there is a band of ornament consisting of the
symmetrical repetition of the palmette motive with rudimentary volutes,
much as it occurs round the outside of the tree of life figured on page
213. In another detail our cut differs slightly from the original. In the
latter there is no corner piece; the border runs entirely across the end,
and the side borders are stopped against it.--ED.]
[393] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 184, note.
[394] LAYARD, _Nineveh_. vol. ii. p. 212, note.
[395] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 281.
[396] PRISSE D'AVENNES, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien d'apres les Monuments_
(2 vols folio): see the plates entitled _Couronnements et Frises
fleuronnes_.
Sec. 8.--_On the Orientation of Buildings and Foundation Ceremonies._
The inhabitants of Mesopotamia were so much impressed by celestial
phenomena, and believed so firmly in the influence of the stars over human
destiny, that they were sure to establish some connection between those
heavenly bodies and the arrangement of their edifices. All the buildings
of Chaldaea and Assyria are orientated; the principle is everywhere
observed, but it is not always understood in the same fashion.
[Illustration: FIG. 143.--Plan of a temple at Mugheir; from Loftus.]
Mesopotamian buildings were always rectangular and often square on plan,
and it is sometimes the angles and sometimes the centres of each face that
are directed to the four cardinal points. It will easily be understood that
the former system was generally preferred. The facades were of such extent
that their direction to a certain point of the horizon was not evident,
while salient angles, on the other hand, had all the precision of an
astronomical calculation; and this the earliest architects of the Chaldees
thoroughly understood. Some of the buildings examined by Loftus and Taylor
on the lower Euphrates may have been restored, more or less, by
Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, but it is generally acknowledged that
the lower and less easily injured parts of most of these buildings date
from the very beginnings of that civilization, and were constructed by the
princes of the early empire. Now both at Warka and at Mugheir one corner of
a building is always turned towards the true north.[397] An instance of
this may be given in the little building at Mugheir in which the lower
parts of a temple have been recognized (Fig. 143). The same arrangement is
to be found in the palace excavated by M. de Sarzec at Tello.[398]
[Illustration: FIG. 144.--Plan of the town and palace of Sargon at
Khorsabad; from Place.]
Most of the Assyrian architects did likewise. See for example the plan of
Sargon's city, Dour-Saryoukin (Fig. 144). Its circumvallation incloses an
almost exact square, the diagonals of which point to the north, south,
east and west respectively.[399] In the large scale plans that we shall
give farther on of the palace and of some of its parts it will be seen that
the parallelograms of which that building was composed also had their
angles turned to the four cardinal points. It was the same with the
structures sprinkled over the summit of the vast mound of Kouyundjik, in
the centre of what once was Nineveh.
[Illustration: FIG. 145.--General plan of the remains at Nimroud; from
Layard.
1, 2, 3 Trenches, 4 Central palace, 5 Tombs, 6 South-eastern edifice, 7
South-western palace, 8 North-western palace, 9 High pyramidal mound.]
On the other hand in those ruins at Nimroud that have been identified with
the ancient Calah, it is the sides of the mound and of the buildings upon
it that face the four cardinal points (Fig. 145). The plan given by Layard
of the square staged tower disengaged in his last digging campaign at the
north-western angle of the mound shows this more clearly.[400] Nearly half
the northern side is occupied by the salient circular mass that is such a
conspicuous object to one looking at the mound from the plain. We do not
know what caused this deviation from the traditional custom; a reason
should perhaps be sought in the configuration of the ground, and in the
course here followed by the river which then bathed the foot of the
artificial hill upon which stood the royal dwellings of the
Tiglath-Pilesers and Assurnazirpals.
The first of these two methods of orientation had the advantage of
establishing a more exact and well defined relation between the disposition
of the building and those celestial points to which a peculiar importance
was attached. It must also be remembered that such an arrangement gave a
more agreeable dwelling than the other. No facade being turned directly to
the north there was none entirely deprived of sunlight, while at the same
time there was none that faced due south. The sun as it ran its daily
course would light for a time each face in turn.
The religious ideas that led to orientation are revealed in other details,
in the time chosen for commencing the foundations of temples or palaces,
and in certain rites that were accomplished afterwards--doubtless with the
help of the priesthood--in order to place the building under the protection
of the gods and to interest them in its duration. There were ceremonies
analogous to those now practised when we lay foundation stones. In the
Chaldee system the first stone, the seed from which the rest of the edifice
was to spring, was an angle stone, under or in which were deposited
inscribed plaques. These contained the name of the founder, together with
prayers to the gods and imprecations on all who should menace the stability
of the building. This custom dated from the very beginning of Chaldaean
civilization, as is proved by a curious text translated by M. Oppert.[401]
It was discovered at Sippara and dates from the time of Nabounid, one of
the last kings of Babylon. Many centuries before the reign of that prince a
temple raised to the sun by Sagaraktyas, of the first dynasty, had been
destroyed, and its foundations were traditionally said to inclose the
sacred tablets of Xisouthros, who has been identified with the Noah of the
Bible. Nabounid recounts the unsuccessful efforts that had been made before
his time to recover possession of the precious deposit. Two kings of
Babylon, Kourigalzou and Nebuchadnezzar, and one king of Assyria,
Esarhaddon, had made the attempt and failed. One of the three had
commemorated his failure in an inscription to the following effect: "I have
searched for the angle stone of the temple of Ulbar but I have not found
it." Finally Nabounid took up the quest. After one check caused by an
inundation he renewed the search with ardour; he employed his army upon it,
and at last, after digging to a great depth, he came to the angle-stone:
"Thus," he says, "have I recovered the name and date of Sagaraktyas."
[Illustration: FIG. 146.--Bronze statuette. 8-1/4 inches high. Louvre.]
In the ruins of the ancient royal city recovered by M. de Sarzec at Tello
the traces of similar precautions have everywhere been found. In the
middle of the great mass of ruins whose plan we are still awaiting, "I
found," says M. de Sarzec, "at a depth of hardly 30 centimetres (one foot
English) below the original level of the soil four cubical masses
consisting of large bricks cemented with bitumen, and measuring about 80
centimetres across each face. In the centre of each cube there was a cavity
27 centimetres long by 12 wide and 35 deep. In each case this hollow
contained a small bronze statuette packed, as it were, in an impalpable
dust. In one cavity the statuette was that of a kneeling man (Fig. 146), in
another of a standing woman (Fig. 147), in another of a bull (Fig. 148). At
the feet of each statue there were two stone tablets, set in most cases in
the bitumen with which the cavity was lined. One of these tablets was
black, the other white. It was upon the black as a rule that a cuneiform
inscription similar, or nearly so, to the inscriptions on the statuettes
was found."[402]
Abridgments of the same commemorative and devotional form of words are
found upon those cones of terra-cotta that were discovered in such numbers
among the foundations and in the interstices of the structure (Fig.
149).[403]
[Illustration: FIG. 147.--Bronze statuette. 8-1/4 inches high. Louvre.]
The Mesopotamian builder was not satisfied with relying upon talismans
built into the lower part of a building or strewn under the pavements.
Taylor ascertained at Mugheir and Loftus at Sinkara that engraved cylinders
were built into the four angles of the upper stories. A brick had been
omitted, leaving a small niche in which they were set up on end.[404]
Profiting by the hint thus given Sir Henry Rawlinson excavated the angles
of one of the terraces of the Birs-Nimroud at Babylon, and to the
astonishment of his workmen he found the terra-cotta cylinders upon which
the reconstruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar is narrated exactly at
the point where he told them to dig.[405] These little tubs are called
cylinders--a not very happy title. As some of them are about three feet
high (Fig. 150) they can take commemorative inscriptions of vastly greater
length than those cut upon small hard-stone cylinders. Some of these
inscriptions have as many as a hundred lines very finely engraved. Many
precious specimens dating from the times of Nebuchadnezzar and his
successors have been found in the ruins of Babylon.[406]
[Illustration: FIG. 148.--Bronze statuette. 10 inches high. Louvre.]
Thus from the beginning to the end of Chaldaean civilization the custom was
preserved of consecrating a building by hiding in its substance objects to
which a divine type and an engraved text gave both a talismanic and a
commemorative value.
As might be supposed the same usage was followed in Assyria. In the palace
of Assurnazirpal at Nimroud, Sir Henry Layard found some alabaster tablets
with inscriptions on both their faces hidden behind the colossal lions at
one of the doorways.[407] The British Museum also possesses a series of
small figures found at Nimroud but in a comparatively modern building, the
palace of Esarhaddon. They have each two pairs of wings, one pair raised,
the other depressed. They had been strewn in the sand under the threshold
of one of the doors.
[Illustration: FIG. 149.--Terra-cotta cone. Height 6 inches. Louvre.]
It was at Khorsabad, however, that the observations were made which have
most clearly shown the importance attached to this ceremony of
consecration. M. Oppert tells us that during the summer of 1854, "M. Place
disinterred from the foundations of Khorsabad a stone case in which were
five inscriptions on five different materials, gold, silver, antimony,
copper and lead. Of these five tablets he brought away four. The leaden one
was too heavy to be carried off at once, and it was despatched to Bassorah
on the rafts with the bulk of the collection, whose fate it shared." The
other four tablets are in the Louvre. Their text is almost identical. M.
Oppert gives a translation of it.[408] According to his rendering, the
inscription--in which the king speaks throughout in the first person--ends
with this imprecation: "May the great lord Assur destroy from the face of
this country the name and race of him who shall injure the works of my
hand, or who shall carry off my treasure!"
A little higher up, where Sargon recounts the founding of the palace,
occurs a phrase which M. Oppert translates: "The people threw their
amulets." What Sargon meant by this the excavations of M. Place have shown.
In the foundations of the town walls, and especially in the beds of sand
between the bases of the sculptured bulls that guard the doorways, he found
hundreds of small objects, such as cylinders, cones, and terra-cotta
statuettes. The most curious of these are now deposited in the Louvre. The
numbers and the character of these things prove that a great number of the
people must have assisted at the ceremony of consecration.
[Illustration: FIG. 150.--Terra-cotta cylinder. One-third of actual size;
from Place.]
Several of these amulets were not without value either for their material
or their workmanship, but the great majority were of the roughest kind,
some being merely shells or stones with a hole through them, which must
have belonged to the poorest class of the community. In many cases their
proper use could be easily divined; the holes with which they were pierced
and other marks of wear showed them to be personal amulets.[409] Those
present at the ceremony of consecrating the foundations must have detached
them from the cords by which they were suspended, and thrown them, upon the
utterance of some propitiatory formula by the priests, into the sand about
to be covered with the first large slabs of alabaster.
The terra-cotta cylinders were in no less frequent use in Assyria than in
Chaldaea. M. Place found no less than fourteen still in place in niches of
the harem walls at Khorsabad. The long inscription they bore contained
circumstantial details of the construction of both town and palace. Like
that on the metal tablets, it ended with a malediction on all who should
dare to raise their hands against the work of Sargon.[410]
As for the cylinders hidden in each angle of a building, none, we believe,
have as yet been found in Assyria; perhaps because no search or an
inefficient search has been made for them.
We have dwelt at some length upon the orientation of buildings, upon the
importance attached to their angle stones, and upon the precautions taken
to place an edifice under the protection of the gods, and to preserve the
name of its founder from oblivion. We can point to no stronger evidence
than that furnished by these proceedings as a whole, of the high
civilization to which the people of Chaldaea and Assyria had attained at a
very early date. The temple and palace did not spread themselves out upon
the soil at the word of a capricious and individual fancy; a constant will
governed the arrangement of its plan, solemn rites inaugurated its
construction and recommended its welfare to the gods. The texts tell us
nothing about the architects, who raised so many noble monuments; we know
neither their names, nor their social condition, but we can divine from
their works that they had strongly established traditions, and that they
could look back upon a solid and careful education for their profession. As
to whether they formed one of those close corporations in which the secrets
of a trade are handed down from generation to generation of their members,
or whether they belonged to the sacerdotal caste, we do not know. We are
inclined to the latter supposition in some degree by the profoundly
religious character of the ceremonies that accompanied the inception of a
building, and by the accounts left by the ancients of those priests whom
they called _the Chaldaeans_. It was to these Chaldaeans that Mesopotamian
society owed all it knew of scientific methods and modes of thought, and
it is, perhaps, fair to suppose that they turned to the practice of the
arts those intellects which they had cultivated above their fellows.
Architecture especially requires something more than manual skill,
practice, and natural genius. When it is carried so far as it was in
Chaldaea it demands a certain amount of science, and the priests who by
right of their intellectual superiority held such an important place in the
state, may well have contrived to gain a monopoly as architects to the
king. In their persons alone would the scientific knowledge required for
such work be combined with the power to accomplish those sacred rites which
gave to the commencement of a new building the character of a contract
between man and his deity.
NOTES:
[397] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, p. 171.
[398] _Les Fouilles de Chaldee, communication d'une Lettre de M. de Sarzec
par M. Leon Heuzey_, Sec. 2 (_Revue archeologique_, November, 1881).
[399] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. pp. 17, 18. BOTTA had previously made the
same observation (_Monument de Ninive_, vol. v. p. 25).
[400] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, plan 2, p. 123.
[401] OPPERT, _Expedition scientifique de Mesopotamie_, vol. i. p. 273.
[402] _Les Fouilles de Chaldee, communication d'une Lettre de M. de
Sarzec_, by M. Leon HEUZEY (_Revue archeologique_, November, 1881).
[403] As to the notions attached to these cones, whether sprinkled about
the foundations of a building, set up in certain sanctuaries, or carried
upon the person, an article published by M. LEDRAIN, _a propos_ of an agate
cone recently added to the collections of the Louvre, may be read with
advantage. Its full title is _Une Page de Mythologie semitique_ (_la
Philosophie positive, Revue_, 14th year, 1882, pp. 209-213).
[404] Taylor, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir_ (_Journal_, &c. vol. xv., pp.
263, 264). LOFTUS, _Travels_, &c. p. 247.
[405] See the _Athenaeum_ for January 20, 1855 (No. 1421), p. 84. "After two
months' excavation Colonel Rawlinson was summoned to the work by the
information that ... a wall had been found and laid bare to a distance of
190 feet, and that it turned off at right angles at each end, to be
apparently carried all round the mound, forming a square of about
twenty-seven feet in height, surmounted by a platform. He immediately rode
to the excavation, examined the spot, where he found the workmen quite
discouraged and hopeless, having laboured long and found nothing. He was
now, however, well aware of these facts, and at once pointed out the spot,
near the corner, where the bricks should be removed. In half an hour a
small hollow was found, from which he immediately directed the head workman
to 'bring out the commemorative cylinder'--a command which, to the wonder
and bewilderment of the people, was immediately obeyed; and a cylinder
covered with inscriptions was drawn out from its hiding-place of
twenty-four centuries, as fresh as when deposited there by the hands,
probably, of Nebuchadnezzar himself! The Colonel added in a note that the
fame of his magical power had flown to Bagdad, and that he was besieged
with applications for the loan of his wonderful instrument to be used in
the discovery of hidden treasures!"
[406] Among these we may mention the Philips cylinder, from which, in
speaking of the great works carried out by Nebuchadnezzar, LENORMANT gives
long extracts in his _Manuel d'Histoire ancienne_, vol. ii. pp. 233 and
235.
[407] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. i. p. 115, and vol. ii. p. 91.
[408] OPPERT, _Expedition en Mesopotamie_, vol. ii. pp. 343-351.
[409] PLACE, _Ninive_, vol. i. p. 188.
[410] OPPERT, _Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. pp. 354 _et seq._
Sec. 9.--_Mechanical Resources._
The Chaldaeans and Assyrians were never called upon to transport such
enormous masses as some of the Egyptian monoliths, such as the obelisks and
the two great colossi at Thebes. But the stone bulls that decorated the
palaces of Nineveh were no light weight, and it was not without difficulty
that the modern explorers succeeded in conveying them to the borders of the
Tigris and loading them on the rafts upon which they began their long
journeys to Paris and London. In moving such objects from place to place
the Assyrians, like the Egyptians, had no secret beyond that of patience,
and the unflinching use of human arms and shoulders in unstinted
number.[411] We know this from monuments in which the details of the
operation are figured even more clearly and with more pictorial power than
in the bas-relief at El-Bercheh, which has served to make us acquainted
with the methods employed in taking an Egyptian colossus from the quarry to
its site.
In Mesopotamia, as in Egypt, there were waterways that could be used at any
season for the transport of heavy masses. Quarries were made as near the
banks of the Euphrates and Tigris as possible, and when a stone monster had
to be carried to a town situated at some distance from both those rivers
the canals by which the country was intersected in every direction supplied
their place. Going down stream, and especially in flood time, no means of
propulsion were required; the course of the boats or rafts was directed by
means of heavy oars like those still used by the boatmen who navigate the
Tigris in _keleks_, or rafts, supported on inflated hides; in ascending the
streams towing was called into play, as we know from one of the Kouyundjik
bas-reliefs.[412] In this the stone in course of transport is oblong in
shape and is placed upon a wide flat boat, beyond which it extends both at
the stern and the bows. It is securely fastened with pieces of wood held
together by strong pins. There are three tow ropes, two fastened to the
stone itself and the third to the bow of the boat.
The towers pull upon these cables by means of smaller cords passed round
the shoulders of each and spliced to the main ropes; by such means they
could bring far more weight to bear than if they had been content to hold
the cable in their hands, as in Egypt. The bas-relief in question is
mutilated, but we may guess that a hundred men were attached to each cable,
which would make three hundred in all obeying the single will of the
superintending engineer who is perched upon the stone and directing their
movements. On each flank of the gang march overseers armed with swords and
rattans that would be quick to descend on the back and loins of any
shirker.
More than one instance of such punishment may be seen on the bas-relief
reproduced in part in our Fig. 151. In its lower division two or three of
these slave-drivers may be seen with their hands raised against the
workmen; in one case the latter sinks to the ground beneath the blows
rained upon him. The way in which the whole series of operations is
represented in this Kouyundjik relief is most curious. High up in the field
we often find the king himself, standing in his chariot and urging on the
work. The whole occupies several of Layard's large plates. We can only
reproduce the central group, which is the most interesting to the student
of engineering in ancient Mesopotamia.
[Illustration: FIG. 151.--The transport of a bull. Height of the slab, 7
feet 3 inches; British Museum.]
The block of alabaster that we saw a moment ago on a boat towed by hundreds
of human arms has been delivered to the sculptors and has put on, under
their hands, the rough form of a mitred, human-headed bull. It will be
completed after being put in place; the last touches of the chisel and the
brush will then be given to it; but the heaviest part of the work is
already done and the block has lost much of its original size and weight.
Firmly packed with timber, the bull lies upon its side upon a sledge which
is curved in front like a boat, or a modern sleigh. Two cables are fastened
to its prow and two to its stern. The engineer is again seated upon the
stone and claps his hands to give the time, but now he is accompanied by
three soldiers who appear to support his authority by voice and gesture. In
order to prevent friction and to facilitate the movement of the sledge,
rollers are thrust beneath its runners as they progress. Before the huge
mass will start, however, the straining cords and muscles have to be helped
by a thrust from behind. This is given by means of a huge lever, upon which
a number of men pull with all their weight, while its curved foot is
engaged under the sledge. A workman is occupied with the reinforcement of
the fulcrum by thrusting a wedge in between its upper surface and the lower
edge of the lever. When everything is ready a signal will be given, the men
behind will throw their weight upon the lever, the sledge will rise a
little, the ropes will strain and tighten, and the heavy mass will glide
forward upon the greased rollers until arms and legs give out and an
interval for rest is called, to be followed presently by a repetition of
the same process. Every precaution is taken to minimize the effect of any
accident that may take place in the course of the operation. Behind the
sledge spare ropes and levers are carried, some upon men's backs, others on
small handcarts. There are also a number of workmen carrying rollers.
We shall only refer to one more of these reliefs and that the one with
which the series appears to close (Fig. 152). This carved picture has been
thought, not without reason, to represent the erection of the bull[413] in
its destined place. After its slow but uninterrupted march the huge monster
has arrived upon the plateau where it has been awaited. By one great final
effort it has been dragged up an inclined plane to the summit of the mound
and has been set upon its feet. Nothing remains to be done but to pull and
thrust it into its place against the doorway it has to guard and ornament.
The same sledge, the same rollers, the same lever, the same precautions
against accident are to be recognized here as in the last picture. The only
difference is in the position of the statue itself. Standing upright like
this it is much more liable to injury than when prone on its flank. New
safeguards have therefore been introduced. It is packed under its belly
with squares of wood and inclosed in scaffolding to prevent dangerous
vibration. Additional precautions against this latter danger are provided
by gangs of men who walk at each side and hold, some ropes fastened to the
uprights of the scaffolding, others long forked poles engaged under its
horizontal pieces. By these means equilibrium could be restored after any
extra oscillation on the part of the sledge and its burden.
All these manoeuvres are remarkable for the skill and prodigality with
which human strength was employed; of all the scientific tools invented to
economise effort and to shorten the duration of a task, the only one they
seem ever to have used was the most simple of all, the lever, an instrument
that must have been invented over and over again wherever men tried to lift
masses of stone or wood from the ground. Its discovery must, in fact, have
taken place long before the commencement of what we call civilization,
although its theory was first expounded by the Greek mathematicians.
[Illustration: FIG. 152.--Putting a bull in place; from Layard.]
In a relief in the palace of Assurnazirpal at Nimroud, there is a pulley
exactly similar to those often seen over a modern well.[414] A cord runs
over it and supports a bucket. There is no evidence that the Assyrians
employed such a contrivance for any purpose but the raising of water. We
cannot say that they used it to lift heavy weights, but the fact that they
understood its principle puts them slightly above the Egyptians as
engineers.
NOTES:
[411] As to the simplicity of Egyptian engineering, see the _History of Art
in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 72, and fig. 43.
[412] See LAYARD, _Monuments_, 2nd series, plate ii. The same author gives
a detailed description of this picture in his _Discoveries_, pp. 104-106.
[413] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 112.
[414] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 32.
Sec. 10.--_On the Graphic Processes Employed in the Representations of
Buildings._
The Chaldaeans and Assyrians knew as little of perspective as they did of
mechanics. When they had to figure a building and its contents, or a
landscape background, they could not resist the temptation of combining
many things which could not be seen from a single standpoint. Like the
painters and sculptors of Thebes they mixed up in the most naive fashion
those graphic processes that we keep carefully apart. All that they cared
about was to be understood. We need not here reproduce the observations we
made on this subject in the corresponding chapter of Egyptian Art;[415] it
will suffice to give a few examples of the simultaneous employment by
Ninevite sculptors of contradictory systems.
[Illustration: FIG. 153.--Chaldaean plan. Louvre.]
It is not difficult to cite examples of things that may, with some little
ingenuity, be brought within the definition of a plan. The most curious and
strongly marked of these is furnished by one of the most ancient monuments
that have come down to us; we mean a statue found at Tello in Lower Chaldaea
by M. de Sarzec. It represents a personage seated and holding on his knees
an engraved tablet on which two or three different things are represented
(Fig. 153). On the right there is one of those styles with which letters or
images were cut in the soft clay, at the bottom of the tablet there is a
scale which we know from another monument of the same kind to have been
originally 10.8 inches in length, _i.e._ the Babylonian half-cubit or span.
By far the larger part of the field, however, is occupied by an irregular
figure in which the trace of a fortified wall may be easily recognized.
When these monuments were first brought to France this statue was supposed
to be that of an architect. When the inscriptions were interpreted,
however, this opinion had to be modified in some degree. They were found to
contain the same royal title as the other figure of similar style and
material discovered by M. de Sarzec on the same spot, the title, namely, of
the individual whom archaeologists have at present agreed to call
Gudea.[416] It therefore seems to represent that prince in the character of
an architect, as the constructor of the building in which his statues were
placed as a sacred deposit. Must we take it to be the plan of his royal
city as a whole, or only of his palace? It is difficult to answer this
question, especially while no precise information has been obtained from
the inscriptions, whose interpretation presents many difficulties. There
can, however, be no doubt that the engraver has given us a plan according
to his lights of a wall strengthened by flanking towers, of which those
with the boldest salience guard the six passages into the interior.
We find a still more simple plan upon an Assyrian monument of much later
date, namely, upon the armour of beaten bronze that formerly protected the
gates of Balawat. In this example (Fig. 154) the doorways, the angles, and
the centres of the two longer curtains are strengthened by towers.
[Illustration: FIG. 154.--Assyrian plan; from the Balawat gates in the
British Museum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 155.--Plan and section of a fortress; from Layard.]
The way in which the sculptor has endeavoured to suggest the crenellations
shows that these plans are not drawn on the same principal as ours; there
is no section taken at the junction with the soil or at a determined
height; the draughtsman in all probability wished to give an idea of the
height of the flanking towers. His representation is an ideal _projection_
similar to those of which we find so many examples in Egypt, only that here
we have the towers laid flat outside the fortification to which they belong
in such a fashion that their summits are as far as possible from the centre
of the structure. We shall see this better in another plan of the same kind
in which the details are more carefully made out (Fig. 155). It comes from
a bas-relief, on which a circular fortress, divided into four equal parts
by walls radiating from its centre, is portrayed.
In this relief we find another favourite process of the Egyptians employed,
namely, that in which a vertical section is combined with a projection, so
that the interior of the building and its arrangements may be laid open to
the spectator. In this instance we can see what is passing in the four
principal chambers of the castle. In each chamber one or two persons are
occupied over what appear to be religious rites.
[Illustration: FIG. 156.--Plan, section, and elevation of a fortified city;
from Layard.]
In another Nimroud bas-relief we find a still greater variety of processes
used upon a single work (Fig. 156). The picture shows the king enthroned in
the centre of a fortified city which he has just captured. Prisoners are
being brought before him; his victorious troops have erected their tents in
the city itself. Beside these tents three houses of unequal size represent
the dwellings of the conquered. The _enceinte_ with its towers is
projected on the soil in the fashion above noticed; a longitudinal section
lays bare the interiors of the tents and shows us the soldiers at their
various occupations. As for the houses, they are represented by their
principal facades, which are drawn in elevation.
[Illustration: FIG. 157.--Plan and elevation of a fortified city; from
Layard.]
When he had to deal with more complicated images, as in the reliefs at
Kouyundjik representing the conquests and expeditions of Assurbanipal, the
artist modified his processes at will so as to combine in the narrow space
at his disposal all the information that he thought fit to give. See for
instance the relief in which the Assyrians celebrate their capture of
Madaktu, an important city of Susiana, by a sort of triumph (Fig. 157).
The town itself, with its towered walls and its suburbs in which every
house is sheltered by a date tree, is figured in the centre. At the top and
sides the walls are projected outwards from the city; at the bottom they
are thrown inwards in order, no doubt, to leave room for the tops of the
date trees. Moreover, the sculptor had to find room for a large building on
the right of his fortification. This is, apparently, the palace of the
king. Guarded by a barbican and surrounded by trees it rises upon its
artificial mound some little distance in front of the city. The artist also
wished to show that palace and city were protected by a winding river
teeming with fish, into which fell a narrower stream in the neighbourhood
of the palace. If he had projected the walls of the palace and its barbican
in the same way as those of the other buildings he would either have had to
encroach upon his streams and to hide their junction or to divert their
course. In order to avoid this he made use of several points of view, and
laid his two chief structures on the ground in such a fashion that they
form an oblique angle with the rest of the buildings. The result thus
obtained looks strange to us, but it fulfilled his purpose; it gave a clear
idea of how the various buildings were situated with respect to each other
and it reproduced with fidelity the topographical features of the conquered
country.
The chief desire of the sculptor was to be understood. That governing
thought can nowhere be more clearly traced than in one of the reliefs
dealing with the exploits of Sennacherib.[417] Here he had to explain that
in order to penetrate into a mountainous country like Armenia, the king had
been compelled to follow the bed of a torrent between high wooded banks. In
the middle of the picture we see the king in his chariot, followed by
horsemen and foot soldiers marching in the water. Towards the summit of the
relief, the heights that overhang the stream are represented by the usual
network. But how to represent the wooded mountains on this side of the
water? The artist has readily solved the question, according to his lights,
by showing the near mountains and their trees upside down, a solution which
is quite on all fours, in principle, with the plans above described. The
hills are projected on each side of the line made by the torrent, so that
it runs along their bases, as it does in fact; but in this case the
topsy-turviness of the trees and hills has a very startling effect. The
intentions of the artist, however, are perfectly obvious; his process is
childish, but it is quite clear.
None of these plans or pictures have, any more than those of Egypt, a scale
by which the proportions of the objects introduced can be judged. The men,
who were more important in the eye of the artist than the buildings, are
always taller than the houses and towers. This will be seen still more
clearly in the figure we reproduce from the Balawat gates (Fig. 158). It
represents a fortress besieged by Shalmaneser II., three people stand upon
the roof of the building; if we restore their lower limbs we shall see that
their height is equal to that of the castle itself.[418]
[Illustration: FIG. 158.--Fortress with its defenders; from the Balawat
gates.]
This short examination of the spirit and principles of Assyrian figuration
was necessary in order to prevent embarrassment and doubt in speaking of
the architectural designs and other things of the same kind that we may
find reproduced in the bas-reliefs. Unless we had thoroughly understood the
system of which the sculptors made use, we should have been unable to base
our restorations upon their works in any important degree; and, besides, if
there be one touchstone more sure than another by which we may determine
the plastic genius of a people, it is the ingenuity, or the want of it,
shown in the contrivance of means to make lines represent the thickness of
bodies and the distances of various planes. In this matter Chaldaea and
Assyria remained, like Egypt, in the infancy of art. They were even
excelled by the Egyptians, who showed more taste and continuity in the
management of their processes than their Eastern rivals. Nothing so absurd
is to be found in the sculptures of the Nile valley as these hills and
trees turned upside down, and we shall presently see that a like
superiority is shown in the way figures are brought together in the
bas-reliefs. In our second volume on Egyptian art we drew attention to some
Theban sculptures in which a vague suspicion of the true laws of
perspective seemed to be struggling to light. The attempt to apply them to
the composition of certain groups was real, though timid. Nothing of the
kind is to be found in Assyrian sculpture. The Mesopotamian artist never
seems for a moment to have doubted the virtues of his own method, a method
which consisted in placing the numerous figures, whose position in a space
of more or less depth he wished to suggest, one above another on the field
of his relief. He trusted, in fact, to the intelligence of the spectator,
and took but little pains to help the latter in making sense of the images
put before him.
NOTES:
[415] _Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. chapter i. Sec. 1.
[416] M. J. HALEVY disputes this reading of the word. As we are unable to
discuss the question, we must refer our readers to his observations (_Les
Monuments Chaldeens et la Question de Sumir et d'Accad_) in the _Comptes
rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions_, 1882, p. 107. M. Halevy believes it
should be read as the name of the prince Nabou or Nebo. The question is
only of secondary importance, but M. Halevy enlarges its scope by reopening
the whole matter of debate between himself and M. Oppert as to the true
character of what Assyriologists call the Sumerian language and written
character. The _Comptes rendus_ only gives a summary of the paper. The same
volume contains a _resume_ of M. Oppert's reply (1882, p. 123:
_Inscriptions de Gudea_, et seq).
[417] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 341.
[418] The same disproportion between men and buildings is to be found in
many other reliefs (see figs. 39, 43, and 60).
[Illustration]