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A History of Greek Art
With an Introductory Chapter on Art in Egypt and Mesopotamia
BY F. B. TARBELL
PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
PREFACE.
The art of any artistically gifted people may be studied with
various purposes and in various ways. One man, being himself an
artist, may seek inspiration or guidance for his own practice;
another, being a student of the history of civilization, may
strive to comprehend the products of art as one manifestation of a
people's spiritual life; another may be interested chiefly in
tracing the development of artistic processes, forms, and
subjects; and so on. But this book has been written in the
conviction that the greatest of all motives for studying art, the
motive which is and ought to be strongest in most people, is the
desire to become acquainted with beautiful and noble things, the
things that "soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man." The
historical method of treatment has been adopted as a matter of
course, but the emphasis is not laid upon the historical aspects
of the subject. The chief aim has been to present characteristic
specimens of the finest Greek work that has been preserved to us,
and to suggest how they may be intelligently enjoyed. Fortunate
they who can carry their studies farther, with the help of less
elementary handbooks, of photographs, of casts, or, best of all,
of the original monuments.
Most of the illustrations in this book have been made from
photographs, of which all but a few belong to the collection of
Greek photographs owned by the University of Chicago. A number of
other illustrations have been derived from books or serial
publications, as may be seen from the accompanying legends. In
several cases where cuts were actually taken from secondary
sources, such as Baumeister's "Denkmaler des klassischen
Altertums," they have been credited to their original sources. A
few architectural drawings were made expressly for this work,
being adapted from trustworthy authorities, viz.: Figs. 6, 51, 61,
and 64. There remain two or three additional illustrations, which
have so long formed a part of the ordinary stock-in trade of
handbooks that it seemed unnecessary to assign their origin.
The introductory chapter has been kindly looked over by Dr. J. H.
Breasted, who has relieved it of a number of errors, without in
any way making himself responsible for it. The remaining chapters
have unfortunately not had the benefit of any such revision.
In the present reissue of this book a number of slight changes and
corrections have been introduced.
Chicago, January, 1905.
CONTENTS.
I. ART IN EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA
II. PREHISTORIC ART IN GREECE
III. GREEK ARCHITECTURE
IV. GREEK SCULPTURE--GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
V. THE ARCHAIC PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE, FIRST HALF: 625 (?)-550 B.C.
VI. THE ARCHAIC PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE. SECOND HALF: 550-480 B. C.
VII. THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE. 480-4506. C.
VIII. THE GREAT AGE OF GREEK SCULPTURE. FIRST PERIOD: 450-400 B. C.
IX. THE GREAT AGE OF GREEK SCULPTURE. SECOND PERIOD: 400-323 B. C.
X. THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE. 323-146 B. C.
XI. GREEK PAINTING
A HISTORY OF GREEK ART.
CHAPTER I.
ART IN EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA.
The history of Egypt, from the time of the earliest extant
monuments to the absorption of the country in the Roman Empire,
covers a space of some thousands of years. This long period was
not one of stagnation. It is only in proportion to our ignorance
that life in ancient Egypt seems to have been on one dull, dead
level. Dynasties rose and fell. Foreign invaders occupied the land
and were expelled again. Customs, costumes, beliefs, institutions,
underwent changes. Of course, then, art did not remain stationary.
On the contrary, it had marked vicissitudes, now displaying great
freshness and vigor, now uninspired and monotonous, now seemingly
dead, and now reviving to new activity. In Babylonia we deal with
perhaps even remoter periods of time, but the artistic remains at
present known from that quarter are comparatively scanty. From
Assyria, however, the daughter of Babylonia, materials abound, and
the history of that country can be written in detail for a period
of several centuries. Naturally, then, even a mere sketch of
Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian art would require much more
space than is here at disposal. All that can be attempted is to
present a few examples and suggest a few general notions. The main
purpose will be to make clearer by comparison and contrast the
essential qualities of Greek art, to which this volume is devoted.
I begin with Egypt, and offer at the outset a table of the most
important periods of Egyptian history. The dates are taken from
the sketch prefixed to the catalogue of Egyptian antiquities in
the Berlin Museum. In using them the reader must bear in mind that
the earlier Egyptian chronology is highly uncertain. Thus the date
here suggested for the Old Empire, while it cannot be too early,
may be a thousand years too late. As we come down, the margin of
possible error grows less and less. The figures assigned to the
New Empire are regarded as trustworthy within a century or two.
But only when we reach the Saite dynasty do we get a really
precise chronology.
Chief Periods of Egyptian History:
OLD EMPIRE, with capital at Memphis; Dynasties 4-5 (2800-2500 B.
C. or earlier) and Dynasty 6.
MIDDLE EMPIRE, with capital at Thebes; Dynasties 11-13 (2200-1800
B. C. or earlier).
NEW EMPIRE, with capital at Thebes; Dynasties 17-20 (ca. 1600-1100
B. C.).
SAITE PERIOD; Dynasty 26 (663-525 B. C.).
One of the earliest Egyptian sculptures now existing, though
certainly not earlier than the Fourth Dynasty, is the great Sphinx
of Gizeh (Fig. 1). The creature crouches in the desert, a few
miles to the north of the ancient Memphis, just across the Nile
from the modern city of Cairo. With the body of a lion and the
head of a man, it represented a solar deity and was an object of
worship. It is hewn from the living rock and is of colossal size,
the height from the base to the top of the head being about 70
feet and the length of the body about 150 feet. The paws and
breast were originally covered with a limestone facing. The
present dilapidated condition of the monument is due partly to the
tooth of time, but still more to wanton mutilation at the hands of
fanatical Mohammedans. The body is now almost shapeless. The nose,
the beard, and the lower part of the head dress are gone. The face
is seamed with scars. Yet the strange monster still preserves a
mysterious dignity, as though it were guardian of all the secrets
of ancient Egypt, but disdained to betray them
"The art which conceived and carved this prodigious statue," says
Professor Maspero [Footnote: Manual of Egyptian Archaeology second
edition 1895 page 208] "was a finished art, an art which had
attained self mastery, and was sure of its effects. How many
centuries had it taken to arrive at this degree of maturity and
perfection?" It is impossible to guess. The long process of self-
schooling in artistic methods which must have preceded this work
is hidden from us. We cannot trace the progress of Egyptian art
from its timid, awkward beginnings to the days of its conscious
power, as we shall find ourselves able to do in the case of Greek
art. The evidence is annihilated, or is hidden beneath the sand
of the desert, perhaps to be one day revealed. Should that day
come, a new first chapter in the history of Egyptian art will have
to be written.
There are several groups of pyramids, large and small at Gizeh and
elsewhere, almost all of which belong to the Old Empire. The
three great pyramids of Gizeh are among the earliest. They were
built by three kings of the Fourth Dynisty, Cheops (Chufu),
Chephren (Chafre), and Mycerinus (Menkere) They are gigantic
sepulchral monuments in which the mummies of the kings who built
them were deposited. The pyramid of Cheops (Fig. 1, at the right),
the largest of all, was originally 481 feet 4 inches in height,
and was thus doubtless the loftiest structure ever reared in pre-
Christian times. The side of the square base measured 755 feet 8
inches. The pyramidal mass consists in the main of blocks of
limestone, and the exterior was originally cased with fine
limestone, so that the surfaces were perfectly smooth. At present
the casing is gone, and instead of a sharp point at the top there
is a platform about thirty feet square. In the heart of the mass
was the granite chamber where the king's mummy was laid. It was
reached by an ingenious system of passages, strongly barricaded.
Yet all these precautions were ineffectual to save King Cheops
from the hand of the spoiler. Chephren's pyramid (Fig. 1, at the
left) is not much smaller than that of Cheops, its present height
being about 450 feet, while the height of the third of this group,
that of Mycerinus, is about 210 feet. No wonder that the pyramids
came to be reckoned among the seven wonders of the world.
While kings erected pyramids to serve as their tombs, officials of
high rank were buried in, or rather under, structures of a
different type, now commonly known under the Arabic name of
mastabas. The mastaba may be described as a block of masonry of
limestone or sun-dried brick, oblong in plan, with the sides
built "battering," i.e., sloping inward, and with a flat top. It
had no architectural merits to speak of, and therefore need not
detain us. It is worth remarking, however, that some of these
mastabas contain genuine arches, formed of unbaked bricks. The
knowledge and use of the arch in Egypt go back then to at least
the period of the Old Empire. But the chief interest of the
mastabas lies in the fact that they have preserved to us most of
what we possess of early Egyptian sculpture. For in a small,
inaccessible chamber (serdab) reserved in the mass of masonry were
placed one or more portrait statues of the owner, and often of his
wife and other members of his household, while the walls of
another and larger chamber, which served as a chapel for the
celebration of funeral rites, were often covered with painted bas-
reliefs, representing scenes from the owner's life or whatever in
the way of funeral offering and human activity could minister to
his happiness.
One of the best of the portrait statues of this period is the
famous "Sheikh-el-Beled" (Chief of the Village), attributed to
the Fourth or Fifth Dynasty (Fig. 2). The name was given by the
Arab workmen, who, when the figure was first brought to light in
the cemetery of Sakkarah, thought they saw in it the likeness of
their own sheikh. The man's real name, if he was the owner of the
mastaba from whose serdab he was taken, was Ra-em-ka. The figure
is less than life-sized, being a little over three and one half
feet in height. It is of wood, a common material for sculpture in
Egypt. The arms were made separately (the left of two pieces) and
attached at the shoulders. The feet, which had decayed, have been
restored. Originally the figure was covered with a coating of
linen, and this with stucco, painted. "The eyeballs are of opaque
white quartz, set in a bronze sheath, which forms the eyelids; in
the center of each there is a bit of rock-crystal, and behind this
a shining nail" [Footnote: Musee de Gizeh: Notice Sommaire
(1892).]--a contrivance which produces a marvelously realistic
effect. The same thing, or something like it, is to be seen in
other statues of the period. The attitude of Ra-em-ka is the usual
one of Egyptian standing figures of all periods: the left leg is
advanced; both feet are planted flat on the ground; body and head
face squarely forward. The only deviation from the most usual type
is in the left arm, which is bent at the elbow, that the hand may
grasp the staff of office. More often the arms both hang at the
sides, the hands clenched, as in the admirable limestone figure of
the priest, Ra-nofer (Fig. 3).
The cross-legged scribe of the Louvre (Fig. 4) illustrates another
and less stereotyped attitude. This figure was found in the tomb
of one Sekhem-ka, along with two statues of the owner and a group
of the owner, his wife, and son. The scribe was presumably in the
employ of Sekhem-ka. The figure is of limestone, the commonest
material for these sepulchral statues, and, according to the
unvarying practice, was completely covered with color, still in
good preservation. The flesh is of a reddish brown, the regular
color for men. The eyes are similar to those of the Sheikh-el-
Beled. The man is seated with his legs crossed under him; a strip
of papyrus, held by his left hand, rests upon his lap; his right
hand held a pen.
The head shown in Fig. 5 belongs to a group, if we may give that
name to two figures carved from separate blocks of limestone and
seated stiffly side by side. Egyptian sculpture in the round never
created a genuine, integral group, in which two or more figures
are so combined that no one is intelligible without the rest; that
achievement was reserved for the Greeks. The lady in this case was
a princess; her husband, by whom she sits, a high priest of
Heliopolis. She is dressed in a long, white smock, in which there
is no indication of folds. On her head is a wig, from under which,
in front, her own hair shows. Her flesh is yellow, the
conventional tint for women, as brownish red was for men. Her eyes
are made of glass.
The specimens given have been selected with the purpose of showing
the sculpture of the Old Empire at its best. The all-important
fact to notice is the realism of these portraits. We shall see
that Greek sculpture throughout its great period tends toward the
typical and the ideal in the human face and figure. Not so in
Egypt. Here the task of the artist was to make a counterfeit
presentment of his subject and he has achieved his task at times
with marvelous skill. Especially the heads of the best statues
have an individuality and lifelikeness which have hardly been
surpassed in any age. But let not our admiration blind us to the
limitations of Egyptian art. The sculptor never attains to freedom
in the posing of his figures. Whether the subject sits, stands,
kneels, or squats, the body and head always face directly forward.
And we look in vain for any appreciation on the sculptor's part of
the beauty of the athletic body or of the artistic possibilities
of drapery.
There is more variety of pose in the painted bas-reliefs with
which the walls of the mastaba chapels are covered. Here are
scenes of agriculture, cattle-tending, fishing, bread-making, and
so on, represented with admirable vivacity, though with certain
fixed conventionalities of style. There are endless entertainment
and instruction for us in these pictures of old Egyptian life. Yet
no more here than in the portrait statues do we find a feeling for
beauty of form or a poetic, idealizing touch.
As from the Old Empire, so from the Middle Empire, almost the only
works of man surviving to us are tombs and their contents. These
tombs have no longer the simple mastaba form, but are either built
up of sun-dried brick in the form of a block capped by a pyramid
or are excavated in the rock. The former class offers little
interest from the architectural point of view. But some of the
rock-cut tombs of Beni-hasan, belonging to the Twelfth Dynasty,
exhibit a feature which calls for mention. These tombs have been
so made as to leave pillars of the living rock standing, both at
the entrance and in the chapel. The simplest of these pillars are
square in plan and somewhat tapering. Others, by the chamfering
off of their edges, have been made eight-sided. A repetition of
the process gave sixteen-sided pillars. The sixteen sides were
then hollowed out (channeled). The result is illustrated by Fig.
6. It will be observed that the pillar has a low, round base, with
beveled edge; also, at the top, a square abacus, which is simply a
piece of the original four-sided pillar, left untouched. Such
polygonal pillars as these are commonly called proto-Doric
columns. The name was given in the belief that these were the
models from which the Greeks derived their Doric columns, and this
belief is still held by many authorities.
With the New Empire we begin to have numerous and extensive
remains of temples, while those of an earlier date have mostly
disappeared. Fig. 7 may afford some notion of what an Egyptian
temple was like. This one is at Luxor, on the site of ancient
Thebes in Upper Egypt. It is one of the largest of all, being over
800 feet in length. Like many others, it was not originally
planned on its present scale, but represents two or three
successive periods of construction, Ramses II., of the Nineteenth
Dynasty, having given it its final form by adding to an already
finished building all that now stands before the second pair of
towers. As so extended, the building has three pylons, as they are
called, pylon being the name for the pair of sloping-sided towers
with gateway between. Behind the first pylon comes an open court
surrounded by a cloister with double rows of columns. The second
and third pylons are connected with one another by a covered
passage--an exceptional feature. Then comes a second open court;
then a hypostyle hall, i.e., a hall with flat roof supported by
columns; and finally, embedded in the midst of various chambers,
the relatively small sanctuary, inaccessible to all save the king
and the priests. Notice the double line of sphinxes flanking the
avenue of approach, the two granite obelisks at the entrance, and
the four colossal seated figures in granite representing Ramses
II.--all characteristic features.
Fig. 8 is taken from a neighboring and still more gigantic temple,
that of Karnak. Imagine an immense hall, 170 feet deep by 329 feet
broad. Down the middle run two rows of six columns each (the
nearest ones in the picture have been restored), nearly seventy
feet high. They have campaniform (bell-shaped) capitals. On either
side are seven rows of shorter columns, somewhat more than forty
feet high. These, as may be indistinctly seen at the right of our
picture, have capitals of a different type, called, from their
origin rather than from their actual appearance, lotiform or
lotus-bud capitals. There was a clerestory over the four central
rows of columns, with windows in its walls. The general plan,
therefore, of this hypostyle hall has some resemblance to that of
a Christian basilica, but the columns are much more numerous and
closely set. Walls and columns were covered with hieroglyphic
texts and sculptured and painted scenes. The total effect of this
colossal piece of architecture, even in its ruin, is one of
overwhelming majesty. No other work of human hands strikes the
beholder with such a sense of awe.
Fig. 9 is a restoration of one of the central columns of this
hall. Except for one fault, say Messrs. Perrot and
Chipiez,[Footnote: "Histoire de l'Art Egypte," page 576. The
translation given above differs from that in the English edition
of Perrot and Chipiez, "Art in Ancient Egypt," Vol. II., page
123.] "this column would be one of the most admirable creations of
art; it would hardly be inferior to the most perfect columns of
Greece." The one fault--a grave one to a critical eye--is the
meaningless and inappropriate block inserted between the capital
and the horizontal beam which it is the function of the column to
support. The type of column used in the side aisles of the hall at
Karnak is illustrated by Fig. 10, taken from another temple. It is
much less admirable, the contraction of the capital toward the top
producing an unpleasant effect.
Other specimens of these two types of column vary widely from
those of Karnak, for Egyptian architects did not feel obliged,
like Greek architects, to conform, with but slight liberty of
deviation, to established canons of form and proportion. Nor are
these two by any means the only forms of support used in the
temple architecture of the New Empire. The "proto-Doric" column
continued in favor under the New Empire, though apparently not
later; we find it, for example, in some of the outlying buildings
at Karnak. Then there was the column whose capital was adorned
with four heads in relief of the goddess Hathor, not to speak of
other varieties. Whatever the precise form of the support, it was
always used to carry a horizontal beam. Although the Egyptians
were familiar from very early times with the principle of the
arch, and although examples of its use occur often enough under
the New Empire, we do not find columns or piers used, as in Gothic
architecture, to carry a vaulting. In fact, the genuine vault is
absent from Egyptian temple architecture, although in the Temple
of Abydos false or corbelled vaults (cf. page 49) do occur.
Egyptian architects were not gifted with a fine feeling for
structural propriety or unity. A few of their small temples are
simple and coherent in plan and fairly tasteful in details. But it
is significant that a temple could always be enlarged by the
addition of parts not contemplated in the original design. The
result in such a case was a vast, rambling edifice, whose merits
consisted in the imposing character of individual parts, rather
than in an organic and symmetrical relation of parts to whole.
Statues of the New Empire are far more numerous than those of any
other period, but few of them will compare in excellence with the
best of those of the Old Empire. Colossal figures of kings abound,
chiseled with infinite patience from granite and other obdurate
rocks. All these and others may be passed over in order to make
room for a statue in the Louvre (Fig. 11), which is chosen, not
because of its artistic merits, but because of its material and
its subject. It is of bronze, somewhat over three feet in height,
thus being the largest Egyptian bronze statue known. It was cast
in a single piece, except for the arms, which were cast separately
and attached. The date of it is in dispute, one authority
assigning it to the Eighteenth Dynasty and another bringing it
down as late as the seventh century B.C. Be that as it may, the
art of casting hollow bronze figures is of high antiquity in
Egypt. The figure represents a hawk-headed god, Horus, who once
held up some object, probably a vase for libations. Egyptian
divinities are often represented with the heads of animals--
Anubis with the head of a jackal, Hathor with that of a cow, Sebek
with that of a crocodile, and so on. This in itself shows a lack
of nobility in the popular theology. Moreover it is clear that the
best talents of sculptors were engaged upon portraits of kings and
queens and other human beings, not upon figures of the gods. The
latter exist by the thousand, to be sure, but they are generally
small statuettes, a few inches high, in bronze, wood, or faience.
And even if sculptors had been encouraged to do their best in
bodying forth the forms of gods, they would hardly have achieved
high success. The exalted imagination was lacking.
Among the innumerable painted bas-reliefs covering the walls of
tombs and temples, those of the great Temple of Abydos in Upper
Egypt hold a high place. One enthusiastic art critic has gone so
far as to pronounce them "the most perfect, the most noble bas-
reliefs ever chiseled." A specimen of this work, now, alas! more
defaced than is here shown, is given in Fig. 12. King Seti I. of
the Nineteenth Dynasty stands in an attitude of homage before a
seated divinity, of whom almost nothing appears in the
illustration. On the palm of his right hand he holds a figure of
Maat, goddess of truth. In front of him is a libation-standard, on
which rests a bunch of lotus flowers, buds, and leaves. The first
remark to be made about this work is that it is genuine relief.
The forms are everywhere modeled, whereas in much of what is
commonly called bas-relief in Egypt, the figures are only outlined
and the spaces within the outlines are left flat. As regards the
treatment of the human figure, we have here the stereotyped
Egyptian conventions. The head, except the eye, is in profile, the
shoulders in front view, the abdomen in three-quarters view, the
legs again in profile. As a result of the distortion of the body,
the arms are badly attached at the shoulders. Furthermore the
hands, besides being very badly drawn, have in this instance the
appearance of being mismated with the arms, while both feet look
like right feet. The dress consists of the usual loin-cloth and of
a thin, transparent over-garment, indicated only by a line in
front and below. Now surely no one will maintain that these
methods and others of like sort which there is no opportunity here
to illustrate are the most artistic ever devised. Nevertheless
serious technical faults and shortcomings may coexist with great
merits of composition and expression. So it is in this relief of
Seti. The design is stamped with unusual refinement and grace. The
theme is hackneyed enough, but its treatment here raises it above
the level of commonplace.
Egyptian bas-reliefs were always completely covered with paint,
laid on in uniform tints. Paintings on a flat surface differ in no
essential respect from these painted bas-reliefs. The conventional
and untruthful methods of representing the human form, as well as
other objects--buildings, landscapes, etc.--are the same in the
former as in the latter. The coloring, too, is of the same sort,
there being no attempt to render gradations of color due to the
play of light and shade. Fig. 13, a lute-player from a royal tomb
of the Eighteenth Dynasty, illustrates some of these points. The
reader who would form an idea of the composition of extensive
scenes must consult works more especially devoted to Egyptian art.
He will be rewarded with many a vivid picture of ancient Egyptian
life.
Art was at a low ebb in Egypt during the centuries of Libyan and
Ethiopian domination which succeeded the New Empire. There was a
revival under the Saite monarchy in the seventh and sixth
centuries B.C. To this period is assigned a superb head of dark
green stone (Fig. 14), recently acquired by the Berlin Museum. It
has been broken from a standing or kneeling statue. The form of
the closely-shaven skull and the features of the strong face,
wrinkled by age, have been reproduced by the sculptor with
unsurpassable fidelity. The number of works emanating from the
same school as this is very small, but in quality they represent
the highest development of Egyptian sculpture. It is fit that we
should take our leave of Egyptian art with such a work as this
before us, a work which gives us the quintessence of the artistic
genius of the race.
Babylonia was the seat of a civilization perhaps more hoary than
that of Egypt. The known remains of Babylonian art, however, are
at present far fewer than those of Egypt and will probably always
be so. There being practically no stone in the country and wood
being very scarce, buildings were constructed entirely of bricks,
some of them merely sun-dried, others kiln-baked. The natural
wells of bitumen supplied a tenacious mortar. [Footnote: Compare
Genesis XI 3: "And they had brick for stone and slime had they for
mortar."] The ruins that have been explored at Tello, Nippur, and
elsewhere, belong to city walls, houses, and temples. The most
peculiar and conspicuous feature of the temple was a lofty
rectangular tower of several stages, each stage smaller than the
one below it. The arch was known and used in Babylonia from time
immemorial. As for the ornamental details of buildings, we know
very little about them except that large use was made of enameled
bricks.
The only early Babylonian sculptures of any consequence that we
possess are a collection of broken reliefs and a dozen sculptures
in the round, found in a group of mounds called Tello and now in
the Louvre. The reliefs are extremely rude. The statues are much
better and are therefore probably of later date, they are commonly
assigned by students of Babylonian antiquities to about 3000 B.C.
Fig. 15 reproduces one of them. The material, as of the other
statues found at the same place, is a dark and excessively hard
igneous rock (dolerite). The person represented is one Gudea, the
ruler of a small semi-independent principality. On his lap he has
a tablet on which is engraved the plan of a fortress, very
interesting to the student of military antiquities. The forms of
the body are surprisingly well given, even the knuckles of the
fingers being indicated. As regards the drapery, it is noteworthy
that an attempt has been made to render folds on the right breast
and the left arm. The skirt of the dress is covered with an
inscription in cuneiform characters.
Fig. 16 belongs to the same group of sculptures as the seated
figure just discussed. Although this head gives no such impression
of lifelikeness as the best Egyptian portraits, it yet shows
careful study. Cheeks, chin, and mouth are well rendered. The
eyelids, though too wide open, are still good; notice the inner
corners. The eyebrows are less successful. Their general form is
that of the half of a figure 8 bisected vertically, and the hairs
are indicated by slanting lines arranged in herring-bone fashion.
Altogether, the reader will probably feel more respect than
enthusiasm for this early Babylonian art and will have no keen
regret that the specimens of it are so few.
The Assyrians were by origin one people with the Chaldeans and
were therefore a branch of the great Semitic family. It is not
until the ninth century B.C. that the great period of Assyrian
history begins. Then for two and a half centuries Assyria was the
great conquering power of the world. Near the end of the seventh
century it was completely annihilated by a coalition of Babylonia
and Media.
With an insignificant exception or two the remains of Assyrian
buildings and sculptures all belong to the period of Assyrian
greatness. The principal sites where explorations have been
carried on are Koyunjik (Nineveh), Nimroud, and Khorsabad, and the
ruins uncovered are chiefly those of royal palaces. These
buildings were of enormous extent. The palace of Sennacherib at
Nineveh, for example, covered more than twenty acres. Although the
country possessed building stone in plenty, stone was not used
except for superficial ornamentation, baked and unbaked bricks
being the architect's sole reliance. This was a mere blind
following of the example of Babylonia, from which Assyria derived
all its culture. The palaces were probably only one story in
height. Their principal splendor was in their interior decoration
of painted stucco, enameled bricks, and, above all, painted
reliefs in limestone or alabaster.
The great Assyrian bas-reliefs covered the lower portions of the
walls of important rooms. Designed to enrich the royal palaces,
they drew their principal themes from the occupations of the
kings. We see the monarch offering sacrifice before a divinity,
or, more often, engaged in his favorite pursuits of war and
hunting. These extensive compositions cannot be adequately
illustrated by two or three small pictures. The most that can be
done is to show the sculptor's method of treating single figures.
Fig. 17 is a slab from the earliest series we possess, that
belonging to the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal (884-860 B.C.) at
Nimroud. It represents the king facing to right, with a bowl for
libation in his right hand and his bow in his left, while a eunuch
stands fronting him. The artistic style exhibited here remains
with no essential change throughout the whole history of Assyrian
art. The figures are in profile, except that the king's further
shoulder is thrown forward in much the fashion which we have found
the rule in Egypt, and the eyes appear as in front view. Both king
and attendant are enveloped in long robes, in which there is no
indication of folds, though fringes and tassels are elaborately
rendered. The faces are of a strongly marked Semitic cast, but
without any attempt at portraiture. The hair of the head ends in
several rows of snail-shell curls, and the king's beard has rows
of these curls alternating with more natural-looking portions.
Little is displayed of the body except the fore-arms, whose
anatomy, though intelligible, is coarse and false. As for minor
matters, such as the too high position of the ears, and the
unnatural shape of the king's right hand, it is needless to dwell
upon them. A cuneiform inscription runs right across the relief,
interrupted only by the fringes of the robes.
Fig. 18 shows more distinctly the characteristic Assyrian method
of representing the human head. Here are the same Semitic
features, the eye in front view, and the strangely curled hair and
beard. The only novelty is the incised line which marks the iris
of the eye. This peculiarity is first observed in work of Sargon's
time (722-705 B. C.).
A constant and striking feature of the Assyrian palaces was
afforded by the great, winged, human-headed bulls, which flanked
the principal doorways. The one herewith given (Fig. 19) is from
Sargon's palace at Khorsabad. The peculiar methods of Assyrian
sculpture are not ill suited to this fantastic creature, an
embodiment of force and intelligence. One special peculiarity will
not escape the attentive observer. Like all his kind, except in
Sennacherib's palace, this bull has five legs. He was designed to
be looked at from directly in front or from the side, not from an
intermediate point of view.
Assyrian art was not wholly without capacity for improvement.
Under Asshur-bam-pal (668-626), the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, it
reached a distinctly higher level than ever before. It is from his
palace at Nineveh that the slab partially shown in Fig. 20 was
obtained. Two demons, with human bodies, arms, and legs, but with
lions' heads, asses' ears, and eagles' talons, confront one
another angrily, brandishing daggers in their right hands.
Mesopotamian art was fond of such creatures, but we do not know
precisely what meaning was attached to the present scene. We need
therefore consider only stylistic qualities. As the two demons
wear only short skirts reaching from the waist to the knees, their
bodies are more exposed than those of men usually are. We note the
inaccurate anatomy of breast, abdomen, and back, in dealing with
which the sculptor had little experience to guide him. A marked
difference is made between the outer and the inner view of the
leg, the former being treated in the same style as the arms in
Fig. 17. The arms are here better, because less exaggerated. The
junction of human shoulders and animal necks is managed with no
sort of verisimilitude. But the heads, conventionalized though
they are, are full of vigor. One can almost hear the angry snarl
and see the lightning flash from the eyes.
It is, in fact, in the rendering of animals that Assyrian art
attains to its highest level. In Asshur-bam-pal's palace extensive
hunting scenes give occasion for introducing horses, dogs, wild
asses, lions, and lionesses, and these are portrayed with a keen
eye for characteristic forms and movements. One of the most famous
of these animal figures is the lioness shown in Fig. 21. The
creature has been shot through with three great arrows. Blood
gushes from her wounds. Her hind legs are paralyzed and drag
helplessly behind her. Yet she still moves forward on her fore-
feet and howls with rage and agony. Praise of this admirable
figure can hardly be too strong. This and others, of equal merit
redeem Assyrian art.
As has been already intimated, these bas-reliefs were always
colored, though, it would seem, only partially, whereas Egyptian
bas-reliefs were completely covered with color.
Of Assyrian stone sculpture in the round nothing has yet been
said. A few pieces exist, but their style is so essentially like
that of the bas-reliefs that they call for no separate discussion.
More interesting is the Assyrian work in bronze. The most
important specimens of this are some hammered reliefs, now in the
British Museum, which originally adorned a pair of wooden doors in
the palace of Shalmaneser III. at Balawat. The art of casting
statuettes and statues in bronze was also known and practiced, as
it had been much earlier in Babylonia, but the examples preserved
to us are few. For the decorative use which the Assyrians made of
color, our principal witnesses are then enameled bricks. These are
ornamented with various designs--men, genii, animals, and floral
patterns--in a few rich colors, chiefly blue and yellow. Of
painting, except in the sense of mural decoration, there is no
trace.
Egypt and Mesopotamia are, of all the countries around the
Mediterranean the only seats of an important, indigenous art,
antedating that of Greece. Other countries of Western Asia--Syria,
Phrygia, Phenicia, Persia, and so on--seem to have been rather
recipients and transmitters than originators of artistic
influences. For Egypt, Assyria, and the regions just named did not
remain isolated from one another. On the contrary, intercourse
both friendly and hostile was active, and artistic products, at
least of the small and portable kind, were exchanged. The paths of
communication were many, but there is reason for thinking that the
Phenicians, the great trading nation of early times, were
especially instrumental in disseminating artistic ideas. To these
influences Greece was exposed before she had any great art of her
own. Among the remains of prehistoric Greece we find, besides some
objects of foreign manufacture, others, which, though presumably
of native origin, are yet more or less directly inspired by
Egyptian or oriental models. But when the true history of Greek
art begins, say about 600 B. C., the influences from Egypt and
Asia sink into insignificance. It may be that the impulse to
represent gods and men in wood or stone was awakened in Greece by
the example of older communities. It may be that one or two types
of figures were suggested by foreign models. It may be that a hint
was taken from Egypt for the form of the Doric column and that the
Ionic capital derives from an Assyrian prototype. It is almost
certain that the art of casting hollow bronze statues was borrowed
from Egypt. And it is indisputable that some ornamental patterns
used in architecture and on pottery were rather appropriated than
invented by Greece. There is no occasion for disguising or
underrating this indebtedness of Greece to her elder neighbors.
But, on the other hand, it is important not to exaggerate the
debt. Greek art is essentially self-originated, the product of a
unique, incommunicable genius. As well might one say that Greek
literature is of Asiatic origin, because, forsooth, the Greek
alphabet came from Phenicia, as call Greek art the offspring of
Egyptian or oriental art because of the impulses received in the
days of its beginning. [Footnote: This comparison is perhaps not
original with the present writer.]