[Illustration: FIG. 76.--Fight between a man and an

ostrich. Chalcedony. National Library, Paris.]

As for fishes, crabs, and shells, these were scattered broadcast over

the watercourses in the reliefs, but they are never studied with any

great care (see Vol. I., Figs. 34 and 157), nor is any attempt made to

distinguish their species. They seem to have been introduced merely as

hints to the spectator, to dispel any doubt he may entertain as to the

meaning of those sinuous lines by which the sculptor suggested rivers

and the sea. Where these indications are not given we might indeed very

easily mistake the artist’s intention (see Vol. I., Figs. 38 and 71).

Some of the animals in the Assyrian reliefs are then nothing but

determinative signs, a kind of pictorial gloss. Of these it will

suffice to mention the existence. Their forms are so much generalized

that they offer no matter for study. On the other hand, our best

attention should be given to those figures whose modelling has

strongly interested the artist, who has taken a lively pleasure in

reproducing their various aspects and in making them live again in

all the originality of their powerful and exceptional natures. In

this respect the lion deserves particular notice. He interested the

Assyrian sculptors more profoundly than any other animal and they

devoted extraordinary attention to illustrating his various attitudes

and characteristics. One is inclined to believe that the more skilful

among them chose a lion for treatment when they wished to display all

the talent they possessed and to gain a reputation for complete mastery

of their art.[187]

Here we find the great beast stretched carelessly upon the ground, full

of confidence in his strength and careless of danger (Plate XI.); there

he rises to his feet and advances ready to collect himself and spring

upon any threatening enemy or passing prey (Plate VIII.). We sometimes

find both these motives united, as in a bas-relief of Assurbanipal,

which is unfortunately mutilated (Fig. 77). Here a lioness is stretched

upon the ground, her head upon her forepaws and her tail outstretched

behind her, in a favourite attitude of very young cats. The lion stands

upright before her in a proud, extended attitude like that of the

colossal lion from Nimroud (Plate VIII.); his head and the hind parts

of his body are unfortunately missing.

[Illustration: BRONZE LION

FROM KHORSABAD

Louvre]

Elsewhere we find the lion cautiously emerging from a stoutly-built

timber cage (Fig. 78). He has been captured in a net or snare and shut

up in this narrow prison until the day of some great hunt.[188] When

that arrives the door is raised at a given signal by a man perched on

the top of the cage and protected by a timber grating. In spite of this

defence the service would hardly be free from danger but that the lion

is too pleased to find himself at liberty to look behind him.[189]

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--Lion and lioness in a park.

British Museum.]

The lion finds himself confronted by the Royal huntsman who fights, as

a rule, from his chariot, where two or three companions, chosen from

his bravest and most skilful servants, are ready to lend him help if

necessary. The British Museum possesses a great number of sculptured

pictures in which every incident of the hunt is figured up to its

inevitable end. We reproduce two figures from the slabs representing

the great hunt of Assurbanipal. The first shows a huge lion mortally

wounded by an arrow which still stands in his body. It has transfixed

some great vessel, and the blood gushes in a wide torrent from his

open mouth. Already the chills of death are upon him and yet with his

back arched, and his feet brought together and grasping the soil, he

collects his energies in a last effort to prevent himself rolling over

helplessly on the sand.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Lion coming out of his cage.

Height of relief about 22 inches. British Museum.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Wounded lion. Height of slab

about 22 inches. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

Still more expressive, perhaps, and more pathetic, is the picture of

a lioness struck down by the same hand, but in a different fashion

(Fig. 80). One of three arrows that have reached her has transfixed

the spinal column at the loins. All the hinder part of the body is

paralysed. The hind feet drag helplessly on the ground, while the poor

animal still manages for a moment to support herself on her fore

paws. She still faces the enemy, her half opened jaws are at once

agonised and menacing, and, as we gaze upon her, we can almost fancy

that we hear her last groan issue from her dying lips.

We might multiply these examples if we chose, but the two fragments

we have reproduced will, we hope, send our readers to the British

Museum to see the _Hunt of Assurbanipal_ for themselves. In any

case they are enough to prove that the Assyrian sculptor studied the

lion from nature. He was not without opportunities. He was, no doubt,

allowed to assist at those great hunts of which he was to be the

official chronicler. He there saw the king of beasts throw himself on

the spears of the footmen or fly before the arrows of the charioteers,

and break the converging line of beaters; he saw him fall under his

repeated wounds and struggle in his last convulsions. Later on he

could supplement his recollections, he could complete and correct

his sketches by the examination of the victims.[190] At the end of

the day the “bag” was displayed as it is now at the end of a modern

_battue_, when the keepers bring pheasants, hares and rabbits,

and lay them in long rows in some clearing or corner of the covert. In

one of the Kouyundjik reliefs we see the king standing before an altar

and doing his homage to the gods after the emotions and dangers of a

hunt that was almost a battle.[191] He seems to pour the wine of the

libation upon four dead lions, which his attendants have arranged in

line upon the ground.

There must also have been tame lions in the palaces and royal parks.

Even now they are often to be met with in that country, under the

tent of the Arab chief or in the house of the bey or pacha.[192] When

captured quite young the lion is easily educated, and, provided

that his appetite is never allowed to go unsatisfied, he may be an

inoffensive and almost a docile companion until he is nearly full

grown. We are ready to believe that the lion and lioness shown in our

Fig. 77 were tame ones. The background of the relief suggests a park

attached to the royal residence, rather than a marsh, jungle or desert.

Vines heavy with fruit and bending flowers rise above the dozing

lioness; we can hardly suppose that wild animals could intrude into

such a garden. It follows, then, that the artist could study his models

as they moved at freedom among the trees of the royal demesne, basking

idly in the sun or stretching themselves when they rose, or burying

their gleaming teeth on the living prey thrown to them by their keepers.

Thanks to such facilities as these the Ninevite sculptors have handed

down to us more faithful reproductions of the lion than their more

skilful successors of Greece or Rome. For the latter the lion was

little more than a conventional type from which ornamental motives

might be drawn. Sometimes no doubt they obtained very fine effects from

it, but they always considered themselves free to modify and amplify,

according to the requirements of the moment. Thus they were often led

to give him full and rounded forms, which had a beauty of their own but

were hardly true to nature. The Assyrian never committed that fault. He

knew that the great flesh-eating beasts never grew fat, that they were

all nerve and muscle, without any of those adipose tissues which reach

so great a development in herbivorous animals, like the sheep or ox, or

those that eat anything that comes, like the pig. Look at the bronze

lion from Khorsabad figured in our Plate XI., and see how lean he is at

the croup in spite of the power in his limbs, and how the bones of his

shoulder and thigh stand out beneath the skin.

This characteristic is less strongly marked in the bas-reliefs, which

hardly enjoy the same facilities for emphasising structure as work

in the round. On the other hand the other features of the leonine

physiognomy are rendered with singular energy. Anything finer in its

way than the head of the colossal lion from Nimroud figured in our

Plate VIII. can hardly be imagined.

[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Wounded lioness. Height of slab

about 15 inches. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 81.--Niche decorated with two lions.

Height 6½ inches. British Museum.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

Seeing how familiar they were with this animal, the artists of

Mesopotamia could hardly have failed to employ him as a motive in

ornament. In such a case, of course, they did not insist so strongly

upon fidelity to fact as in the historical bas-reliefs, but whether

they made use of his figure as a whole or confined themselves to the

head or paws, they always preserved the true character and originality

of the forms. This may be clearly seen in an object belonging to the

British Museum (Fig. 81). We do not exactly know where it was found and

we cannot say what may have been its use. It is a kind of shallow niche

cut from a fossiliferous rock.[193] It is hardly deep enough to have

sheltered an idol or statuette of any kind. But whatever it may have

been nothing could be more natural than the action of the two lions

that show themselves at the two upper angles. They hang tightly to the

edge of the stone with their extended claws, giving rise to a happy,

piquant, and unstudied effect. The scabbard in our next illustration

is no less happily conceived; the lions at its foot who seem about to

climb up the sheath with the playfulness of kittens, should be noticed

(Fig. 82). Again, we find the lion introduced into those embroideries

on the royal robes of which we have already had occasion to speak.

In the example figured here (Fig. 83) he is fighting an animal whose

feet and legs are those of a bull, although its stature is greater and

its form more slender than those of the antelope. It appears to be a

unicorn, a fantastic animal that has always played a great part in

oriental fables.

[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Sword and scabbard. From a

Khorsabad bas-relief. Louvre.]

The lion’s head with its powerful muscular development, its fine mouth,

and picturesque masses of floating hair, has often furnished ceramists,

gold and silversmiths, and art workmen of every kind with motives for

use upon their creations. A fine example of this is reproduced on the

title-pages of these volumes. It belongs to the Luynes collection in

the French National Library. The material is gold, and a small staple

attached to the neck shows that it once belonged to some object now

lost. Our reproduction is of the same size as the original. In spite of

its small dimensions its workmanship is no less remarkable for freedom

and nobility of style than the colossal head from Nimroud. Something of

the same qualities but with more finish in the details is to be found

in a terra-cotta fragment covered with a green glaze which now belongs

to the collection in the Louvre. These objects, which have come down

to us in considerable numbers, must have been used as applied work, in

the decoration of vases, utensils, and other small pieces of furniture

(Fig. 84). The object figured at the end of the last chapter belongs to

the same class. There is a hollow or mortice in its base by which it

was attached to some knife or poignard to form its handle.

The lion’s paw was used in the same fashion and no less often. Its

expressive form and the elegant curves of its claws are found on

numerous altars, tables, and thrones (Vol. I., Fig. 168; and above,

Fig. 47).[194]

[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Combat between a lion and a

unicorn. From Layard.]

[Illustration: FIG. 84.--Lion’s head in enamelled

earthenware. Louvre. Actual size.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

We find the same truth of design in many small earthenware articles,

even when they reproduce a type less interesting and less majestic

than that of the lion. A good instance of this is afforded by the goat

of white earthenware covered with a blue glaze which was found at

Khorsabad by Place (Fig. 85). It is but a sketch. The modeller has not

entered into any details of the form, but he has thoroughly grasped

its general character. The terra-cottas properly speaking, those that

have received no glaze or enamel, are, as a rule, less carefully

executed, but even in them we can perceive, though in a less degree,

the certainty of eye, the same promptitude in seizing and rendering the

special physiognomy of an animal. We feel this very strongly in what

is by no means the work of a skilful modeller, the dog figured below

(Fig. 86). The head and fore quarters of one of the mastiffs of the

bas-reliefs may here be recognized (see Fig. 72).

[Illustration: FIG. 85.--Recumbent goat. Enamelled

earthenware. Actual size.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

The same desire for precision, or rather comprehension, of form,

is to be found even in those imaginary beings which the artists of

Chaldæa and Assyria took such pleasure in multiplying. Although in

their fantastic creations they brought together features belonging to

animals of totally different classes, they made a point of drawing

those features with the greatest precision. This is well illustrated by

an object in the Luynes collection (Fig. 87). Nowhere is the arbitrary

combination of forms having nothing in common pushed farther than

here. A ram’s horns grow on a bull’s head, which, again, has a bird’s

beak; the body, the tail, the fore paws are those of a lion, while the

hind legs and feet and the wings that spring from the shoulders are

borrowed from the eagle.[195]

[Illustration: FIG. 86.--Dog. Terra-cotta. British

Museum. Height about 5 inches.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

We have already described the most remarkable of all these composite

types, the man-headed bull and lion; we have attempted to explain the

intellectual idea which gave them birth; we have yet to point out a

variety which is not without importance. The lion has sometimes been

given, not only the head, but also the arms and bust of a man. In one

of the entrances to the palace of Assurbanipal there was a colossus

of this kind (Vol. I., Fig. 114).[196] With one arm this man-lion

presses against his body what seems to be a goat or a deer, while the

other, hanging at his side, holds a flowering branch. This figure, like

almost all of those found in the doorways, is winged. Another example

of the same type is to be found in a bas-relief of Assurbanipal; it

is, however, simplified, and it looks, on the whole, more probable

(Fig. 88). The wings have disappeared; there are but two natures to

be joined, and the junction seems to be made without effort; the lion

furnishes strength and rapidity, the man the various powers of the arm

and hand, and the beauty of the thinking and speaking head. The divine

character of the personage thus figured is indicated by the three pairs

of horns bent round the dome-like tiara, and also by the place he

occupies in the inferior compartment of a relief on which, at the top,

appear those lion-headed genii we have already figured (Vol. I., Fig.

6).

[Illustration: FIG. 87.--Fantastic animal. National

Library, Paris. Height 5¼ inches.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

In this last composition we have a foretaste of the centaur. Replace

the lion by a horse and the likeness is complete. Even now it is very

great. At the first moment, before we have time to notice the claws and

divided toes, we seem to recognize the fabulous animal of the Greeks

upon the walls of an Assyrian palace.

[Illustration: FIG. 88.--Man-lion. British Museum.

Height about 27 inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

Another composite animal familiar to the imaginations both of Greeks

and Mesopotamians was the winged horse, the Hellenic Pegasus (Fig. 89).

The example we have chosen is full of grace and nobility. We feel that

the wings have given additional lightness and almost a real capacity

for leaving the ground.

[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Winged horse. From Layard.]

[Illustration: FIG. 90.--Griffins seizing a goat. From

Layard.]

The whole of the fabulous tribe of griffins, by which we mean an animal

with the body of a lion or panther and the wings and head of a bird

of prey, is richly represented in Assyrian art. The griffin recurs

continually in the embroidery of the royal robes of Assurnazirpal (Fig.

90). The bird with a human head, the prototype of the Greek harpies

and sirens, is also to be frequently met with. We find it introduced

in those applied pieces which, after being cast and finished with

the burin, were used by bronze workers in the decoration of vases of

beaten metal. The diameters of the vases may easily be calculated from

the inner curve of the applied plaques;[197] the latter were used to

strengthen the vessels at the points where the movable handles, like

those of a modern bucket, were attached. These handles were hooked to a

ring or fastened to the back of the figure on the plaque.[198] The head

of the figure gave something to catch hold of when the vessel was upon

the table, with its handle down. The form in question (see Fig. 91) was

chosen by the artist on account of its fitness for the work to be done;

the tail and wings embrace the swelling sides very happily; but yet it

would never have been so employed had it not belonged to the ordinary

repertory of the ornamentist.

Of all these types the only one that does not seem to have been

invented by those who made use of it is that of the winged sphinxes

used as supports in the palace of Esarhaddon (Vol. I., Fig. 85). The

human-headed lion is certainly found long before, but it is not until

the later reigns that he takes the couchant attitude and something of

the physiognomy of the Egyptian sphinx.

[Illustration: FIG. 91.--Human-headed bird. From De

Longperier. One-third of the actual size.]

Under the Sargonids communication with Egypt became so frequent that

certain motives from the Nile valley were introduced into the Assyrian

system of ornament, but the part they played was always a subordinate

one. In creations such as those we have just been studying Chaldæa and

Assyria certainly displayed more inventive power than was ever shown by

Egypt. Speaking broadly, there was no possible combination they did not

attempt. It was from Chaldæo-Assyrian artists that Syria, Judæa, and

Phœnicia, as well as Asia Minor, borrowed their imaginary animals; and,

thanks to these middle-men, it was also to the artists of the double

valley that the early ceramists and modellers of Greece owed not a few

of the motives they transmitted to the great periods of classic art,

and, through the latter, to the art of the Renaissance and of our own

day.

§ 5. _Chaldæan Sculpture._

So far we have made no distinction between Chaldæan and Assyrian

sculpture. They made, in fact, but one art. In both countries we find

the same themes and the same treatment--the same way of looking at

nature and the same conventional methods of interpreting it. The common

characteristics are numerous enough to justify us in attributing to

one and the same school the works produced both in the southern and

northern provinces. If we take them _en bloc_, and put them side

by side with the productions of any other great nation of antiquity,

we shall be at once struck by the close resemblance between all the

monuments from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, whether they

come from Sirtella or Babylon, Calah or Nineveh. The connoisseur can

point out a Mesopotamian creation at a glance, mingled with works from

Egypt, Phœnicia, or Greece though it may be. In order to define the

Chaldæo-Assyrian style, he may take the first object that comes to

hand, without caring much whether it come from the upper country or the

neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf.

And yet between those cities of primitive Chaldæa that almost rivalled

Memphis in age, and the towns of Assyria which only commenced to

flourish in centuries that we may almost call modern, it is impossible

that the spirit of the plastic arts and their executive processes can

have remained without change. Between the earliest and the latest

monuments, between the images of Gudea and those of Assurbanipal,

there are, at least, shades of difference. It is certain that the old

Chaldæan art and the art of Assyria were not two different arts, but

they were two successive movements of the same art--two phases in its

development. We have still to distinguish between these two phases by

studying, one after the other, the history of Chaldæan and that of

Assyrian sculpture.

In the course of this study, and especially in the case of the older

civilization, we shall encounter many gaps. The monuments are few, and,

even of those that we have, many are not a little embarrassing. They

are often uninscribed and we are then without even the help afforded

by the language and the style of the character in fixing a date.

Fortunately this is not always the case; there are often indications

that enable us to form certain groups, and, if not to assign absolute

dates, at least to determine their relative places in a chronological

series.

Of all these groups the best established and almost the only ones

that can be used as the heads of series are those whose elements have

been furnished by the explorations undertaken by M. de Sarzec, French

vice-consul at Bassorah, at Tello, upon the site of a town which we

shall follow the majority of Assyriologists in calling Sirtella. We

have written the history of these excavations elsewhere; we have

explained how greatly they do honour to the artistic spirit, the

perseverance, and the energy of M. de Sarzec;[199] we have given the

history of the negotiations and of the vote in Parliament which led to

the acquisition by the Louvre of all the objects discovered. It will

be sufficient to say here that the works began in the winter of 1876

and came to an end in 1881, and that the purchase of M. de Sarzec’s

collection took place in the latter year, under the administration of

M. Jules Ferry.

The name of Tello, which has become famous so suddenly, is to be found

on no map of Asia to which we have access. The place thus designated by

the Arabs in consequence of the numerous mounds, or _tells_, that

are sprinkled about, is situated quite in the desert, on the left bank

of the Shat-el-Haï, above Chatra and below Saïd-Hassan, which are on

the other side of the channel, and about an hour and a quarter’s march

to the east.[200]

This site seems to have been inhabited down to the very last days of

antiquity, so that monuments have been found there of all ages; for the

moment, however, we are only concerned with those that belong to the

early Chaldæan monarchy. Among these there are some that date from the

very beginning of Chaldæan civilization. This we know not only from

their style; arguments based on such evidence alone might leave room

for doubt; some might even contend that the development of art did not

proceed equally over the whole of that extensive country; it might be

asserted that here and there it was in a far less advanced state than

at other centres. The age of these monuments is fixed by much less

debateable signs, namely, by the character of the symbols of which

their inscribed texts are composed (see Vol I., Fig. 2, and below, Fig.

92).

[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Inscription engraved on one of

the seated Chaldæan statues. Louvre.]

We have already explained[201] that in the monuments from Sirtella

these symbols were not all wedges, or arrow-heads, whose exclusive use

did not commence until afterwards; we have shown how their original

ideographic nature is still to be traced in many characters. Compare

the inscription here figured with those on our Assyrian monuments. Put

it side by side with the narrative that runs across all the reliefs

of Assurnazirpal at Nimroud (Vol. I., Fig. 4, and, above, Fig. 64):

you will see at once what a profound change has taken place and how

many centuries must have intervened between such different ways of

employing the same alphabet. At Tello the material was less kindly;

it was not, as in Assyria, limestone or gypsum; it was a diorite

or dolerite as stubborn as the hardest rocks of Egypt.[202] The

widely-spaced characters are none the less distinct; their cutting

is, in fact, marvellous in its decision and clearness. We feel that

the scribe traced each letter with much the same care and respect as

he would have shown in performing a religious rite. In the eyes of

the people who saw these complicated symbols grow under the chisel,

writing still had a beauty of its own as well as a mysterious prestige;

it was only legible by the initiated, and they were few in number; it

was admired for itself, for the power it possessed of representing

the facts of nature and the thoughts of mankind; it was a precious,

almost a magic, secret. By the time that the palaces of the Assyrian

monarchs began to be raised on the banks of the Tigris it was no longer

so; writing had gone on for so many centuries that people had become

thoroughly accustomed to it and to its merits; all that one desired,

when he took the chisel in hand, was to be understood. The text in

which Assurnazirpal celebrates the erection of his palace and claims

for it the protection of the great gods of Assyria, is written in very

small, closely-set characters, engraved by a skilful and rapid hand in

the soft and kindly stone; the inequalities of the surface, the details

of the sculptures and the shadows they cast, make a letter difficult

to read here and there. Nowhere, neither here nor in any other of the

great Assyrian inscriptions, do we find the signs of care, the look of

simple and serious sincerity, that distinguishes the ancient writing of

Chaldæa. At Calah and Nineveh we have before us the work of a society

already far advanced, a society which lives in the past and makes use,

with mere mechanical skill, of the processes created and brought to a

first perfection many centuries before.

Of all the monuments found at Tello, the oldest, apparently, is a

great stele of white stone, both sides of which are covered with

bas-reliefs and inscriptions. Unfortunately it had been broken into

numerous pieces, and, as these have not all been recovered, it is

impossible to restore it entirely. The style of its writing seems the

farthest removed from the form into which it finally developed, and its

symbols seem to be nearer their original imitativeness than anywhere

else. “Inexperience is everywhere to be recognized in the drawing of

the figures; eyes are almost triangular and ears roughly blocked out;

the aquiline type of nose is but a continuation of the line of the

forehead, into which it blends; the Semitic profile is more strongly

marked than in the monuments of the following age.”[203]

[Illustration: FIG. 93.--Fragment of a stele; from

Tello. Height 1 foot. Louvre.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

The bas-reliefs represent strange scenes of war, of carnage, of burial.

Here we find corpses arranged in line so that the head of one is

touching the feet of his neighbour (Fig. 93); they look as if they were

piled one above another, but this, we believe, is an illusion due to

want of skill on the part of the artist. He puts objects one above

another on the field of his relief which, in reality, were laid side

by side. We must imagine these corpses spread over the surface of the

ground and covered with earth. If the sculptor had introduced the soil

above them, the corpses would have been invisible; so he has left it

out. The two figures on the left, who mount an inclined plane[204] with

baskets on their heads, what are they carrying? Offerings to be placed

on the summit of the sepulchre? or earth to raise the tumulus to a

greater height? We prefer the latter suggestion. When earth or rubbish

has to be removed in the modern East, when excavations are made, for

instance, the work is set about in the fashion here commemorated;

the action of these two figures seems, moreover, to indicate that

the weight they are carrying is greater than a basket full of cakes,

fruits, and other things of that kind would account for.

If on this fragment we have a representation of the honours paid by the

people of Sirtella to companions slain in battle, another compartment

of the same relief shows us the lot reserved by the hate and vengeance

of the victor for the corpses of his enemies (Fig. 94). Birds of prey

are tearing them limb from limb on the place where they fell. In their

beaks and claws they held the heads, hands, and arms of dismembered

bodies. The savagery of all this suggests a remote epoch, when

civilization had done little to soften original brutality.

A last fragment belongs to another composition (Fig. 95). It comes

from a relief showing either the departure of an army for the field

or its triumphal return. Very little is left, but that little is

significant;--a hand holding one of those military standards whose use

by the Assyrians we have already noticed (see above, Fig. 46), and the

head of a personage, perhaps the king, walking in the procession; and

that is all. The head-covering of the latter individual seems to be a

kind of feather crown with a metal or ivory aigrette or cockade in the

centre of one side, reminding us in its shape of the head of one of

the great Assyrian bulls; it would seem to be a symbol of strength and

victory.

[Illustration: FIG. 94.--Fragment of a stele; from

Tello. Height 9¾ inches. Louvre.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

In the monograph now under preparation by MM. de Sarzec and Heuzey a

description of several smaller and still more fragmentary pieces of

the same monument will be found. There is one of which the subject may

still be traced. We have been prevented from reproducing it by its

bad condition. It again shows a battle field. Two rows of corpses are

stretched upon the ground; behind them are several standing figures.

We may thus re-establish with but little room for mistake the whole

economy of the composition. It was made to commemorate some military

expedition in which the prince who reigned at Sirtella was successful.

We do not know whether the fight itself was represented or not, but we

have before our eyes the consequences of victory. One picture shows

the insults inflicted upon the lifeless bodies of the hated enemy; two

more celebrate the care taken by the victors of their dead and the

honours rendered to their memory; finally the march of the successful

army is portrayed. We have here, then, a well thought-out combination,

a serious effort to seize and figure the different moments in a

complicated action. The execution is, however, of singular awkwardness.

The first halting experiments of the Chaldæan chisel, what we may call

the primitive art of Chaldæa, is preserved for us in the fragments of

this great stele.[205]

[Illustration: FIG. 95.--Fragment of a stele; from

Tello. About one-third of the original size. Louvre.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

A second and still more curious group of monuments is composed of eight

statues of different sizes with inscriptions of Gudea, and of a ninth

on which occurs a name read _Ourbaou_ by some and _Likbagas_

by others.[206] It is the smallest of all those exhibited at the

Louvre. All these figures are broken at the junction of the neck with

the body.[207] We may put beside them two heads whose proportions are

about the same as theirs, which were found, one among the mutilated

statues, the other in the ruins of a neighbouring building. The

material is similar, a very hard and dark igneous rock. The execution

corresponds exactly with that of the torsos, to one of which the first

named head may perhaps have belonged.

M. de Sarzec tells us that these statues were found in the great

edifice at Tello, almost all on the soil of the central court.[208]

Some are standing, others seated;[209] we give an example of each

type (Plate VI., Figs. 96 and 98). In these effigies we may notice

an arrangement that we have more than once encountered in Assyrian

reliefs, but which has never, so far as we know, been employed in the

arts of any other people. “All these statues, without exception, have

their hands folded within each other and placed against their chests,

an attitude still used in the East to mark the respectful attention

of the servant awaiting his master’s orders. If, as we have every

reason to believe, these figures were placed in a sacred inclosure, in

front of the images of the gods or of the symbols that recalled their

power, this attitude of submission and respect became one of religious

veneration (Fig. 97).”[210]

At Nimroud and Khorsabad this expressive gesture is sometimes given

to eunuchs in the presence of their masters, sometimes to kings

when standing before the effigies of their gods. It is thoroughly

well-fitted for those votive statues that proclaim themselves in their

inscriptions to be offerings to the deity. In consecrating an image

of himself on the threshold of the sanctuary, the king assured the

perpetuity of his prayers and acts of homage; he remained for ever

in an attitude of worship before his god--in an attitude whose calm

gravity was well calculated to suggest the idea of a divine repose to

which death was the passport.

[Illustration: FIG. 96.--Statue; from Tello. Height 37

inches. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

The chief point of interest for us lies in the execution of these

statues. They embody a very sensible progress. Art has thrown off the

hesitations of its first youth and attacks the stubborn material with

much certainty and no little science; and yet the most striking quality

is less the successful grappling with a mechanical difficulty, than

the feeling for nature and the general striving for truth; a striving

which has not been discouraged by the resistance of the material. This

resistance has resulted in a method that makes use of wide, smooth

surfaces; and yet the workmanship has a freedom that a too great

fondness for superficial polish too often took away from the diorite

monuments of Egypt. The bare right arm and shoulder are remarkable

passages. The strongly-marked muscles of the back and the freedom with

which the bony framework is shown under the flesh and skin should also

be noticed. All these parts are treated with a breadth that gives a

fine look of power to the otherwise short and thickset figure. And yet

the vigour of the handling never goes beyond what is sober and discreet

(Fig. 98). The same character is to be found in the hands, where

joints, bones, and nails are studied with minute care, and in the feet,

where power of foothold and the shapes of the toes are thoroughly well

indicated.

[Illustration: FIG. 97.--The hands of a statue; from

Tello. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

The treatment of the two heads is no less excellent (Plate VII). The

eyes are straight and widely opened; the heavy brows join in the

middle; the strong and salient chin, as well as the crown of the head,

is shaved in the fragment in which it is left bare.[211] Under the kind

of hat or turban in the other there would be a head no less bald. In

our own day the small cap of cotton or linen covered by the twisted

scarf or shawl of the Turk or Hindoo, conceals little but the smooth

skin of the skull.[212] The custom had yet to be introduced of wearing

the long and closely-curled hair and beard that we find reproduced in

the sculptures of Nineveh. The nose is broken in both heads, but if

we may judge from the statuettes and bas-reliefs of the same epoch,

especially from a curious fragment recovered in the course of the

same excavations, it must have been arched--but not so much as the

Assyrian noses--and a little thick at the end. Taking the face as a

whole it is square in structure, like the body; in the few examples of

Assyrian heads in the round that we possess the oval of the face seems

longer, but the beard by which the whole of its lower part is concealed

renders any comparison difficult. We do not think, however, that there

is any necessity to raise a question of race. “It is only subject to

the greatest reserve that we can venture to say anything as to the

ethnography of the types created by sculpture, especially when those

types are archaic, and therefore exposed more than all others to the

influence of school conventions.[213] It is a common habit with antique

sculptors to allow traces of their work in its rough shape to subsist

in the finished creation. In all countries the march of art has been

from square and angular to round and flowing shapes, from short and

thickset to graceful and slender proportions.”[214]

The tendencies shown in the rendering of the face and the uncovered

parts of the body are also to be recognized in the treatment of the

drapery. “The sculptor has attempted with much truth and simplicity to

suggest the relief of the drapery and the direction of its folds. This

early and timid attempt at studying folds is all the more remarkable

as nothing like it is to be found either in Egyptian sculpture or

in the later works of Assyria. It bears witness to a sculpturesque

instinct that does not reappear until we arrive at the art of the

Greeks and the magnificent development of draperies and their

significance which we then encounter.”[215]

[Illustration: FIG. 98.--The large statue from Tello.

Height 5 feet 3 inches. Louvre. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 99.--Female statuette. Alabaster.

Height about 8 inches.]

The figures we have been describing seem to us to represent THE

ARCHAIC AGE OF CHALDÆAN ART. The characteristics to which the

name of archaism has been given are easier to feel than to define. The

proportions, especially in the seated figures, are here very short and

broad, so much so that they seem to want length even when compared to

the thickset forms in the Nimroud bas-reliefs. There is some evidence

that the neck was very short and thick and the head large for the body,

as we see it indeed in the statuette of a woman sitting, in which our

lamented colleague de Longpérier was the first to recognize the work of

some ancient Chaldæan artist (Fig. 99).[216] In the figures from Tello

the elbow and the lower edge of the robe make those sharp angles which

Assyrian sculptors set themselves to round off in later days. There is

no attempt at grace; directness and truth of expression are all that

the artist has cared about.

[Illustration: FIG. 100.--Statuette; from Tello. Actual

size. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin.]

We should ascribe several other objects found at Tello to the same

period. These are in the first place the votive bronzes inscribed with

the name of Gudea, which M. de Sarzec drew from their hiding places

(Vol. I., Figs. 146–148); secondly, a statuette carved from a rather

soft, fine-grained stone (Fig. 100). By its attitude it reminds us of

the statues of Gudea, while the treatment of its drapery is more like

the alabaster figure that we have chosen for reproduction from the

old Louvre collections. Those symmetrical folds that appear to have

been obtained with an iron, and that we have already seen imitated

on the oldest Chaldæan cylinders (Vol. I., Figs. 3, 17, and 20; and

above, Figs. 39 and 40), may be observed in its draperies. Thirdly, a

bas-relief in soft stone, of which two compartments still remain, would

date from the same period (Fig. 101). In its original condition it may

have comprised some further divisions, for the subject as we see it in

the fragment preserved is by no means clear. In the upper compartment

there are four figures diminishing in size from left to right. The

male figure on the left bears what seems to be an instrument of music,

a kind of cymbal upon which he would beat with the hammer-shaped

object in his right hand. The three individuals behind him are all in

attitudes of submission and respect. In the lower division a seated

individual twangs the cords of a harp. In front his instrument is

decorated with the image of a bull, recalling the richly ornamented

harps that we find so often figured in the Egyptian tombs.[217] Another

figure, again in the attitude of respect, stands before the harpist. It

seems to be that of a woman, but the relief is in such a condition that

nothing but the general contours can be made out.

[Illustration: FIG. 101.--Fragment of a relief; from

Tello. Height 44 inches. Louvre.]

Chaldæan art did not stop here. Once arrived at the degree of mastery

shown by the statues of Gudea, it made progress of which, indeed, we

are unable to measure the rapidity; but whose results are now before

our eyes. We can hardly doubt that it reached a pitch of executive

skill which often gave quite remarkable delicacy and finesse to

the most insignificant details of sculpture and ornament. This had

already suggested itself to M. Heuzey in the course of his study of

the small Chaldæo-Babylonian figures belonging to the collection of

terra-cottas in the Louvre;[218] he found the same merits in several

of the fragments collected by M. de Sarzec.[219] We have been unable

to reproduce all the pieces to which he alludes; some are too small to

be rendered in a fashion that would do justice to the excellence of

their treatment;[220] but that we may give some idea of the third group

we are thus led to form, we shall figure two or three small objects,

which the visitor will find without difficulty in the cases of the

Louvre. One of these is a fragment from a bas-relief on which nothing

remains but a foot, charmingly modelled, and a piece of ornament

representing a vase from which two streams of water, each supporting

a fish, are flowing (Fig. 102). The hardly sensible relief and the

extreme finesse of this motive, remind us of the marvels of Japanese

workmanship.[221] Still more striking is a small, a very small, head in

steatite, reproducing the same type as the large statues with a grace

and precision that make it a veritable gem (Fig. 103). The eyes have

the oblique inclination that was afterwards to become so conspicuous in

the Assyrian reliefs, but in a very slight degree. We may apply almost

the same remarks to another but less well preserved head in diorite.

Unlike all those we have as yet encountered, it is not shaven. In spite

of the stubborn material the twists and turns of the hair and beard are

sculptured in relief with admirable skill and precision.

It was during this period that the custom was introduced of allowing

the hair and beard to grow, so that their crisp curls should form a

close frame for the face. This fashion was in the ascendant when a

bas-relief, of which, to our great regret, we only possess a small

fragment greatly damaged by fire (Fig. 67), was chiselled. It is

remarkable both for the fineness of its workmanship and its curious

subject. It shows the upper parts of two figures, entwined. That on the

right, from the long hair flowing over the shoulders, must be a woman.

The tall horned caps worn by both figures proclaim them to be a royal

or divine couple.

[Illustration: FIG. 102.--Fragment of a relief; from

Tello. Actual size. Louvre.]

[Illustration: FIG. 103.--Head; from Tello. Actual size.

Louvre.]

We find the same characteristics in a fifth monument from the same

place, whose composition at least is not wanting in originality. This

is a support of some kind, perhaps the foot of a vase, cut in rock so

hard, dark, and metal-like in its reflections, that at the first glance

it might almost be taken for bronze. Its general form is circular.

Above a plinth decorated with roughly chiselled squares and around a

central cylinder, sit a number of individuals with long beards and

hair. Their hands are placed upon their knees; the attitudes of the

limbs and the modelling of the feet remind us of the statues of Gudea;

but these figures are nude and their arrangement has more ease and

variety. The general motive is especially interesting; it is both

singular and happy, and proves that art was sufficiently advanced to

understand how to decorate common objects by the addition of figures

skilfully grouped and placed in natural and picturesque attitudes (Fig.

104).

It can never be sufficiently deplored that none of these monuments are

either of a fair size or in a good state of preservation. We can only

judge of the school by the small fragments we have been describing.

What name are we to give to the art of which we thus catch a glimpse?

Is it not better to employ some expression that has been sanctified by

custom, and one to which the critic and historian instinctively turns?

When he seeks for a special term to denote the different phases of an

organic development, what does he call the phase in which execution is

at once free and informed with knowledge, when the hand of the artist,

having won complete mastery over itself and over the material on which

it is employed, allows him to reproduce those aspects of nature by

which he has been charmed and interested? He calls it the _classic

period_, or the period in which works fit to be placed, as models,

before the artists of future ages, were produced. If we adopt this

nomenclature, the third of the periods we have just been discussing

will be for us the CLASSIC AGE OF CHALDÆA.

[Illustration: FIG. 104.--Stone pedestal; from Tello.

Greatest diameter 6 inches. Louvre.]

Although the remains from Sirtella give an opportunity for the study of

Chaldæan art that is to be equalled nowhere else in Europe, still the

British Museum and the old collections of the Louvre contain more than

one object calculated to enrich, if not to complete, the series we have

established.

A bronze in the former gallery (Fig. 105) seems to date from the

earliest period of Chaldæan art. It has been thought to represent a

goddess, Istar perhaps, although there is nothing in the modelling

of the bosom to suggest the female sex. The whole work is, however,

so rough and barbarous that the author may very well have left out

all details of the kind through sheer inability to render them. Like

the bronzes of Tello, this figure--which is without legs--ends in a

cylindrical stem. It was in all probability meant to be placed in one

of those hiding places we have already described.

[Illustration: FIG. 105.--Chaldæan statuette. Height 6½

inches. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

Monuments from the Archaic age are less rare. We have already had

occasion to notice some of them, the tablet from Sippara with the god

Shamas (Vol. I. Fig. 71), for instance, the canephorus inscribed

with the name of the king Kourdourmapouk (Fig. 53), and the stele of

Merodach-Idin-Akhi (Fig. 63). The canephorus must have been the oldest

of these objects. Its head is entirely shaven and in its attitude it

resembles the bronzes of Gudea (Vol. I. Fig. 147). We are induced to

bring down the tablet nearer to our own day because the individuals

shown in it wear both beard and long hair. These are not confined to

the god himself and the two divine personages who support the disk

placed on the altar and representing the sun; they are common to the

three figures advancing in an attitude of worship. The first appears to

be a priest. Among other interesting details we may point out, under

the throne of Shamas, the two strong-limbed deities whom Assyriologists

call Izdubar and Hea-bani, and, in Shamas’s right hand, the staff

with a ring attached that is found elsewhere than in Mesopotamia. The

draperies of the god and those of the third worshipper are arranged in

the crimped folds of which we have spoken above. Here art is fairly

advanced. Putting on one side the convention which allows the deity to

be made much taller than mortals, the proportions of the figures are

good, their attitudes well understood and expressive. The workmanship

of the stele of Merodach-Idin-Akhi is far inferior to that of the

Sippara tablet. It belongs to a series of monuments in which, as we

shall explain farther on, the workmanship is, as a rule, very mediocre.

We shall also mention a few fragmentary statues of very hard stone

which have been seen by travellers in Chaldæa,[222] and a few remains

of the same kind that are now in the British Museum; but of the first

we have only short and vague descriptions, while, among the second,

there is not a piece that can be compared to the statues of Gudea in

the Louvre. During all this period the volcanic rocks appear to have

been extensively employed; we still think they were obtained either

from the borders of the Arabian desert, or by way of the two rivers

from the mountains at the head of the double valley.

To the same school we may attribute a bronze from Hillah, now in the

Louvre (Fig. 106). It represents a priest robed in a long tunic with

five flounces of crimped work. His hair is brought together at the

back of his head, and he wears a low tiara with the usual horns folded

about it. His beard is short and broad. With his two hands--which

are broken--he holds a small ibex against his chest. We have already

encountered this motive in Assyria (see Vol. I. Fig. 114).

[Illustration: FIG. 106.--Statuette of a priest. Height

5¼ inches. Louvre.]

[Illustration: FIG. 107.--Statuette of a woman.

Terra-cotta. Louvre. Height 5¾ inches.]

It is chiefly, however, among the terra-cotta statuettes that we

find good examples of that more elegant and refined form of art of

which we catch certain glimpses in some of the Tello fragments. The

figure of a priest happily draped in a mantle that covers his head

and shoulders from behind, has already been given (Fig. 50). We may

here add two more specimens of the same kind. Their merits, however,

can only be fairly appreciated in the originals, on account of their

small size. One of the very best things produced by Chaldæan art is

the statuette of a nude woman, standing and suckling her infant (Fig.

107);[223] her large, and perhaps slightly empty forms are modelled

with ease and artistic feeling. She is, in all probability, a goddess

of maternity.[224] In the statuette reproduced in our Fig. 108, the

treatment is less free, its precision is a little dry and hard. The

personage represented employs the gesture proper to the nursing

goddesses (see Vol. I. Fig. 16), although robed from head to foot. Her

garment ends below in a deep fringe. On her head there is a Persian

tiara.[225]

[Illustration: FIG. 108.--Terra-cotta statuette. Height

4¼ inches. Louvre.]

This latter figure, in spite of certain qualities to which we are by no

means blind, belongs to a period of decadence which lasted, perhaps,

throughout the Persian domination, and even as late as the Seleucidæ

and Parthians. The types consecrated by religious tradition were

repeated, but repeated with a hesitating and indifferent hand, and

with little reference to nature. The faults inherent in this kind of

workmanship are still more conspicuous in the example, given in Fig. 16

of the first volume, of a type which was very common both in Chaldæa

and Susiana.[226] Whether we call her Istar or Anahit this goddess

seems to have enjoyed a very lasting popularity in the whole region

of which Mesopotamia forms the centre. The art of Chaldæa survived

itself, so to speak, and reappeared after the fall of the national

independence, just as the art of Egypt had a renewal of life under the

Ptolemies and the Roman emperors. It is to these centuries that we

should ascribe a limestone head found by M. de Sarzec at Tello (Fig.

109). In its execution there is none of the firmness and feeling for

nature that is so conspicuous in the monuments from the three periods

that we have endeavoured to establish.

[Illustration: FIG. 109.--Head; from Tello. Actual size.

Louvre.]

It is mainly to the second Chaldee empire that a whole series of

monuments belongs whose characteristics constitute them a class

apart;[227] we mean those tablets, generally of some very hard stone,

which are inscribed with what we should call title-deeds. Two-thirds of

their surface is occupied by several columns of close and fine writing,

in which the stipulations of the contract securing the rights of the

proprietor are recited. On the upper part, and dominated by several

stars and by a great serpent stretching across the upper edge, some

emblems are grouped, and these are almost exactly the same in all known

examples. There are altars upon which the wedge or arrow-head, the

primordial element of that writing without which the preservation of

the contract would have been impossible, is either laid upon its side

or set up on end. Other altars support horned tiaras, a horse-shoe,

and another object which has been made unrecognizable by an unlucky

fracture. With these things are mingled several animals, real and

fantastic, and many symbols, no doubt of a sacred character, for we

find them hung round the necks of Assyrian kings or placed in front of

them on the field of their steles.

On one of these monuments, the one we have chosen as the type of the

whole series, a double river seems to flow round the stone, and to

embrace in its windings the mystic scene we have described. This is

the _Caillou Michaux_, now in the French National Library. In

Fig. 110 we give a reproduction of it as a whole, and in Figs. 111

and 112 the upper parts of its two faces on a larger scale.[228] The

particular value of each symbol here engraved, is still, and perhaps

will always remain, an enigma, but the general significance of their

introduction into these documents is easily understood. They give a

religious character, a sort of divine sanction, to the titles inscribed

upon the stone; they act as witnesses and guarantees. The landmark

thus prepared, was set, no doubt, like the Athenian ὅροι, at the

limits of the field whose ownership it declared. It became a kind of

talisman.[229]

The workmanship of the upper division is very dry and hard; it is not

art. These images were not intended to charm the eye; they were only

placed on the stone on account of their supposed power of interesting

the gods in the preservation of the rights and titles thereon set out.

Their execution was therefore left to mere workmen, who sculptured

the symbols and animal forms in the most mechanical and perfunctory

fashion. They never dreamt of referring to nature and so giving some

variety to the traditional forms. This art, if we may call it so, was

hieratic in the fullest sense of the term.

[Illustration: FIG. 110.--The Caillou Michaux. Height

19¾ inches. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

From our point of view, then, we should gain nothing by multiplying

the number of these monuments. They are chiefly interesting to the

historian of law and religious beliefs in Chaldæa. The remains for

whose recovery we look with the most anxious hope are those of what we

have called the classic age of Chaldæan art, an art that must have

reached its apogee in the days of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar.

Speaking broadly, we can show nothing produced by the sculptors,

painters, and ornamentists who were employed on the decoration of those

great buildings which even the Jewish prophets could not help admiring,

while they abused the princes who built them and the gods to whom they

were consecrated. The earliest Greek travellers, such as Herodotus and

Ctesias, only saw the ruins of these magnificent structures and of

their rich adornment of enamels, frescoes, and sculptured figures; and

yet how great was their wonder! We can hardly reflect without emotion

upon what we have lost in great works in stone and metal carried out in

the style of which certain fragments from Tello and a few terra-cotta

statuettes give us some faint idea.[230]

[Illustration: FIG. 111.--The Caillou Michaux, obverse.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration: FIG. 112.--The Caillou Michaux, reverse.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

That such works did once exist we are told by the Greek historians.

Herodotus, after having described the temple of Bel and the sanctuary

on its summit in which no image of the deity was set up, goes on, “In

this temple at Babylon there is another sanctuary lower down, _where

a great seated statue of Zeus may be seen_.[231] Near this statue

there is a large table of gold, the throne and its steps are of the

same material. The whole, according to the Chaldæans, is worth eight

hundred talents of gold ... at one time the sacred inclosure also

contained a statue of massive gold twelve cubits high. I did not see

it. I content myself with repeating what the Chaldæans told me about

it. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, formed a project to carry it off, but

he did not dare to execute it. Xerxes, the son of Darius, caused the

priest to be put to death by whom the enterprise was opposed, and took

possession of the statue.” We here have the evidence of an eye-witness.

The seated statue of Bel, without being of the colossal size ascribed

by the Chaldæans to the image destroyed by Darius, must yet, if we may

judge from the expression of Herodotus, have been larger than nature.

We may gather some notion as to its pose and general appearance from

certain figures carved upon the cylinders (Fig. 40), just as, in

Greece, the more famous and venerable of her religious statues were

reproduced upon coins and gems. As to this Babylonian statue, the one

doubt we have relates to the value put upon it by the Chaldæans. Had

the statue and its surroundings really been of massive gold, would the

Persians have spared it when the other was overthrown and broken up?

It is possible that in spite of the historian’s assertion the work he

describes was only gilded bronze.

And as for the image twelve cubits high, we may express the same

doubts. Ctesias seems to have received better information as to how

these figures were made than Herodotus, and, through Diodorus, he

tells us that they consisted of metal plates beaten into shape with

the hammer.[232] Whether Ctesias or his informants did or did not

exaggerate their true dimensions (Diodorus speaks of a Bel forty feet

high), or whether these figures were of gold or gilded brass, is of

comparatively slight importance; we are interested chiefly in the

information he gives as to the method of fabrication. Ever since the

discovery of the Balawat gates proved to what a height the student art

of Assyria carried the manipulation of metal by the _repoussé_

process, we have had no difficulty in believing that the sculptors of

Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar could build up images of colossal

size and fine decorative effect by means of plaques united with rivets.

If we may believe the rest of Diodorus’s description, the Chaldæan

artists combined the glory of gold and silver with the purity of ivory

and the bright and varied colours of precious stones. And all this we

see good reason to admit when we have examined at the British Museum

those ivories in which lapis lazuli and other substances of the same

kind even now fill up the hollows of the design, while the field still

glitters here and there with some last fragments of the gold with which

it was once incrusted. The skilful workmen who discovered the secret

of this kind of mosaic, may very well have learnt to combine these

beautiful materials so well that the statues upon which they were used

would even have rivalled the chryselephantine masterpieces of Phidias;

in richness and harmony of tones, at least, if not in nobility and

purity of form.

§ 6. _Assyrian Sculpture._

Assyrian sculpture is far from leading us into the remote centuries

from which some of the Chaldæan works must date. It had no period of

infancy or childish effort. The Semites of the north were the pupils

of their southern brothers, from whom they obtained an art already

mature. The oldest known Assyrian monument dates from the reign of

Tiglath-Pileser I., or about the end of the twelfth century B.C.; it

is a bas-relief chiselled upon a rock near the sources of the Tigris,

about fifty miles north of Diarbekir and near the village of Korkhar.

It represents the king standing upright, his right hand extended

and his left holding a sceptre; at present, however, we only know

it by the very poor sketch given by Professor Rawlinson.[233] It is

almost the only monument extant from the time when the capital of the

monarchy was on the site now known as _Kaleh-Shergat_. One other may

be named, the female torso in the British Museum, to which we have

already referred;[234] on it the name of Assurbilkala, who succeeded

Tiglath-Pileser I., may be read.

The monumental history of Assyria really begins two centuries later,

with the great buildings erected by Assurnazirpal at Calah (Nimroud),

his favourite residence. Assyrian art then reached a level that,

speaking generally, it never surpassed. In the following centuries it

innovated, it became more complex and certainly more refined, but it

produced nothing essentially nobler than certain Nimroud bas-reliefs,

in which the king is seated among his great officers or before his

gods, and always in the attitude of prayer and sacrifice. We have

already given several examples of these reliefs (Vol. I. Fig. 4, and

above, Figs. 15 and 64); we may here add one more (Fig. 113). Leaning

on his bow with his left hand, the king, richly dressed, lifts in his

right the patera whose contents he is about to pour as a libation to

the deity. Facing him stands a gigantic eunuch, who waves over his

master’s head one of those fly-flappers that, with the parasol, have

always been among the insignia of Oriental royalty (see Plate X.).

These figures are rather short in their proportions, and the muscular

development of their arms, which alone are bare, is violently

exaggerated, but yet as a whole the work has a certain grandeur and

nobility. The lines are well balanced. Both the king and his attendant

seem fully impressed with the gravity of the rite over which they are

busy. There is dignity in their attitudes, but no stiffness; their

gestures are easy and expressive without being too much accented.

In our engraving we have only been able to include the two isolated

figures, in the original there are several more all occupied over

the same rite. Even the British Museum has only a few fragments from

these vast compositions. For those who saw them in their original

completeness, well lighted and distributed in their right order along

the walls of spacious saloons, they must have seemed majestic enough.

In his palace decorations the Assyrian artist set himself to free

his figures from all unnecessary surroundings and to simplify his

theme as much as he could. But we must make a distinction between

those reliefs that may be called historical, such as the pictures

of battles and sieges, and those in which the king is shown in the

accomplishment of some duty belonging to his position, and part of

his daily or periodical routine. It is to the latter class that the

most carefully-executed works belong. In these no particular locality

is specified; like that of the Panathenaic procession, it is left

undetermined, and the mind of the spectator is silently invited to fill

it in for himself. Those who frequented the palace were accustomed to

see the king upon his throne, or traversing the wide quadrangle, or

pouring libations on the altar that stood in front of the temple; so

that they had no difficulty in imagining all that the sculptor had left

unsaid. In the hunting pictures the same method was followed with but

little modification. A flat surface suggesting the unbroken expanse of

the desert, was the only indication of a _locus in quo_.

[Illustration: FIG. 113.--Assurnazirpal offering a

libation. Height 7 feet 8 inches. British Museum.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

It would have been difficult, or rather impossible, to adhere to such

a rule in those reliefs in which the actual incidents of military

expeditions were retraced. In them the sculptor thought it necessary to

insert such details as would permit the various episodes commemorated

to be identified. One of the simplest means of insuring the desired

result was to render not only buildings, such as castles and fortified

towns, but also the natural features of the scene, with the greatest

possible truth. This the Assyrian artist did, as a rule, with

excellent judgment. Thus, if an action or campaign had been fought

in a mountainous country, he made use of a kind of lattice-work or

reticulation, which every spectator thoroughly understood (see Vol. I.

Figs. 39 and 43); if among forests, he introduced numerous trees among

his figures. He made little attempt to distinguish between one kind of

tree and another, but in most cases employed forms as conventional as

that by which he indicated hills (Fig. 114).

[Illustration: FIG. 114.--Tree on a river bank; from

Layard.]

One of the chief merits and most striking features of Assyrian

sculpture is, then, its power of selection, its rejection of all that

is superfluous, its comprehension, in fact, of the true spirit and

special conditions of the art. The field has none of those encumbering

accessories which, under the pretext of furnishing and defining, only

serve, so to speak, to take away air and elbow-room from the figures.

When certain complementary features are required to make the subject

clear, the sculptor introduces them, but he never gives more than is

strictly necessary. He never gives way to the temptation to exaggerate

such details, or treats them as if they had an interest and importance

of their own. Such sobriety found its reward. His work no doubt

remained faulty in many respects and inferior to that of his Egyptian

forerunner, still more to that of his Greek successor; but yet it had

an air of frankness, of pride and dignity, to which the more complex

and superficially more skilful compositions of the following epoch too

seldom attained.

The good qualities of this early Assyrian school are no less

conspicuous in the colossal figures with which the doorways of palaces

and temples were decorated. The head of the winged bull has nowhere a

more lofty expression or one more full of dignity than at Nimroud (see

below, Fig. 133). The chisels of these northern artists never created

anything more bold, energetic, and lifelike than the figures from the

small temple built by Assurnazirpal (Vol. I. Fig. 188); we need only

mention the colossal lion in the British Museum (Plate VIII.) and the

grimacing demon whom a beneficent god seems to be expelling from the

sanctuary in spite of his threats and grinning teeth.[235]

And yet this art which is so masterly in some respects is very

primitive and naïve in others. We cannot help being amazed, for

instance, at the wide band of wedges that the scribe has been allowed

to cut across all the lines and contours left by the sculptor. This

proceeding is to be explained, of course, by the essentially historical

and anecdotic character of Assyrian art, but nevertheless it betrays

the contempt for æsthetic effect which is one of the characteristics

of archaic art in Assyria. This feature is by no means without

importance, and Sir Henry Layard seems to us to have been ill advised

in deliberately suppressing it. In his otherwise faithful reproductions

of the best preserved among the bas-reliefs of Assurnazirpal he has

everywhere left out the continuous band of inscription which runs

across them at about two-thirds of their height. By such a proceeding

he has sensibly modified their decorative value.[236]

We must be on our guard against attributing such primitive simplicity

to inexperience in the use of the chisel. In the finest works of later

years that instrument was never wielded with more assured skill than

in the delicate carvings in which the embroidery on the royal robes

are reproduced. We have already put several of these motives before

our readers; in Fig. 115 we give a last exquisite morsel. It shows a

winged lion with the head of a woman, and a king or priest who holds

one of her paws in his left hand, while with his right he seems to

threaten her with a mace.

[Illustration: FIG. 115.--Detail from the royal robe of

Assurnazirpal; from Layard.]

Such dexterity as this is not to be seen in works in the round (see

Fig. 60). But with the reign of Assurnazirpal commences another

series of royal monuments in which the artist, not being compelled

to quit work in relief, felt himself more at home. We refer to

those round-headed steles on which the standing figure of the king

is relieved against a flat ground bordered by a raised edge. An

inscription is engraved sometimes upon the bed of the relief, sometimes

on the reverse of the stele. An effigy of Assurnazirpal belonging

to this class is now in the British Museum. It was discovered still

standing in the entrance to one of the temples built by that sovereign

on the platform of Calah. Before the stele there was an altar similar

to that shown on page 256 of our first volume. This altar is also in

the British Museum.[237] From the existence of these steles it has

been concluded, with no little probability, that the Assyrian kings,

or at least some of them, received divine honours after their deaths.

We have chosen that of Samas-vul II. for reproduction, on account of

its good condition (Fig. 116). It differs but little from the stele of

Assurnazirpal. High up in the field and in front of the head may be

noticed symbols like those on the land marks (see Figs. 111, 112, and

143). The king’s right hand is raised in the attitude of adoration.

In his left he holds a sceptre, with a ball of ivory or metal at one

end and a tassel at the other. These steles must have been set up in

great numbers. We find them represented in the reliefs (Vol. I. Figs.

42 and 112, and Plate XII.) and upon cylinders (_ib._ Fig. 69).

They were raised as a sign of annexation in conquered countries, and an

invocation engraved upon the stone put them under the protection of the

Assyrian gods, who were charged with the punishment of any who might

lay hands upon them.[238]

In the British Museum there are fragments of a sculptured obelisk on

which the wars and hunts of Assurnazirpal are figured. It is taller

than that of his son Shalmaneser II., being nearly ten feet high, but

as the material is a soft limestone, it is in far worse preservation;

we only mention it to show that Assyrian art was in possession of all

its resources in the time of this king.

Under none of the princes who reigned at Calah did sculpture show

any sensible change of style; but yet, perhaps, in certain passages

of the Balawat gates we may recognize the first signs of a tendency

that was to become strongly marked under the Sargonids. The field

of the relief there contains a far greater number of picturesque

and explanatory details than the great bas-reliefs of Nimroud. The

campaigns and victories of Shalmaneser II. was the theme put before

the sculptor. In order to do it justice he had to carry the spectator

into countries of various aspects, and to give their true character to

military struggles whose conditions were incessantly changing. He did

not think success was to be attained by confining himself to figuring

the cities and fortresses besieged and taken by the Assyrian army; he

introduced features for the purpose of determining the seat of war.

Such accessories were better placed among figures on a small scale

than among those surpassing or even approaching life size; and without

knowing exactly why, the artist seems to have been warned of this by

a secret and delicate instinct. These strips of bronze are ten inches

high; each is divided into two horizontal divisions by a narrow band of

rosettes, which is also repeated at the top and bottom of each strip.

The figures are on an average about three and a half inches high (see

Fig. 117 and Plate XII.).

[Illustration: FIG. 116.--Stele of Samas-vul II. Height

7 feet 2 inches. British Museum.

Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

[Illustration:

PLATE XII

FROM THE BALAWAT GATES

British Museum]

Our Plate XII. is an exact copy from a part of the band marked B in

the provisional numeration adopted by Dr. Birch.[239] According to the

inscription upon it this part of the work commemorates a sacrifice

offered by Shalmaneser on the borders of the Lake Van, in Armenia. The

figure of the king is not included in our plate, but it contains all

the sacred vessels of which he made use for the ceremony. Beginning on

the left we find a sort of great candelabrum, a three-legged altar, and

two standards upon tripods. Must these be accepted as military ensigns

of the same class as that shown in Fig. 46 or as religious emblems of

the sun and moon? The question is hardly one for us to discuss. Next

comes a stele raised upon a rock, or perhaps carved upon its surface.

Other reliefs of the same series show us that Shalmaneser erected these

steles in every country he conquered. Further to the right we see

soldiers throwing into the lake the limbs of the animals sacrificed.

This must be an offering to the deity of its waters, perhaps to Anou,

who was believed to reside in rivers and lakes as well as in the sea.

The denizens of the lake seize upon the morsels thus put in their way;

among them we may recognize a large fish, a tortoise, and a quadruped,

that may perhaps be an otter.[240]

In the lower division we see the Assyrian army on the march. On the

right Mr. Pinches recognizes a fortified camp in which horses were

left for flight in case of defeat. There is, indeed, one of these

fortified walls shown in projection, of which we have already spoken,

but the horse is placed upon a clearly indicated arch. What is this

arch doing in the middle of the camp? We ask ourselves whether this

circular structure may not be intended to represent a fortified

_tête-de-pont_. It is abundantly proved that the Assyrians and

Chaldæans made great use of the vault. Why should they not have

employed it for bridges elsewhere than at Babylon? and wherever there

were bridges on the great roads and near their own frontiers what

could be more natural than to defend them by works flanked, like this,

with towers? The horse would then be about to cross the bridge, and

his introduction would be explained simply by the sculptor’s desire

to give all possible clearness to a representation which could never

be complete. He seems to advance with some precaution as if the floor

of the bridge, which is indicated merely by a straight line, was made

of tree trunks or roughly squared planks badly joined. We offer this

hypothesis for what it may be worth. Next come two archers, and then

chariots. The ground must be difficult, for not only does the driver

support his horses with a tightened rein, but a man on foot walks in

front and holds them by the head.

We find a scene entirely similar but still better treated in the upper

division of another plaque (see Fig. 117).[241] Here we may see that

the chariots are progressing not without difficulty and even danger, in

the very bed of a torrent. The movement of the men who lead the horses

is well understood and skilfully rendered; we feel how carefully they

have to conduct their advance among the blocks of stone that encumber

the bed of the stream and the tumbling water that conceals the nature

of the ground. In the lower division we are presented with one of those

scenes that are so common in Assyrian reliefs. The king in his royal

robes appears on the left; a line of prisoners guarded by archers

approach him and beg for mercy, while the foremost among them “kiss

the dust beneath his feet,” to use an oriental expression in its most

literal sense.

[Illustration: FIG. 117.--Two fragments from the Balawat

gates. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

We should have been willing, had it been possible, to make further

extracts from this curious series of reliefs; to have shown, here naked

prisoners defiling under the eyes of the conqueror, there Assyrian

archers shooting at the heaped-up heads of their slain enemies. But

we have perforce been content with giving, by a few carefully chosen

examples, a fair idea of the work that intervened between the

sculptors of Assurnazirpal and those of the Sargonids.

It is probable that the scheme of this vast composition was due to a

single mind; from one end to the other there is an obvious similarity

of thought and style. But several different hands must have been

employed upon its execution, which is far from being of equal merit

throughout. It is on examining the original that we are struck by these

inequalities. Thus, in some of the long rows of captives the handling

is timid and without meaning, while in others it has all the firmness

and decision of the best among the alabaster or limestone reliefs; the

muscular forms, the action of the calf and knee, are well understood

and frankly reproduced. The passages we have chosen for illustration

are among the best in this respect. Taking them all in all these bronze

reliefs are among the works that do most honour to Assyrian art.

The only monument that has come down to us from the reign of Vulush

III., the successor of Samas-vul, is a statue, or rather a pair of

statues, of Nebo; the better of the two is reproduced in Fig. 15 of our

first volume. These sacred images are of very slight merit from an art

point of view; we should hardly have referred to them but for their

votive inscriptions. From these we learn that they were consecrated

in the Temple of Nebo by the prefect of Calah in order to bespeak the

protection of that god for the king. But the latter is not named alone;

the faithful subject says that he offers these idols “for his master

Vulush and his mistress Sammouramit.”

In this latter name it is difficult not to recognize the Semiramis

of the Greeks, and we are led to ask ourselves whether the queen of

Vulush may not have afforded a prototype for that legendary princess.

This association of a female name with that of the king is almost

without parallel either in Chaldæa or Assyria. In royal documents, as

well as in those of a more private character, there is no more mention

of the royal wives than if they did not exist. Only one explanation

can be given of the apparent anomaly, and that is that Sammouramit,

for reasons that may be easily guessed, enjoyed a quite exceptional

position. It was in those days that, from one reign to another, the

princes of Calah attempted to complete the subjugation of Chaldæa.

It may have happened that in order to put an end to a state of

never-ending rebellion, Vulush married the heiress of some powerful

and popular family of the lower country, and, that he might be looked

upon as the legitimate ruler of Babylon, joined her name with his in

the royal style and title. This hypothesis finds some confirmation

in what Herodotus tells us about Semiramis. She was, he says, queen

of Babylon five generations before Nitocris, which would be about a

century and a half. He adds that she caused the quays of the Euphrates

to be built.[242] This takes us back to rather beyond the middle of

the eighth century B.C., that is very near to the date which

Assyrian chronology would fix for the reign of Vulush (810–781). As

the last representative of the old national dynasty, this Semiramis,

associated as she was in the exercise, or at least in the show, of

sovereign power both in Assyria and Chaldæa, would not be forgotten

by her countrymen, and the population of Babylon would be especially

likely to magnify the part she had played. There is nothing fabulous

in the tradition as Herodotus gives it, although it may, perhaps, go

beyond the truth here and there. Ctesias, however, goes much farther.

He brings together and amplifies tales which had already received many

additions in the half century that separated him from Herodotus, and

he thus creates the type of that Semiramis, the wife of Ninus and the

conqueror of all Asia, who so long held an undeserved place in ancient

history.[243]

The last Calah prince who has left us anything is Tiglath-Pileser II.

(745–727). We have already described how his palace was destroyed by

Esarhaddon, who employed its materials for his own purposes.[244] At

the British Museum there are a few fragments which have been recognized

by their inscriptions as belonging to his work (Vol. I. Fig. 26)[245];

they are quite similar to those of his immediate predecessors.

With the new dynasty founded by Sargon at the end of the eighth century

taste changed fast enough. In those bas-reliefs in the Khorsabad palace

which represent that king’s campaigns, many details are treated in a

spirit very different from that of former days. Trees, for instance,

are no longer abstract signs standing for no one kind of vegetation

more than another; the sculptor begins to notice their distinguishing

features and to give their proper physiognomy to the different

countries overrun by the Assyrians. But these landscape backgrounds are

not to be found in all the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad.[246]

The art of Sargon was an art of transition. While on the one hand it

endeavoured to open up new ground, on the other it travelled on the

old ways and followed many of the ancient errors; it had a marked

predilection for figures larger than nature, and bas-reliefs treating

of royal pageants and processions remind us by the simplicity of

their conception of those of Assurnazirpal. We have already given

many fragments (Vol I. Figs. 22–24, and 29), and now we give another,

a vizier and a eunuch standing before the king in the characteristic

attitude of respect (Fig. 118). The inscription which cut the figures

of Assurnazirpal so awkwardly in two has disappeared; the proportions

have gained in slenderness, and the muscular development, though still

strongly marked, has lost some of its exaggeration. All this shows

progress, and yet on the whole the Louvre relief is less happy in its

effect than the best of the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum.

The execution is neither so firm nor so frank; the relief is much

higher and the modelling a little heavy and bulbous in consequence.

This result may also be caused to some extent by the nature of the

material, which is a softer alabaster than was employed, so far as we

know, in any other part of Assyria. At Nimroud a fine limestone was

chiefly used.

We shall be contented with mentioning the stele of Sargon, found near

Larnaca, in Cyprus, in 1845. It is most important as an historical

monument; it proves that, as a sequel to his Syrian conquests, the

terror of Sargon’s name was so widespread that even the inhabitants of

the islands thought it prudent to declare themselves his vassals, and

to set up his image as a sign of homage rendered and allegiance sworn.

But the stone is now too much broken to be of any great interest as a

work of art.[247]

The artistic masterpiece of this epoch is the bronze lion figured in

our Plate XI. It had been suggested that its use was to hold down the

cords of a tent or the lower edge of tapestries, a purpose for which

the weight of the bronze and the ring fixed in its back make it well

suited. This idea had to be abandoned, however, when a whole series of

similar figures marked with the name of Sennacherib was found. Their

execution was hardly equal to that of the lion we have figured, but

their general characteristics were the same, and they had rings on

their backs.[248]

These lions are sixteen in number; they form a series in which the size

of the animal becomes steadily smaller with each example; the largest

is a foot long, the smallest hardly more than an inch. The decrease

seems to follow a certain rule, but rust has affected them too greatly

for it to be easy to base any metrological calculation upon their

weight. But all doubt as to their use is removed by the inscriptions

in cuneiform and in ancient Aramaic characters with which several of

them are engraved. The Aramaic inscriptions all begin with the word

_mine_; then comes a figure indicating the number of _mines_,

or of subdivisions of the _mine_ that the weight represents;

finally, there is the name of some personage, who may perhaps have been

a magistrate charged with the regulation and verification of weights.

[Illustration: FIG. 118.--Bas-relief from Khorsabad.

Height 9 feet 5 inches. Louvre.]

With the accession of Sennacherib, a sensible change comes over the

aspect of the reliefs. What until now has been the exception becomes

the rule. On almost every slab we find a complex and carefully treated

landscape background. The artist is not satisfied with indicating the

differences between conifers, cypresses, and pines (Vol. I. Figs,

41–43), palms (_ib._ Figs. 30 and 34; and above, Fig. 21), the

vine (Fig. 47), and the tall reeds and grasses of the marsh (Fig. 119)

are also imitated.[249]

[Illustration: FIG. 119.--Marsh vegetation; from Layard.]

We feel that the sculptor wished to reproduce all those subordinate

features of nature by which his eye was amused on the Assyrian plains;

he seems almost to have taken photographs from nature, and then to

have transferred them to the palace walls by the aid of his patient

chisel. Look, for instance, at the reliefs in which the process

of building Sennacherib’s palace is narrated. The sculptor is not

content with retracing, in a spirit of uncompromising reality, all the

operations implied by so great an undertaking; he gives backgrounds to

his pictures in which he introduces, on a smaller scale, many details

that have nothing to do with the main subject of the relief. Thus we

find a passage in which men are shown carting timber, and another in

which they are dragging a winged bull, both surmounted by a grove of

cypresses, while still higher on the slab, and, therefore, in the

intention of the sculptor, on a more distant horizon, we see a river,

upon which boatmen propel their clumsy vessels, and fishermen, astride

on inflated skins, drift with the stream, while fishes nibble at their

baited lines.[250]

Neither boatmen nor fishermen have anything to do with the building of

the great edifice that occupies so many minds and arms within a stone’s

throw of where they labour. They are introduced merely to amuse the

eye of the spectator by the faithful representation of life; a passage

of what we call _genre_ has crept into an historical picture.

Elsewhere it is landscape proper that is thus introduced. One of the

slabs of this same series ends in a row of precipitous heights covered

with cypresses, vines, fig and pomegranate trees, and a sort of dwarf

palm or _chamærops_.[251]

They thought no doubt that the spectators of such pictures would be

delighted to have the shadowy freshness of the orchards that bordered

the Tigris, the variety of their foliage and the abundant fruit under

which their branches bent to the ground, thus recalled to their minds.

The group of houses that we have figured for the sake of their domed

roofs, forms a part of one of these landscape backgrounds (Vol. I. Fig.

43).[252]

We might multiply examples if we chose. There is hardly a relief

from Sennacherib’s palace in which some of those details which

excite curiosity by their anecdotic and picturesque character are

not introduced.[253] We find evidence of the same propensity in the

decoration of the long, inclined passage that led from the summit of

the mound down to the banks of the Tigris. There the sculptor has

represented what must have actually taken place in the passage every

day; on the one hand grooms leading their horses to water, on the other

servants carrying up meat, fruit, and drink for the service of the

royal table and for the army of officers and dependants of every kind

that found lodging in the palace.[254]

This active desire to imitate reality as faithfully as possible had

another consequence. It led to the multiplication of figures, and

therefore to the diminution of their scale. No figures like those

that occupy the whole heights of the slabs at Nimroud and Khorsabad

have been found in the palace of Sennacherib. In the latter a slab is

sometimes cut up into seven or eight horizontal divisions.[255] The

same landscape, the same people, the same action is continued from

one division to another over the whole side of a room. The subjects

were not apportioned by slabs, but by horizontal bands; whence we may

conclude that the limestone or alabaster was chiselled in place and not

in the sculptor’s studio.

We have not engraved one of these reliefs in its entirety; with its

half-dozen compartments one above another and its hundred or hundred

and fifty figures, it would have been necessary to reduce the latter to

such a degree that they could only be seen properly with a magnifying

glass. The originals themselves, or the large plates given by Layard

in his _Monuments_, must be consulted before the dangers of this

mode of proceeding can be appreciated. The confusion to which we have

pointed as one of the cardinal defects of Assyrian sculpture, is

nowhere more conspicuous than in the battle pictures from Sennacherib’s

palace. It is, however, only to be found in the historical subjects.

When the sculptor has to deal with religious scenes he returns to the

simplicity of composition and the dignity of pose that we noticed in

the reliefs of Assurnazirpal.

This may be seen in the figures carved on the rock of Bavian by the

orders of Sennacherib. The village which has given its name to this

monument lies about five and thirty miles north-north-east of Mossoul,

at the foot of the first Kurdistan hills and at the mouth of a narrow

and picturesque valley, through which flows the rapid and noisy Gomel

on its way to the ancient _Bumados_, the modern Ghazir, which in

its turn flows southwards into the Zab.

The sculptures consist of several separate groups cut on one of the

lofty walls of the ravine. Some are accompanied by inscriptions, but

the latter speak of canals cut by the king for the irrigation of his

country and of military expeditions, and do not explain why such

elaborate sculptures should have been carried out in a solitary gorge,

through which no important road can ever have passed.[256]

The valley, which is very narrow, is a cul-de-sac. May we suppose that

during the summer heats the king set up his tent in it and passed

his time in hunting? According to Layard’s description the scene is

charming and picturesque. “The place, from its picturesque beauty

and its cool refreshing shade even in the hottest day of summer, is

a grateful retreat, well suited to devotion and to holy rites. The

brawling stream almost fills the bed of the narrow ravine with its

clear and limpid waters. The beetling cliffs rise abruptly on each side

and above them tower the wooded declivities of the Kurdish hills. As

the valley opens into the plain the sides of the limestone mountains

are broken into a series of distinct strata, and resemble a vast flight

of steps leading up to the high lands of central Asia. The banks of

the torrent are clothed with shrubs and dwarf trees, among which are

the green myrtle and the gay oleander bending under the weight of

its rosy blossoms.”[257] Such a gorge left no room for a palace and

its mound,[258] but a subterranean temple may have been cut in the

limestone rock for one of the great Assyrian deities, and its entrance

may now be hidden, or even its chambers filled up and obliterated, by

landslips and falling rocks, and two huge masses of stone that now

obstruct the flow of the torrent may be fragments from its decoration.

They bear the figures of two winged bulls, standing back to back and

separated by the genius who is called the lion-strangler.[259]

[Illustration: FIG. 120.--The great bas-relief at

Bavian; from Layard.]

The principal relief fills up a frame 30 feet 4 inches wide and 29

feet high (see Fig. 120). The bed has been cut away by the chisel to

a depth of about 8 inches. Sheltered by the raised edge thus left

standing the figures would have been in excellent condition but for

the unhappy idea that struck some one in later years, of opening

chambers in the rock at the back and cutting entrances to them actually

through the figures. These hypogea do not seem to have been tombs.

They contain no receptacles for bodies, but only benches. They were,

in all probability, cells for Christian hermits, cut at the time when

monastic life was first developed and placed where we see them with the

idea of at once desecrating pagan idols and sanctifying a site which

they had polluted. In Phrygia and Cappadocia we found many rock-cut

chambers in which evidence of the presence of these pious hermits was

still to be gathered. In some, for instance, we found the remains of

religious paintings. As examples we may mention the royal tombs of

Amasia, which were thus converted into oratories.[260]

The composition contains four figures. Two in the middle face each

other and seem to be supported by animals resembling dogs in their

general outlines. They are crowned with tiaras, cylindrical in shape

and surrounded with horns. One of these figures has its right hand

raised and its left lowered; his companion’s gesture is the same, but

reversed. The general attitudes, too, are similar, but the head of

one figure has disappeared, so that we can not tell whether it was

bearded like its companion or not. They each carry a sceptre ending

in a palmette and with a ring attached to it at about the middle of

the staff. In the centre of this ring a small standing figure may be

distinguished. Behind each of these two chief personages, and near the

frame of the relief, two subordinate figures appear. In attitude and

costume they are the repetition of each other. Their right hands are

raised in worship, while in their left they hold short, ball-headed

sceptres.

The two figures in the centre must represent gods. The king is never

placed on the backs of living animals in this singular fashion; but

we can understand how, by an easily-followed sequence of ideas, such

a method of suggesting the omnipotence of the deity was arrived at.

Neither did the kings of the period we are considering wear this

cylindrical tiara. In the palaces of the Sargonids it is reserved for

the winged bulls. It is larger than the royal tiara, from which it is

also distinguished by its embracing horns. Finally, the ringed sceptre

is identical with the one held by Samas, in the Sippara tablet (Vol. I.

Fig. 71). No one will hesitate as to the real character of these two

personages; the only point doubtful is as to whether the one on the

left is a god or a goddess. The mantle worn by the right hand figure is

wanting; but the question cannot be decided, because the head has been

completely destroyed. In any case, the difference of costume proves

that two separate deities, between whom there was some relation that

escapes our grasp, were here represented.

As for the two figures placed behind the gods, they would have been

quite similar had they been in equally good condition. They represent

Sennacherib himself, with the head-dress and robes that he wears in the

sculptures of his palace at Nineveh. He caused his image to be carved

on both sides of the relief, not for the sake of symmetry, but in order

to show that his worship was addressed no less to one than the other of

the two deities.

This rock-cut picture is not the only evidence of Sennacherib’s desire

to leave a tangible witness of his piety and glory in this narrow

valley. In another frame we find some more colossal figures, only one

of which is fairly well preserved; it is that of a cavalier who, with

his lance at rest, seems to be in act to charge an enemy. His attitude

and movement recall those of a mediæval knight at a tournament.[261]

Layard counted eleven smaller reliefs sprinkled over the face of the

rock. Some are easily accessible, while others are situated so high up

that they can hardly be distinguished from below. Each of these has an

arched top like that of the royal steles (see Fig. 116) and incloses

a figure of the king about five feet six inches high. Above his head

symbols like those on the Babylonian landmarks (see Figs. 43 and 111)

and the Assyrian steles (Fig. 116) are introduced.[262] Three of these

reliefs had inscriptions, and to copy them Layard caused himself to be

let down by ropes from the top of the cliff, the ropes being held by

Kurds who could hardly have had much experience of such employment.

The illustration we have borrowed from his pages shows the adventurous

explorer swinging between sky and earth (Fig. 120).

As a last example of these works cut in the rock, we may here mention a

fountain that was cleared and for the moment restored to its original

state by Mr. Layard (Fig. 121). By means of conduits cut in the living

rock, they had managed to lead the water of the stream to a series

of basins cut one below the other. The sketch we reproduce shows the

lowest basin, which is close to the path. The face of the rock above

it is smoothed and carved into a not inelegant relief. The water seems

to pour from the neck of a large vase, seen in greatly foreshortened

perspective. Two lions, symmetrically arranged, lean with their

fore-feet upon the edge of the vase.[263] The work is interesting,

as it is the only thing left to show how the Assyrians decorated a

fountain.

[Illustration: FIG. 121.--Fountain; from Layard.]