The Assyrians thus found, in the very neighbourhood of their capital,

great surfaces of rock almost smooth and irresistibly inviting to the

chisel. Their unceasing expeditions led them into countries where,

on every hand, they were tempted by similar facilities for wedding

the likenesses of their princes to the very substance of the soil,

for confiding the record of their victories to those walls of living

rock that would seem, to them, unassailable by time or weather. Their

confidence was often misplaced. In some places the water has poured

down the face of the rock and worn away the figures; in others,

landslips have carried the cliff and its sculptures bodily into the

valley. In some instances, no doubt, the accumulations cover figures

still in excellent condition, but several of these fallen sculptures

have already been cleared.

[Illustration: FIG. 122.--Assyrian bas-relief in the

Nahr-el-Kelb. Drawn by P. Sellier.]

We have already spoken of the bas-relief of Korkhar;[264] it is about

three hundred miles from Nineveh, but the Assyrian conquerors left

traces of their passage even farther from the capital than that, in the

famous pass of the Lycos, for instance, near modern Beyrout, and now

called _Nahr-el-Kelb_, or _river of the dog_. A rock-cut road

passes through it, which has been followed from the remotest times by

armies advancing from the north upon Egypt, or from the latter country

towards Damascus and the fords of the Euphrates. Following the Pharaohs

of the nineteenth dynasty, Esarhaddon caused his own image and royal

titles to be cut in this defile; they may still be seen there, on rocks

whose feet stand in the bed of the torrent (Fig. 122).[265]

Without going so far as northern Syria we might find, if we may believe

the natives of the country, plenty of sculptures in the valleys that

open upon the Assyrian plain if they were carefully explored. Near

Ghunduk, a village about forty-five miles north-west of Mossoul, Layard

noticed two reliefs of the kind, one representing a hunt, the other

a religious sacrifice.[266] But after Bavian the most important of

all these remains yet discovered is that at Malthaï. This village is

about seventy-five miles north of Mossoul, in a valley forming one of

the natural gateways of Kurdistan. The road by which the traveller

reaches Armenia and Lake Van runs through the valley.[267] There, in

the fertile stretch of country that lies between two spurs standing

out from the main chain, stands a _tell_, or mound, which seems

to have been raised by the hand of man. Place opened trenches in it

without result, but he himself confesses that his explorations were

not carried far enough, and, the beauty of the site and other things

being considered, he persists in believing that the kings of Assyria

must have had a palace, or at least a country lodge, in the valley.

However this may be, the bas-reliefs, of which Place was the first

to make an exact copy, suffice to prove that this site attracted

particular attention from the Assyrians (see Fig. 123). They are to be

found on the mountain side, at about two-thirds of its total height,

or some thousand feet above the level of the valley. In former days

they must have been inaccessible without artificial aids. It is only by

successive falls of rock that the rough zig-zag path by which we can

now approach them has been formed. The figures, larger than nature, are

arranged in a long row and in a single plane. Place was obliged, by

the size and shape of his page, to give them in two instalments in the

plate of which our Fig. 123 is a copy. In the absence of a protecting

edge they have suffered more than the figures at Bavian. They have,

indeed, a slight projection or cornice above, but its salience is

hardly greater than that of the figures themselves.

[Illustration: FIG. 123.--The bas-reliefs of Malthaï;

from Place. About one forty-fifth of actual size.]

The composition contains three groups, or rather one group repeated

three times without sensible differences. The middle group, which is

divided between the upper and lower parts in our woodcut, has been more

seriously injured by the weather than those on each side of it; three

of its figures have almost disappeared. The first group to the right in

the upper division has part of its surface cut away by a door giving

access to a rock-cut chamber behind the relief, like those at Bavian.

It is, then, in the left-hand group that the subject and treatment can

now be most clearly grasped.

In the first place, we may see at a glance that the theme is

practically the same as at Bavian; it is a king adoring the great

national gods. But the latter are now seven in number instead of two;

instead of being face to face they are all turned in one direction,

towards the king; but the latter is none the less repeated behind each

group. There are some other differences. Among the animals who serve

to raise the gods above the level of mere humanity we may distinguish

the dog, the lion, the horse, and the winged bull. The gods are in

the same attitude as at Bavian; their insignia are the same, those

sceptres with a ring in the middle, which we never find except in the

hands of deities. The sixth in the row also grasps the triple-pointed

object that we have already recognised as the prototype of the Greek

thunderbolt.[268] Finally, each god has the short Assyrian sword upon

his thigh. To this there is one exception, in the second figure of each

group. This figure is seated upon a richly-decorated throne, and has no

beard, so that we may look upon it as representing a goddess. The last

of the seven deities is also beardless, and, in spite of the sword and

the standing attitude, may also be taken to represent a goddess. The

tiaras, which are like those of Bavian in shape, each bear a star, the

Assyrian ideogram for _God_.[269]

There is no inscription, but both Place and Layard agree that the

proportions of the figures, and their execution, and the costume of

the king, declare the work to have been carried out in the time of the

Sargonids, probably under Sennacherib, but if not, during the reign

either of his father, his son, or his grandson.

We have been led to give a reproduction and detailed description

of these reliefs, chiefly because they acted as a school for the

people about them. We find this habit of cutting great sculpturesque

compositions on cliff-faces followed, on the one hand by the natives

of Iran, on the other by those of Cappadocia, and in the works they

produced there are points of likeness to the Assyrian reliefs that can

by no means be accidental. When the proper time comes we shall, we

believe, be able to show that there was direct and deliberate imitation.

* * * * *

It was not only on these rock-cut sculptures that the gods appeared

thus perched on the backs of animals; the motive was carried far afield

by small and easily-portable objects, on which it very often occurs. It

is to be found on many of the cylinders; we reproduce two as examples.

Each of these shows us an individual in an attitude of worship before a

god standing on a bull’s back. The main difference between the two is

one of style. The cylinder engraved in Fig. 124 dates from the early

Chaldæan monarchy, while its companion (Fig. 125) is ascribed by M.

Ménant to the Assyrian dynasty of Calah.[270]

By their simplicity of arrangement and the nudity of their field,

the sculptures of Bavian and Malthaï belong in some sense to the

archaic period, but their figures are designed with that finer sense

of proportion that distinguished Assyrian art from the reign of

Sennacherib onwards. It was, however, in the palaces that the new

tendency towards grace and slenderness chiefly made itself felt. We

have no sculptures to speak of from the time of Esarhaddon, but no

monarch has left us monuments more numerous or in better preservation

than his son Assurbanipal. A visit to London is necessary, however, for

their proper examination, as they have not yet been made the subject

of any such publication as that devoted by Mr. Layard to remains from

the time of Sennacherib and Assurnazirpal. Some idea of them may be

formed, however, from the numerous fragments figured in these pages

(Vol. I., Figs. 5, 27, 28; below, Figs. 162, 172, 174, 177–180, 188).

[Illustration: FIG. 124.--Chaldæan Cylinder.

Hematite.[271]]

[Illustration: FIG. 125.--Assyrian Cylinder.[272]]

Speaking generally, the sculptors of Assurbanipal were the pupils of

those of Sennacherib, with, perhaps, a larger endowment of taste and

skill. Under them Assyrian art aimed higher than ever before. It was

fascinated by movement, and endeavoured to render its accidents and

unforeseen turns. From this point of view we must draw particular

attention to the pictures representing the campaign of Assurbanipal

against the Elamites. In these the figures are more numerous and more

closely packed than anywhere else, and the chisel has attacked episodes

more complicated and more difficult to treat. Here, for instance, is

a chariot upset upon the battle-field; it is turned completely over,

while the struggling horses pull different ways, and the occupants are

thrown out head foremost. There are many technical defects and mistakes

of drawing, but the attempt is none the less interesting.

Some of the reliefs show the same confused accumulation of figures

as in the time of Sennacherib. Now and then we find as many as six

horizontal divisions, each from ten to fourteen inches high. But

their height obeys no regular or constant rule. The central division,

with the king in his chariot, is two feet high. No attempt is made to

distinguish planes by varying the size of the figures, to mark the

successive moments of the action by dividing the groups, or to give

prominence to the main incidents; the confusion is unbroken. Here, as

in all the battle pieces, a very singular convention may be noticed.

There are no dead or beaten Assyrians. If we may believe the artist,

the kings of Nineveh won all their battles without losing a man!

The hunting scenes are arranged with more judgment. In certain

respects we might place them in the same class as the great reliefs

from Nimroud. By right of their dignity and breadth, the latter must

be considered the masterpieces of Assyrian sculpture, but these later

works can boast an amount of energy and vitality and a truthfulness of

handling that are worthy of no stinted praise. The master by whom the

conception was thought out abandoned the overloaded backgrounds that

his immediate predecessors had brought into vogue. He concentrated his

attention on the figures, to which he gave all the value he could. They

stand out with singular force against a field whose unbroken surfaces

happily suggest the immensity of the naked plains on which the hunts

took place. We have already shown how well the distinctive features

and movements of the dog, the lion, and the wild ass are rendered; in

our Fig. 126 we give another example of the same kind. A sentiment

of real interest is stirred in us on behalf of these wild goats with

their young, who run and feed on the steppe while horsemen and beaters

prepare to drive them into the treacherous nets.

[Illustration: FIG. 126.--Wild goats. British Museum.

Drawn by Wallet.]

[Illustration: FIG. 127.--The feast of Assurbanipal.

British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.]

Elsewhere, on the other hand, the sculptor has furnished the beds of

his reliefs with certain vegetable and floral forms chiselled with

the greatest care. We may give, as an example, the kind of royal park

or garden in which we saw a pair of tame lions (see above, Fig. 77).

Behind the animals, to the right, there is a tree round which a vine

clings and mounts. It is heavy with clusters of ripe fruit, and even

the curling tendrils with which its branches end are not forgotten. On

the left there is a palm tree, or, at least, its trunk. Between the

vine and the palm tall flowering stems rear their heads. The artist

has wished us to understand that fruits, sweet-smelling flowers, and

umbrageous leafage, combined to make these gardens the most agreeable

of retreats for a king fatigued with war against human enemies or the

beasts of the desert. The same intention is traceable on the famous

slab already figured (Vol. I. Figs. 27 and 28), which shows the king

and queen at table in one of these royal gardens. We reproduce the

chief group on a larger scale in order that the beauty of the execution

may have a chance of making itself felt (Fig. 127). Notice the

treatment of the vine that bends over the heads of the royal couple.

The heads themselves have suffered, but all the rest of the plaque is

in excellent condition. Notice the pattern on the royal robes, and the

details of the furniture. The latter may be recognized as truthful

renderings of the magnificent chairs and tables of bronze, inlaid with

ivory and lapis-lazuli, of which so many fragments have been found in

the Assyrian palaces. Every detail that the chisel could render has

been faithfully copied. Except in colour and material, the objects

themselves are before us. The fringed coverlet thrown over the king’s

knees, the cushion on which he leans, the garland thrown over the arm

of his couch, the system of metal uprights and cross pieces of which

the queen’s throne, the king’s bed, and the small table placed between

them consist, might all be restored without difficulty. The chiselled

feet of all these objects resemble fir-cones in shape. In the case of

the table they are connected with its body by lion’s paws. On the lower

bar of the queen’s chair there is a small couchant lion.

[Illustration: FIG. 128.--Terra-cotta statuette. Actual

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

It may be thought, perhaps with truth, that the sculptor has overdone

these details, and that his figures are, in some degree, sacrificed to

the decorations about them. Other examples from the same series, give

a higher idea of the sculpture of this time; we may cite especially

a fragment possessed by the Louvre, in which the treatment is of the

skilfullest (Plate X). It represents Assurbanipal in his war-chariot

at the head of his army. The chariot itself, and all the accessories,

such as the umbrella and the robes of the king and his attendants, are

treated with great care but they do not unduly attract the eye of the

spectator. We can enjoy, as a whole, the group formed by the figures in

the chariot, and those who march beside and behind it. Its arrangement

is clear and well balanced; there is no crowding, the spacing of the

figures is well judged and the movement natural and suggestive. The

king dominates the composition as he should, and his umbrella happily

gathers the lines of the whole into a pyramid. In all this there is

both knowledge and taste.

The best of the Assyrian terra-cottas also belong to this period. The

merit of their execution may be gathered from the annexed statuette,

which comes from the palace of Assurbanipal (Fig. 128). From the staff

in its hands it has been supposed to represent a king, but we know that

every Assyrian was in the habit of carrying a stick with a more or less

richly ornamented head, and here we find neither a tiara nor the kind

of necklace which the sovereign generally wore (see Fig. 116). I am

inclined to think it is the image of a priest.

In conclusion we may say that, in some respects, Assyrian sculpture was

in a state of progression when the fall of Nineveh came to arrest its

development and to destroy the hopes it inspired.

§ 7.--_Polychromy._

We have now studied Mesopotamian sculpture in its favourite themes,

in its principal conventions, and in the fluctuations of its taste

and methods of work; we have yet to ask whether this sculpture, which

differed in so many ways from the plastic art of Egypt, differed from

it also in absence of colour. We have put off this question until now,

because we had first to determine what materials the architect and

sculptor employed, how they employed them, and what part was played by

figures in relief and in the round in the architectonic creations of

Chaldæa and Assyria.

In speaking of Egypt we have explained how a brilliant light destroys

the apparent modelling of objects, how, by the reflections it casts

into the shadows, it interferes with our power to distinguish one

distant plane from another.[273] In every country where a vertical sun

shines in an unclouded sky, the decorator has had to invoke the help

of colour against the violence of the light, has had to accept its aid

in strengthening his contours, and in making his figures and ornaments

stand out against their ground. In describing Egyptian polychromy

we said that we should find the same tendency among other nations,

different in character and origin, but subjected to the influence of

similar surroundings. We also allowed it to be seen that we should have

to notice many changes of fashion in this employment of colour. Colour

played a different and more important part in one place or period than

in another, and it is not always easy to specify the causes of the

difference. In the Egyptian monuments hardly a square inch of surface

can be found over which the painter has not drawn his brush; elsewhere,

in Greece for instance, we shall find him more discreet, and his

artificial tints restricted to certain well-defined parts of a figure

or building.

Did Assyria follow the teaching of Egypt, or did she strike out a line

of her own, and set an example of the reserve that was afterwards to

find favour in Greece? That is the question to be answered. Before we

can do so we must produce and compare the evidence brought forward

by Botta, Layard, Place and others, who saw the Assyrian sculptures

reappear in the light of day. Ever since those sculptures were

recovered they have been exposed to the air; they have undergone all

the handling and rubbing involved in a voyage to Europe; and for the

last twenty or thirty years they have been subjected to the dampness

of our climate. We need, then, feel no surprise that traces of colour

still visible when the pick-axe of the explorer freed the alabaster

slabs from their envelope of earth have now disappeared.

Before examining our chief witnesses, the men who dug up Khorsabad,

and Nimroud, and Kouyundjik, we may, to some extent, foretell their

answers. We have already explained how the Mesopotamian architect made

use of colour to mask the poverty of his construction and to furnish

the great bare walls of his clay buildings. Both inside and outside,

the Assyrian palaces had the upper parts of their walls and the

archivolts of their doors decorated with enamelled bricks or paintings

in distemper. Is it to be supposed that where the reliefs began all

artificial tinting left off, and that the eye had nothing but the dull

grey of gypsum and limestone to wander to from the rich dyes of the

carpets with which the floors were strewn? Nothing could well be more

disagreeable than such a contrast. In our own day, and over the whole

of the vast continent that stretches from China to Asia Minor, there is

not a stuff, however humble, that is woven on the loom or embroidered

by the needle, but betrays an instinctive feeling for harmony so true

and subtle that every artist wonders at it, and the most tasteful of

our art workmen despair of reaching its perfection, and yet many of

these faultless harmonies were conceived and realized in the tent of

the nomad shepherd. We can hardly believe that in the palace where

official art lavished all its resources in honour of its master, there

could be any part from which the gaiety that colour gives was entirely

excluded, especially if it was exactly the part to which the eye of

every visitor would be most surely attracted.

Before going into the question of evidence one might, therefore, make

up our minds that the Assyrian architect never allowed any such element

of failure to be introduced into his work; and the excavations have

made that conclusion certain. The Assyrian reliefs were coloured, but

they were not coloured all over like those of Egypt; the grain of the

stone did not disappear, from one end of the frieze to the other, under

a layer of painted stucco. Flandin, the draughtsman attached to the

expedition of M. Botta, alone speaks of a coat of ochre spread over

the bed of the relief and over the nude portions of the figures;[274]

he confesses, however, that the traces were very slight and that they

occurred only on a slab here and there. Botta, who saw the same slabs,

thought his colleague mistaken.[275] Place is no less decided: “None

of us,” he says, “could find any traces of paint upon the undraped

portions of the figures, and it would be very extraordinary if among

so many bare arms and bare legs, to say nothing of faces, not one

should have retained any vestige of colour if they had all once been

painted.”[276] We might be inclined to ask whether the traces of

pigment that have been noticed here and there upon the alabaster might

not have been the remains of a more widespread coloration, the rest of

which had disappeared. Strong in his experience, Place thus answers

any doubts that might be expressed on this point: “We never found an

ornament, a weapon, a shoe or sandal, partially coloured; they were

either coloured all over or left bare, while objects in close proximity

were without any hue but their own. Sometimes eyes and eyebrows were

painted, while hair and beard were left untouched; sometimes the tiara

with which a figure was crowned or the fan it carried in its hand was

painted while the hand itself and the hair that curled about the head

showed not the slightest trace of such an operation; elsewhere colour

was only to be found on a baldrick, on sandals, or the fringes of a

robe.” Wherever these colours existed at all they were so fresh and

brilliant at the time of discovery that no one thought of explaining

their absence from certain parts of the work by the destruction of the

pigment. “How is it,” continues Place, “that, if robes were painted

all over, we only found colour on certain accessories, on fringes and

embroideries? How is it that if the winged bulls were coated in paint

from head to foot, not one of the deep grooves in their curled beards

and hair has preserved the slightest vestige of colour, while the white

and black of their eyes, which are salient rather than hollowed, remain

intact? Finally, we may mention the following purely accidental, and

therefore all the more significant, fact: a smudge of black paint,

some two feet long, was still clearly visible on the breast of one of

the colossi in the doorway of room 19.[277] How can we account for the

persistence of this smudge, which must have fallen upon the monster’s

breast while they were painting its hair, if we are to suppose that the

whole of its body was covered with a tint which has disappeared and

left no sign?”

Such evidence is decisive. The colouring of the Assyrian reliefs must

always have been partial. The sculptor employed the painter merely to

give a few strokes of the brush which, by the frankness and vivacity of

their accent, should bring the frieze into harmony with the wall that

enframed it. Nothing more was required to destroy the dull monotony of

the long band of stone. At the same time these touches of colour helped

to draw attention to certain details upon which the sculptor wished to

insist.

For all this, four colours were enough. Observers agree in saying that

black, white, red and blue made up the whole palette.[278] These tints

were everywhere employed pretty much in the same fashion.[279]

In those figures in which drapery covered all but the head, the latter

was, of course, more important than ever. The artist therefore set

himself to work to increase its effect as much as he could. He painted

the eyeball white, the pupil and iris, the eyebrows, the hair and the

beard, black; sometimes the edges of the eyelids were defined with

the same colour. The band about the head of the king or vizier is

often coloured red, as well as the rosettes which in other figures

sometimes decorate the royal tiara. The same tint is used upon fringes,

baldricks, sandals, earrings, parasols and fly-flappers, sceptres, the

harness of horses and the ornamental studs or bosses with which it was

covered, and the points of weapons.[280] In some instances blue is

substituted for red in these details. Place speaks of a fragment lost

in the Tigris on which the colours were more brilliant than usual;

upon it the king held a fan of peacock’s feathers coloured with the

brightest mineral blue.[281]

When figures held a flower in their hands it was blue, and at Khorsabad

a bird on the wing was covered with the same tint.[282] In some

bas-reliefs red and blue alternate in the sandals of the figures and

harness of the horses.[283] We find a red bow with a blue quiver.[284]

The flames of towns taken and set on fire by the Assyrians were

coloured red in many of the Khorsabad reliefs.[285]

A few traces of colour may still be discovered upon some of Sargon’s

sculptures in the Louvre and upon those of Assurnazirpal in the British

Museum.[286] I could find no remains of colour either upon the reliefs

of Assurbanipal or upon those of Sennacherib, where, moreover, Layard

tells us he could discover none.[287]

It would be very strange however, if in these palaces of the last of

the Sargonids the decorator had deliberately renounced the beauties of

that discreet system of polychromy of which the traces are to be found

in all the earlier palaces. It is possible that these touches of colour

were reserved for the last when the palaces were erected, and that

something may have happened to prevent them from being placed on the

sculptures of these two sovereigns.

So far as we can discover, no trace of colour has been found on any

of the arched steles or isolated statues left to us by Chaldæa and

Assyria. This abstention is to be explained by the nature of the

materials at the disposal of the sculptor in Chaldæa, the cradle of

his art. These were chiefly igneous rocks, very hard, very close in

grain and dark in colour, and susceptible of a very high polish. The

existence of such a polish disposes of any idea that the figures to

which it was given were ever painted. The pigment would not have stayed

long on such a surface, and besides, the reds and blues known to the

Ninevite artists would have had a very poor effect on a blue-black

ground.

On the other hand, when they set to work to model in clay the Assyrians

could give free rein to their love for colour. Most of the statuettes

found in the ruins of their palaces had been covered with a single

uniform tint, which, thanks to the porous nature of the material, is

still in fair preservation. The tint varies between one figure and

another, and, as they are mostly figures of gods or demons, the idea

has been suggested that their colours are emblematic.[288] Thus the

Louvre possesses a statuette from Khorsabad representing a god crowned

with a double-horned tiara, and covered all over, flesh and drapery

alike, with an azure blue.[289] A demon with the head of a carnivorous

animal, from the same place, is painted black, a colour that seems

to suggest a malevolent being walking in the night and dwelling in

subterranean regions.[290]

The Assyrians also made use of what has been sometimes called natural

polychromy, that is to say they introduced different materials into

the composition of a single figure, each having a colour of its own

and being used to suggest a similar tint in the object represented.

Several fragments of this kind may be seen in the cases of the British

Museum.[291] We may give as examples some eyes in black marble; the

ball itself is ivory while the pupil and iris are of blue paste, a

sandy frit in which the colour sank deeply before firing. Beards and

hair were also made of this material; they have been found in several

instances, without the heads to which they belonged. In the ruins from

which he took these objects, Layard saw arms, legs and torsos of wood.

They were so completely carbonized by fire that they could not be

removed; at the least touch they crumbled into powder.

With wood, with enamel and coloured earths, with stones, both soft

and hard, and metals both common, like bronze, and precious, like

gold and silver, the sculptor built up statues and statuettes in

which the peculiar beauty to be attained by the juxtaposition of such

heterogeneous materials, was steadily kept in view. With inferior taste

and less feeling for purity of form than the Greeks, this art was

identical in principal with the chryselephantine sculpture that created

the Olympian Zeus and the Athene of the Parthenon.

The idea that sculpture is the art in which form is treated to

the exclusion of colour is quite a modern one.[292] The sculptor

of Assyria was as ready to mix colour with his contours as his

_confrère_ of Egypt, but he made use of it in more sober and

reserved fashion. How are we to explain the difference? It is easier to

prove the fact than to give a reason for it. It may be said that the

sunlight is less constant and less blinding in Mesopotamia than in the

Nile valley, and that the artist was not called upon to struggle with

such determination, by the profusion and brightness of his colours,

against the devouring illumination that impoverishes outlines and

obliterates modelling. We must also bear in mind the habits formed

by work in such materials as basalt and diorite, which did not lend

themselves kindly to the use of bright colours.

In any case the fact itself seems incontestable. We cannot say of the

Ninevite reliefs as we said of those of Thebes, that they resembled a

brilliant tapestry stretched over the flat wall-surfaces. If, in most

of the buildings, touches of paint freely placed upon the accessories

and even upon the figures and faces, lightened and varied the general

appearance of the sculptures, still the naked stone was left to show

all over the bed and over the greater part of the figures. From this

we must not conclude, however, that the Assyrians and Chaldæans did

not possess, and possess in a very high degree, the love for bold and

brilliant colour-schemes which even now distinguishes their degenerate

posterity, the races inhabiting the Euphrates valley and the plateau

of Iran. But they gratified their innate and hereditary taste in a

different way. It was to their woven stuffs, to their paintings in

distemper and their enamelled faïence that the buildings of Mesopotamia

owed that gaiety of appearance which has led us to compare them with

the mosques of Turkey and Persia.

§ 8.--_Gems._

“Every Babylonian had a seal,” says Herodotus;[293] this fact seems to

have struck him directly he began to explore the streets and bazaars of

the great oriental city. These seals, which appear to have attracted

the eye of the historian by the open manner in which they were carried

and the continual use made of them in every transaction of life, public

or private, are now in our museums. They are to be found in hundreds in

all the galleries and private collections of Europe.[294]

When Chaldæan civilization became sufficiently advanced for writing to

be in widespread use and for every man to provide himself with his own

personal seal, no great search for convenient materials was necessary.

The rounded pebbles of the river beds gave all that was wanted. The

instinct for personal adornment is one of the earliest felt by mankind,

and just as the children of to-day search in the shingle of a beach for

stones more attractive than the rest, either by their bright colours,

or vivid markings or transparency of paste, so also did the fathers of

civilization. And when they had found such stones they drilled holes

through them and made them into earrings, necklaces and bracelets.

More than one set of pebble ornaments has been preserved for us in the

Chaldæan tombs. In many instances forms sketched out by the accidents

of nature have been carried to completion by the hand of man (Fig.

129). They were not long contented with thus turning a pebble into a

jewel. The fancy took them to engrave designs or figures upon them so

as to give a peculiar value to the single stone or to sets strung into

a necklace, which thus became a kind of amulet (Fig. 130).

In the first instance this engraving was nothing more than an ornament.

But one day it occurred to some possessor of such a stone to take an

impression upon plastic clay. Those who saw the image thus obtained

were struck by its precision, and were soon led to make use of it for

authenticating acts and transactions of every kind. The presence of

such an impression upon a document would perpetuate the memory of the

man who put it there, and would be equivalent to what we call a sign

manual.

But even when it developed into a seal the engraved stone did not lose

its talismanic value. In order to preserve its quasi-magic character,

nothing more was required than the presence of a god among the figures

engraved upon it. By carrying upon his person the image of the deity in

which he placed his confidence, the Chaldæan covered himself with his

protection as with a shield, and something of the same virtue passed

into the impressions which the seal could produce in such infinite

numbers.

[Illustration: FIG. 129.--River pebble which has formed

part of a necklace.]

[Illustration: FIG. 130.--River pebble engraved; from De

Gobineau.]

No subject occurs more often on the cylinders than the celestial gods

triumphing over demons. Such an image when impressed upon the soft

clay would preserve sealed-up treasures from attempts inspired by the

infernal powers, and would interest the gods in the maintenance of any

contract to which it might be appended.[295]

To all this we must add that superstitions, of which traces subsist in

the East to this day, ascribed magic power to certain stones. Hematite,

for instance, as its name suggests, was supposed to stop bleeding,

while even the Greeks believed that a carnelian gave courage to any one

who wore it on his finger.

When engraving on hard stone was first attempted, it was, then, less

for the love of art than for the profit to be won by the magic virtues

and mysterious affinities, both of the material itself, and of the

image cut in its substance. Then, with the increase of material

comfort, and the development of social relations, came the desire of

every Chaldæan to possess a seal of his own, a signet that should

distinguish him from his contemporaries and be his own peculiar

property, the permanent symbol of his own person and will. So far as

we can tell, none but the lowest classes were without their seals;

these latter when they were parties or witnesses to a contract, were

contented with impressing their fingernails on the soft clay. Such

marks may be found on more than one terra-cotta document; they answer

to the cross with which our own uneducated classes supply the place of

a signature.

When the use of the seal became general, efforts were made to

add to its convenience. In order to get a good impression it was

necessary that the design should be cut on a fairly even and

regular surface. The river pebbles were mostly ovoid in form and

could easily be made cylindrical by friction, and the latter shape

at last became so universal that these little objects are always

known as _cylinders_. These cylinders were long neglected, but

within the last few years they have been the subject of some curious

researches.[296] They may be studied from two different points of view.

We may either give our attention to the inscriptions cut upon them and

to their general historical significance, or we may endeavour to learn

what they may have to teach as to the religious myths and beliefs of

Chaldæa. As for us we are interested in them chiefly as works of art.

It will be our duty to give some idea of the artistic value of the

figures they bear, and to describe the process by which the engraving

was carried out.

The cylinders are, as a rule, from two to three-fifths of an inch in

diameter, and from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half in

length. Some are as much as an inch and three quarters, or even two

inches long, but they are quite exceptional.[297] The two ends are

always quite plain--the engraving is confined to the convex surface.

As a rule the latter is parallel to the axis, but in some cases it is

hollowed in such a fashion that the diameter of the cylinder is greater

at the ends than in the middle (Fig. 131).

Nearly every cylinder is pierced lengthwise, a narrow hole going right

through it. Those that have been found without this hole are so very

few in number that we may look upon them as unfinished. In some cases

the hole has been commenced at both ends, but the drill has stopped

short of the centre, which still remains solid.

[Illustration: FIG. 131.--Concave-faced cylinder; from

Soldi.]

[Illustration: FIG. 132.--Cylinder with modern mount;

from Rawlinson.]

The cylinders were suspended by these holes, but how? In casting about

for an answer to this question, the idea that the Babylonian attached

the greatest importance to the clear reproduction, in the clay, of

every detail of the design engraved upon his seal, has been taken as

a starting point, and a system of mounting invented for him which

would leave nothing to be desired in that respect (see Fig. 132). It

is a reproduction, in small, of a garden roller; as a restoration,

however, it can hardly be justified by the evidence of the monuments.

Examine the terra-cotta tablets on which these seals were used, and you

will see that their ancient possessors did not, as a rule, attempt to

impress the whole of the scenes cut in them upon the soft clay. It is

rare to find an impression as sharp and complete as that on the tablet

from Kouyundjik, which we borrow from Layard (Fig. 133). In the great

majority of cases signatories were content with using only one side

of their seals, usually the side on which their names were engraved.

Sometimes when they wished to transfer the whole of their cylinder to

the clay, they did so by several partial and successive pressures.[298]

The imperfect stamp with which the Chaldæans were satisfied could

easily be produced without the help of such a complicated contrivance

as that shown in our Fig. 132. Nothing more was necessary than to

lay the cylinder upon the soft clay and press it with the thumb and

fore-finger. The hole through its centre was used not to receive an

armature upon which it might turn, but merely for suspending it to

some part of the dress or person. In most cases it must have been hung

by a simple cord passed round the neck. Now and then, however, the

remains of a metal mount have been found in place, but this is never

shaped like that shown above. It is a bronze stem solidly attached to

the cylinder, and with a ring at its upper extremity (Fig. 134).[299]

Cylinders are also found with a kind of ring at one end cut in the

material itself (Fig. 135).

How were these cylinders carried? They must have been attached to the

person or dress, both for the sake of the protecting the image with

which most of them were engraved, and for convenience and readiness

in use as seals. In Chaldæa the fashion seems to have been, at one

time, to fasten them to the wrist. In those tombs at Warka and Mugheir

that we have described, the cylinders were found on the floors of the

tomb-chambers, close to the wrist-bones of the skeletons; and the

latter had not been moved since the bodies to which they had belonged

were laid in the grave.[300] This fashion was apparently abandoned

by the Assyrians, for in those reliefs which reproduce the smallest

details of dress and ornament with such elaboration, we can never find

any trace of the seal beside the bracelets. It is probable that it was

hung round the neck and put inside the dress, in front, for greater

security. It never occurs among the emblematic objects of which the

necklace that spreads over the chest outside the robe, is made up. To

this day traders in the East keep their seals in a little bag which

they carry in an inside pocket.

[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Tablet with impression from a

cylinder; from Layard.]

[Illustration: FIG. 134.--Cylinder with ancient bronze

mount; from Soldi.]

[Illustration: FIG. 135.--Cylinder and attachment in

one; from Soldi.]

[Illustration: FIG. 136.--Chaldæan cylinder; from

Ménant.]

[Illustration: FIG. 137.--Impression from the same

cylinder.]

The practical requirements of the Mesopotamians were satisfied with a

hasty impression from their seals, but we must be more difficult to

please. Before we can study the cylinder with any completeness we must

have an impression in which no detail of the intaglio is omitted; such

a proof is to be obtained by a complete turn of the cylinder upon some

very plastic material, such as modelling-wax, or fine and carefully

mixed plaster-of-Paris. The operation requires considerable skill.

When it is well performed it results in a minute bas-relief, a flat

projection, in reverse, of the whole intaglio. The subject represented

and its execution can be much better seen in a proof like this than on

the original object, it is therefore by the help of such impressions

that cylinders are always studied; we make use of them throughout this

work. Our Figs. 136 and 137 give some idea of the change in appearance

between a cylinder and its impression.

The cutting on the cylinders, or rather on all the engraved stones of

western Asia, is in intaglio. This is the earliest form of engraving

upon _pietra-dura_ in every country; the cameo is always a

much later production; it is only to be found in the last stage of

development, when tools and processes have been carried to perfection.

It is much easier to scratch the stone and then to add with the point

some definition to the figure thus obtained, than to cut away the

greater part of the surface and leave the design in relief. The latter

process would have been especially difficult when the inscriptions

borne by many of the seals came to be dealt with. What long and painful

labour it would have required to thus detach the slender lines of the

cuneiform characters from the ground! And why should any attempt of

the kind be made? As soon as these engraved stones began to be used

as seals, there was every reason why the ancient process should be

retained. The designs and characters impressed upon deeds and other

writings were clearer and more legible in relief than in intaglio.

And it must be remembered that with the exception of some late bricks

on which letters are raised by wooden stamps, the wedges were always

hollowed out. We find but one period in the history of Chaldæa when,

as under the early dynasties of Egypt, her written characters were

chiselled in relief. It is, then, apparent that the artists of Chaldæa

would have done violence to their own convictions and departed from

long established habits, had they deserted intaglio for work in relief.

That they did not do so, even when their skill was at its highest

point, need cause us no surprise.

The Chaldæans naturally began with the softest materials, such as

wood, bone, and the shells picked up on the shores of the Persian

Gulf. Fragments of some large pearl oysters and of the _Tridacna

squamosa_, on which flowers, leaves, and horses have been engraved

with the point, have been brought from lower Chaldæa to London (see

Fig. 138).[301] Limestone, black, white, and veined marble, and the

steatite of which most of the cylinders are made, were not much

more difficult. These substances may easily be cut with a sharp

flint, or with metal tools either pointed or chisel-shaped. With

a little more effort and patience still harder materials, such as

porphyry and basalt; or the ferruginous marbles--serpentine, syenite,

hematite--could be overcome. The oldest cylinders of all, those that

are attributed to the first Chaldæan monarchy, are mostly of these

stubborn materials; their execution was easy enough to the men who

produced the statues of Gudea.[302] All that such men required to pass

from the carving of life-size figures to the cutting of gems was good

eyesight and smaller tools.

It was only towards the end of this period that more unkindly stones

began to be used, such as jasper and the different kinds of agate,

onyx, chalcedony, rock-crystal, garnets, &c. The employment of such

materials implies that of the characteristic processes of gem-cutting,

whose peculiarity consists in the substitution of friction for cutting,

in the supercession of a pointed or edged tool by a powder taken from a

substance harder, or at least as hard, as the one to be operated upon.

“The modern engraver upon precious stones,” says M. Soldi, “sets about

his work in this fashion. He begins by building up a wax model of his

proposed design upon slate. He then takes the stone to be engraved, and

fixes it in the end of a small wooden staff. This done he makes use,

for the actual engraving, of a kind of lathe, consisting of a small

steel wheel which is set in motion by a large cast-iron flywheel turned

by the foot. To the little wheel are attached small tools of soft

iron, some ending in a rounded button, others in a cutting edge. The

craftsman holds the staff with the stone in his left hand; he brings

it into contact with the instrument in the lathe, while, from time to

time, he drops a mixture of olive oil and diamond dust upon it with his

right hand; with the help of this powder the instrument grinds out all

the required hollows one after the other.”[303]

[Illustration: FIG. 138.--Engraved shell. British

Museum.]

The first engravers who attacked precious stones had no diamond dust.

They supplied its place with emery powder, which was to be found in

unlimited quantities in the islands of the Archipelago, whence it was

imported by the Phœnicians at a very early date. Moreover there was

nothing to prevent them crushing the precious stones belonging to the

class called _corundum_, such as sapphires, rubies, amethysts,

emeralds, and the oriental topaz. No doubt the lathe or wheel was a

comparatively late invention. M. Soldi thinks it hardly came into use

in Mesopotamia till about the eighth century B.C. Before that the

continuous rotary movement that was so necessary for the satisfactory

conduct of the operation was obtained by other means. According to M.

Soldi they must have employed for many centuries a hand-drill turned by

a bow, like that of a modern centre-bit or wimble.[304]

[Illustration: FIG. 139.--Chalcedony cylinder. British

Museum.]

[Illustration: FIG. 140.--Cylinder of black jasper.

British Museum.]

On examining the oldest Mesopotamian engravings on precious stones

a skilled craftsman would see at once that nearly all the work had

been done with only two instruments--one for the round hollows and

another for the straight lines. In the designs cut with these tools

we find curiously complete likenesses of the small lay figures with

ball-and-socket joints used by painters. Some idea of the strange

results produced by these first attempts at gem-engraving may be

formed from our reproductions of two cylinders in the collection at

the British Museum. The influence of the process, the tyranny of the

implement, if we may use such a phrase, is conspicuous in both. Note,

for instance, in the first design, which is, apparently, a scene of

sacrifice (Fig. 139), how the head and shoulder of the figure on the

left are each indicated by a circular hollow. The same primitive system

has been used in the cylinder where the god Anou is separated from

another deity by the winged globe (Fig. 140). The design is here more

complex. The bodies of the two divinities and the wings of the globe

are indicated by numerous vertical and horizontal grooves set close

together; but the circular hollows appear not only in the globe and in

the piece of furniture that occupies the foreground, but also in the

knees, calves, ankles, and other parts of the two figures.

[Illustration: FIG. 141.--Assyrian cylinder. British

Museum. Drawn by Wallet.]

As time went on they learnt to use their tools with more freedom and

more varied skill. We shall not attempt to follow M. Soldi in tracing

the art through all its successive stages.[305] As an example of the

skill to which the Mesopotamian artist had attained towards the seventh

century B.C. we may quote a splendid cornelian cylinder belonging to

the British Museum (Fig. 141).[306] The subject is extremely simple. In

its general lines it continually recurs on the bas-reliefs and gems of

the Sargonid period. A winged personage, with his arms extended, stands

between two fantastic winged quadrupeds and grasps each by a fore-paw.

The chief actor in the scene is very like the winged genius whom we

encounter so often on the walls of the palaces (see above, Fig. 36),

while both in the exaggerated modelling of the legs and in the care

with which the smallest details of the costume are carried out, the

special features that distinguished the sculpture of the time may be

recognized. The execution is firm and significant, though a little dry

and hard. It is made up of short cuts, close together; the engraver did

not understand how to give his work that high polish and finish that

enabled the Greeks to express the subtlest contours of the living form.

From this period onwards the artists of Mesopotamia and, in later

years, those who worked for the Medes and Persians, put into use all

the precious stones that were afterwards engraved by the Greeks and

Romans. Their tools and processes cannot have greatly differed from

those handed down by antiquity to the gem-cutters of the middle ages

and the Italian renaissance. If their results were inferior to those

obtained by Pyrgoteles and Dioscorides,[307] it was because oriental

art never had the knowledge of the nude or the passion for beauty of

form which made Greek art so original. Intaglio is only a bas-relief

reversed and greatly diminished in size; the style and spirit of

contemporary sculpture are reflected in it as the objects of nature are

reflected in the mirror of the human eye. For want of proper tools it

may lag behind sculpture, but it will never outstrip it.

The close connection between the two arts is nowhere more strongly

marked than in some of the cylinders belonging to the first monarchy.

Although the artist was content in most cases with mere outlines, he

now and then lavished more time and trouble on his work, and gave to

his modelling something of the breadth and truth that we find in the

statues from Tello. These merits are seen at their best in a fine

cylinder belonging to the New York Museum (Fig. 142). It represents

Izdubar and his companion Hea-bani, the Hercules and Theseus of

Chaldæan mythology, engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a wild bull

and a lion, a scene which may be taken as personifying the struggle

between the divine protectors of mankind on the one hand, and the blind

forces of nature assisted by all the supernatural powers of evil on

the other.[308] We have already had occasion to speak of Izdubar, who

is always represented nude and very muscular. As for his companion,

he combines the head and bust of a man with the hind quarters of a

bull.[309] There is a certain conventionality in the attitude of

the lion and in the way his claws are represented, and the movement

of Hea-bani’s left arm is ungraceful; but the antelope under the

inscription and the bull overpowered by Izdubar are rendered with a

truth of judgment and touch that all connoisseurs will appreciate. We

may say the same of the two heroes; their muscular development is given

with frankness but without exaggeration; the treatment generally is

free and broad.

[Illustration: FIG. 142.--Chaldæan cylinder. Marble or

porphyry. New York Museum.]

Between this cylinder and the one quoted on the last page as among the

masterpieces of Ninevite art, there is the same difference as between

the statues of Tello and the bas-reliefs of Nimroud and Khorsabad. The

engraver, who some fifteen centuries before our era, cut upon marble

this episode from one of the favourite myths of Chaldæa, may not have

been able to manipulate precious stones with such ease and dexterity

as the artist of Sargon or Sennacherib who made the cylinder in the

British Museum, but he had the true feeling for life and form in a far

higher degree.

So far we have studied the cylinders from the standpoint of their use

and the material of which they are composed; we have described the

processes employed in cutting them and the changes undergone in the

course of centuries in the style of art they display. We have yet to

speak of the principal types and scenes to be found upon them. We

cannot pretend, however, to give the details in any complete fashion.

For that a whole book would be necessary, such as the one promised by

M. Ménant.

This is not because the themes treated show any great variety; they

have, in fact, far less originality than might at first be thought.

Compare the impressions from different cabinets and attempt to classify

them in order of subject; you will find the same types and scenes

repeated, with but slight changes, on a great number of specimens, and

you will soon discover that hundreds of cylinders may be divided into

a very small number of groups. In each group, too, many individual

specimens will only be distinguishable from each other by their

inscriptions. All this is to be easily accounted for.

The finest cylinders, whether in design or material, must have been

commissioned by kings, nobles, and priests, while the common people

bought theirs ready-made. When any one of the latter wished to buy a

seal he went to the merchant and chose it from his stock, which was

composed of the patron gods and religious scenes which happened to be

most in fashion at the time. As soon as the purchaser had made his

selection he caused his own name to be engraved in the space left for

the purpose, and it was this inscription, rather than the scene beside

it, that gave its personal character to the seal. The production of

these objects was a real industry, carried on all over the country and

for many centuries, and continually reproducing the same traditional

and consecrated types.

M. Ménant believes himself able to determine where most if not all

the cylinders of the early monarchy were produced. He talks of the

schools of Ur, of Erech, of Arade, and in many cases the signs on which

he relies appear to have a serious value. But we shall not attempt

even to give a _résumé_ of the arguments he uses to justify the

classification he was the first to sketch out; we could not do so

without multiplying our illustrations and extending our letterpress to

an extravagant degree. Judging from the examples quoted by M. Ménant

himself in support of his own theory, the workshops of different towns

in the course of a single period were distinguished rather by their

predilection for particular themes than by anything peculiar in their

styles of execution; the same processes and the same way of looking at

living forms may be recognised in all. We may, then, treat all these

early works of the Chaldæan gem-engravers as the productions of a

single school; and in this history we only propose to note and discuss

the general direction of the great art currents. We cannot follow all

the arms and side streams into which the main river is subdivided.

[Illustration: FIG. 143.--Chaldæan cylinder. Green

serpentine. Louvre. Drawn by Wallet.]

[Illustration: FIG. 144.--Chaldæan cylinder. Basalt.

Louvre. Drawn by Wallet.]

[Illustration: FIG. 145.--Chaldæan cylinder. Basalt.

Louvre.]

One of the favourite subjects at this time was the scene of worship we

have already encountered on the Sippara tablet (Vol. I., Fig. 71.); in

the cylinders as well as on the larger tablet the worshipper is led

by a priest into the presence of an enthroned divinity. The temple,

indicated in the tablet, is suppressed in the seals, where the space is

so much less, but otherwise the composition is the same. It would be

difficult to imagine anything better fitted for objects of a talismanic

character, which were also to be used for the special purpose of these

cylinders. Whenever the Chaldæan put his seal upon clay he renewed

the act of prayer and faith which the engraver had figured upon it;

he took all men to witness his faith in the protection of Anou, of

Samas, or of some other god. We need therefore feel no surprise at

encountering this subject upon the cylinders of Ourkam, (Vol. I., Fig.

3), and his son Dungi,[310] princes in whom the oldest Chaldæan royalty

was embodied. Both of these seals seem to have been engraved in Ur,

the home of that dynasty. We have given several other variants of the

same theme (Vol. I., Figs. 17–20, and above, Figs. 40 and 124);[311]

here are two more found by M. de Sarzec at Tello (Figs. 143, 144). In

the first of these two streams seem to flow from the shoulders of the

seated deity; they may have some connection with that worship of the

two great rivers whose traces appear elsewhere.[312] In the second

example, which is not a little rough and summary in its execution, the

figures are believed to be those of women, on account of the way in

which the hair is arranged. It is clubbed with ribbons at the back of

the neck. The artist seems also to have tried to suggest the amplitude

of the female bosom. On the whole we may believe the scene to represent

a goddess--Istar perhaps--surrounded by worshippers of her own sex.

In the Louvre there is a cylinder with a scene of the same kind, but

more complex and, for us, more obscure (Fig. 145). A seated figure,

apparently female from the long hair flowing over the shoulders, sits

upon a low stool and holds a child upon her knees. In front of the

group thus formed stands a man who seems to be offering some beverage

in a horn-shaped cup. Behind him there are three not inelegant vases

upon a bracket, and a man kneeling beside a large jar upon a tripod.

The latter holds in his hand the spoon with which he has filled the

goblet presented by his companion. We may, perhaps, take the whole

scene as a preparation for a feast offered to one of those goddesses

of maternity whom we find on the terra-cottas (see above Fig. 107).

We shall not here go into the question whether we may see in all this

an episode in the legend of the ancient Sargon, the royal infant whom

his mother exposed upon the water after his clandestine birth; after

commencing like Moses, the hero of this adventure was found and brought

up by a boatman, and became the founder of an empire when he grew to

manhood, like Cyrus and Romulus.[313]

[Illustration: FIG. 146.--Chaldæan cylinder. Montigny

collection.]

If we may believe M. Ménant some of the cylinders belonging to this

period represent human sacrifices. Such he supposes to be the theme of

the example reproduced in Fig. 146. The figure with arm uplifted would

be the priest brandishing his mace over the kneeling victim, who turns

and begs in vain for mercy. The issue of the unequal struggle is hinted

at by the dissevered head introduced in the lower left-hand corner. To

make our description complete we must notice the subordinate passage,

a rampant leopard, winged, preparing to devour a gazelle.[314] The

conjecture is specious, but until confirmatory texts are discovered, it

will remain a conjecture. Those texts that have been quoted in support

of it are vague in the first place, and, in the second, they appear

to refer less to the sacrifice of human victims than to holocausts of

infants, who must have been thrown into the flames as they were in

Phœnicia. Why should we not look upon it as an emblem of the royal

victories, an emblem similar in kind to the group that recurs so

persistently in Egyptian sculpture, from the time of the ancient Empire

to that of the Ptolemies?[315] The gesture in each case is almost

exactly the same; the weapon raised over the vanquished both in the

Theban relief and the Chaldæan cylinder is well fitted to suggest the

power of the conqueror and his cruel revenges. We have reproduced this

example less for its subject than for the character of its execution.

The figures are modelled in a very rough-and-ready fashion; we might

almost call it a sketch upon stone. The movement, however, of the two

chief figures is well understood and expressive.

[Illustration: FIG. 147.--Chaldæan cylinder. Basalt.]

Another and perhaps still richer series is composed of stones on which

the war waged by Izdubar and his faithful Hea-bani against the monsters

is figured.[316] We have already shown Izdubar carrying off a lion

he has killed (see above, Fig. 35). Another task of the Mesopotamian

Hercules is shown in Fig. 147, where he is engaged in a struggle with

the celestial human-headed bull, who has been roused to attack the hero

by Istar, whose love the hero has refused.[317]

In this cylinder it will be noticed that Izdubar is repeated twice,

once in profile and once full face. Close to him Hea-bani is wrestling

with a lion, the bull’s companion and assistant. In another example

we find Izdubar alone (Fig. 148) and maintaining a vigorous struggle

against a bull with long straight horns, and at the same time turning

his head so as to follow a combat between a lion and ibex that is going

on behind him.[318] The action of both these latter animals is rendered

with great freedom and truth. We have already had to draw attention

to the merit that distinguishes not a few of the animals in these

cylinders.[319] This merit is to be found in almost every composition

in which the artist has been content to make use of natural types. It

is only when he compiles impossible monsters that the forms become

awkward and confused. An instance of this may be found in a cylinder

found by M. de Sarzec at Tello, on which winged quadrupeds seizing

and devouring gazelles are portrayed (Fig. 149). Too many figures are

brought together in the narrow space and the result is confusion. We

are not, however, disposed to accept this cylinder as belonging to the

first years of Chaldæan art. It is of veined agate, a material that

was not among the earliest employed; but there are many more on which

similar scenes are engraved, and which, by their execution, may be

safely placed among the most ancient products of art.[320]

[Illustration: FIG. 148.--Chaldæan cylinder. Black

marble. French National Library.]

One of the earliest types invented by the imaginations of these

people was that of the strange and chaotic beings who, according to

the traditions collected by Berosus, lived upon the earth before the

creation of man, creatures in which the forms and limbs afterwards

separated and distinguished by nature, were mixed up as if by accident.

The text in question is of the very greatest interest and value. It

proves that the composite figures of which Chaldæan art was so fond

were not a simple caprice of the artists who made them, but were

suggested by a cosmic theory of which they formed, as it were, a

plastic embodiment and illustration.

“There was a time,” says Berosus, “when all was water and darkness, in

which monstrous animals were spontaneously engendered: men with two

wings, and some with four; with two faces, and two heads, the one male

and the other female, and with the other features of both sexes united

in their single bodies; men with the legs and horns of a goat and the

feet of a horse; others with the hind quarters of a horse and the upper

part of a man, like the hippocentaurs. There were also bulls with human

heads, dogs with four bodies and fishes’ tails, and other quadrupeds in

which various animal forms were blended, fishes, reptiles, serpents,

and all kinds of monsters with the greatest variety in their forms,

monsters whose images we see in the paintings of the temple of Bel at

Babylon.”[321] Of all these fantastic creatures there are hardly any

but may be found on some cylinder, and if there be one or two still

missing, it is very probable that future discoveries will fill up the

gap.

[Illustration: FIG. 149.--Chaldæan cylinder of veined

agate. Louvre.]

Before quitting these remains from the earliest school of gem

engraving, we must draw attention for a moment to the way in which

it treats costume. In most cases the folds of the stuff are imitated

by very fine parallel strokes. Sometimes, as, for instance, in the

figure on the right of Ourkam’s seal (Vol. I., Fig. 3), these close

and slightly sinuous lines extend without interruption from the top to

the bottom of the dress, but in most cases they are crossed by several

transverse bands, probably coloured, either woven into the material or

sewn upon it (see Vol. I., Figs. 3, 17, and 20, and above, Figs. 39 and

41). We have already encountered this method of treating drapery in

certain statuettes from the same place and time (Figs. 99 and 100), but

we never find it in Assyria or in Chaldæa after the fall of Nineveh,

either in statues or on engraved stones.

There is another characteristic detail that should not be forgotten,

namely, the caps turned up at the side in the shape of horns (Vol. I.,

Fig. 17 and above, Fig. 143). By this head-dress and the plaited robes

a Chaldæan cylinder may be at once recognised as dating from these

remote ages. Fashions and methods of execution changed as soon as the

preponderance of Assyrian royalty was assured. Artists of merit must

then have migrated northwards and opened workshops in the cities of

the Tigris; but production was never so great as in the south. Every

traveller in those regions notices that there are far more cylinders

to be purchased in the bazaars of Bagdad and Bassorah than in those

of Mossoul.[322] The glyptic art of Assyria was an exotic, like her

sculpture and her architecture.

[Illustration: FIG. 150.--Archaic Assyrian cylinder. In

the Uffizi, Florence.]

In attempting to define the characteristics of the Assyrian cylinders,

and to distinguish them from those of Chaldæa, we may take as points of

departure and as types of the new class, a few seals bearing legends

that enable us to give them a positive date. Thus we may learn from a

signet that once belonged to the governor of Calah what the execution

of the artists employed by the princes of Elassar and Nimroud was

like (Fig. 150). We need not hesitate to assign this cylinder to the

first Assyrian monarchy. The workmanship, at once careful and awkward,

belongs to a time when all the difficulties of gem engraving had not

yet been overcome. In the wings of the genius and the legs of the

personage who follows him the management of the instrument used is that

of an art still in its infancy. In this seal then we have a valuable

example of what we may call THE ARCHAIC ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.

We have already figured several in which the same characteristics

appear (Figs. 124, 139, and 140). In the same class we may put a number

of cylinders on which scenes of worship are represented with slight

variations (Figs. 151 and 152).[323] The figure of the king standing

before the altar with his right hand upon his bow resembles the

Assurnazirpal in several of the Nimroud reliefs (see above, Fig. 140).

The Balawat gates and other remains from the same time have already

made us acquainted with the accessories of the act of worship figured

in the last of these two cylinders, especially with the short column

surmounted by a cone (Plate XII).

[Illustration: FIG. 151.--Assyrian cylinder. Serpentine.

National Library, Paris.]

[Illustration: FIG. 152.--Assyrian cylinder. Serpentine.

National Library, Paris.]

[Illustration: FIG. 153.--Assyrian cylinder. British

Museum. Drawn by Wallet.]

We now come to the epoch of the Sargonids with its still more refined

and skilful art, of which an exquisite cylinder in the British Museum

may be taken as an example (Fig. 153). The name of a personage called

Musesinip has been read upon it, and it is believed to be a reduction

from a contemporary bas-relief. In the centre appears the holy tree

with the supreme deity floating over it in the winged disk. On each

side of the tree is the figure of a king with a winged eagle-headed

genius behind him. These last-named creatures have their right hands

raised, while in their left they hold the bronze buckets we have

already encountered at Nimroud (Vol. I., Fig. 8). There is one detail

which is not to be found, so far as I know, in the bas-reliefs, namely,

the double cord that descends from the winged disk into the hands

of the king. The artist, no doubt, meant to symbolize by this the

communication established by prayer between the prince and his divine

protector.

Among the dated and authenticated examples from this epoch the cylinder

inscribed with the name of Ursana, king of Musasir and adversary of

Sargon, may be quoted.[324] We do not reproduce it because it differs

so little from the example of Assyrian gem engraving given in our

Fig. 141. The same genius appears in the middle, but instead of two

winged monsters he holds two ostriches by the neck. We have already

encountered this fight between a man and an ostrich on a stone dating

from the same century (Fig. 75). We may name as a last example the

stone found by Layard at Kouyundjik, which may be the very signet of

Sennacherib himself (Vol. I., Fig. 70).

If we place all these impressions side by side we shall find they have

a certain number of common characteristics which will enable us to

recognize those of Assyrian parentage even when they bear no lettering,

or when their inscriptions tell us nothing as to their origin. In the

first place they are mostly of fine materials, such as chalcedony or

onyx. Secondly, they contain sacred emblems and types that are not to

be found in the primitive arts of Chaldæa, such as the mystic tree,

the winged globe, the eagle-headed genius, &c. Thirdly, the fantastic

animals of Assyria are different in general appearance from those of

the southern kingdom; and, finally, the costume of the two countries is

not the same. In the cylinders from Calah and Nineveh we find neither

the flounced robes nor the cap with turned-up borders. As in the

palace reliefs, the mantle-fringes cross the figure slanting-wise--an

obliquity which affords a ready means of distinguishing between a

native of Assyria and one of Chaldæa.

[Illustration: FIG. 154.--Chaldæan cylinder dating from

the second monarchy. Black jasper. British Museum.]

[Illustration: FIG. 155.--Impression of a cylinder on a

contract; from Ménant.[2]]

The use of the cylinder persisted after the fall of Nineveh and

throughout the second Chaldæan monarchy, but the types from this late

epoch display very little invention or variety. The most common of all

shows a personage standing bare-headed before two altars, one bearing

the disk of the sun, the other that of the moon (Fig. 154).[325]

This individual is sometimes bearded, sometimes shaven. His costume

is neither that of early Chaldæa nor the twisted robe of Assyria.

Sometimes one of the altars or the field is occupied by a monster with

a goat’s head and a fish’s body and tail, as in the impression left

by a cylinder on a contract dated “the twelfth year of Darius, king

of Babylon, king of the nations” (Fig. 155).[326] The use of these

types lasted in the valley of the Euphrates all through the Achæmenid

supremacy. No inscriptions were used. Names and dates were engraved by

hand on the clay after the seal had been placed upon it. We can see

clearly from the monotony of the images, which are repeated almost

unchanged on hundreds of tablets, that the art of gem-engraving was in

full decadence. The people were enslaved, they lived upon the memory of

their past, creating neither new forms nor new ideas. They no longer

attempted to make their seals works of art; they looked upon them as

mere utensils.

[Illustration: FIG. 156.--Cylinder with Aramaic

characters. Vienna Museum.]

Cylinders are sometimes found in this region inscribed with Aramaic

characters, like the weights from Nimroud. Such, for instance, is one

representing a dismounted hunter meeting the charge of a lion,[327]

while his horse stands behind him and awaits the issue of the struggle

(Fig. 156). The costume of the hunter is neither Assyrian nor Chaldæan.

He has been supposed to represent a Scythian. The Scythian figured at

Bisitun has the same pointed bonnet or cowl. Cylinders of this kind

will long be a difficulty for the classifier.[328]

The cylindrical form was not the only one used by the inhabitants of

Mesopotamia for their seals. Small objects in _pietra dura_ of a

different shape are now often found in the country, and are beginning

to hold their own in our museums; these are pyramids, spheroids,

and especially cones. Every cone, except one or two which may never,

perhaps, have been finished, is pierced near its summit with a hole for

suspension. There has never been any doubt from the first that they

were signets. Their bases, which are generally flat, but sometimes

convex or concave, are always engraved in intaglio. The impression was

thus obtained at one stroke, at one pressure of the hand, and it was

in all probability the greater ease with which that operation could be

carried out that in time led to the supercession of the cylinder by the

cone. The use of the latter became almost universal in the time of the

Seleucidæ and Parthians.

[Illustration: FIG. 157.--Cone. Sapphirine

chalcedony.[329]]

[Illustration: FIG. 158.--Cone. Sapphirine

chalcedony.[330]]

It is when they grow old that both nations and individuals turn their

attention to ease and comfort. The Chaldees were long contented with

the cylinder, although, as a seal, it was a very imperfect contrivance.

The ancient monarchy never seems to have made use of flat signets. The

impression of one has been sought for in vain on those contracts of

the time of Hammourabi, where so many cylinders have left their mark.

The oldest document on which the trace of a circular seal has been

recognized belongs to the northern kingdom, and dates from the reign

of Bin-Nirari, who occupied the throne of Assyria towards the end of

the ninth century B.C. From this moment the use of the cone becomes

rapidly common. Under the Sargonids, and still more during the second

Chaldee monarchy and under the Achæmenids, it superseded the cylinder.

The dates inscribed on the tablets prove their age; the space on the

cones themselves was too narrow, as a rule, for a legend. On a few

specimens we find one or two characters engraved, generally a divine

monogram or the traditional emblems of the sidereal powers. A few cones

have inscriptions in Aramaic characters (see Fig. 157); on the example

figured we again encounter the strange composite beast we have already

seen upon a stone tablet and a cylinder (Figs. 87 and 141). In spite

of the alphabet employed, this cone must have been engraved either in

Nineveh or its neighbourhood.

The narrowness of the field explains the want of variety in the

subjects. In a small circle like this there was no room for more than

a single figure with a few accessories, or, at most, for two figures.

We cannot expect to find scenes as varied and complicated as those upon

the cylinders. A very small number of the simplest themes formed the

stock-in-trade of the engraver.

There are about four hundred specimens in the British Museum, and as

many more in Paris, in the Louvre and the _Cabinet des Antiques_.

In the presence of them all we can only confess to a feeling of

embarrassment. They are never arranged in chronological order; Assyrian

intaglios are mixed up with those from Chaldæa, from Phœnicia and

Persia. Certain types were reproduced and copied in this region even

as late as the Arsacids and Sassanids. We shall choose a few, however,

which we may with some certainty attribute to Assyria. There is in the

first place one on which two winged figures seem to be adorning the

sacred tree (Fig. 158). We find the impression of an almost exactly

similar cone on a contract dated 650 B.C. The only differences lie in

the more careful execution of the latter seal and in the substitution

of the radiant disk of the sun for the crescent moon.[331] In another

impression we find the radiant disk changed into the winged globe.[332]

The shape and fringe of the Assyrian robe may be recognized in the

intaglio in which a man with long hair and beard does homage to a

winged genius (Fig. 159). The worshipper is standing, but behind him

appears a kneeling figure. This posture is rare, but it is met with in

a few instances on monuments from this period, and is always used to

suggest the profound respect with which a man does obeisance either to

his god or his king.[333]

We need not hesitate to ascribe to the second Chaldæan monarchy a cone

with a bearded individual standing before an altar on which lies a

fantastic animal (Fig. 160); above his head appear the sun, the moon,

and a star. We have already mentioned two examples of this theme, which

begins to appear in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and remains in fashion

until the Macedonian conquest.[334]

[Illustration: FIG. 159.--Amethyst cone. National

Library, Paris.[335]]

[Illustration: FIG. 160.--Agate cone. National Library,

Paris.[336]]

Among the themes in most frequent use under the Sargonids we might have

quoted the _single combat of the king with a lion_, the _god

standing upon a lion’s back_, the _king over whose head a servant

holds an umbrella_, the heads and bodies of different animals, and

others.[337] We cannot pretend, however, to enumerate them all. It is

sufficient to show, as we have done, that after the ninth century at

latest both cylinders and cones were produced in the same workshops,

and that the differences in their figuration are to be explained by the

dimensions and form of the new surface. Those who have supposed that

the use of flat seals only commenced under the Achæmenids are mistaken.

All that we can say with truth is that intaglios cut upon sections of

cones, spheres and pyramids are less ancient than the cylinders of Ur,

Erech, Accad and Sippara.

This is proved by the dated contracts to which we have already so often

had to refer; but supposing no such contracts to have been in existence

we could have arrived at the same conclusion by another path. Cones in

calcareous stone, in marble, or even in _pietra dura_ are either

wanting altogether, or very few and far between; they are almost all in

precious stones, most of them in carnelian and chalcedony. Sapphirine

chalcedony, with its fine bluish tint, seems to have been most in

favour.

In Egypt we found intaglios upon metal as well as upon lapidary

substances.[338] This use of metal was a result of mounting seals in

circles of gold or silver. Precious stones were rare and difficult

to cut; what could be more natural than to substitute metal for them

and to make the bezel of a ring of the same material as its hoop. For

its engraving neither lathe nor diamond dust was wanted; the burin

alone was necessary, and the figures cut by it gave a result no less

satisfactory than those obtained by the slower process and in the more

stubborn material. The temptation was great for the Egyptian artist,

and we are not surprised that he succumbed to it, but it did not exist

for the Chaldæan engraver. The latter had only to deliver a stone which

his client could wear fastened to his wrist, or hung round his neck

by a cord. He had no direct and intimate relations with the worker

in metal; he was not compelled to call in the latter to mount his

creation. Sometimes, under the influence perhaps of foreign models,

he may have attempted to substitute metal for stone, but isolated

attempts did not make a school. We can point to only one example of

such work. The British Museum possesses a silver cylinder, but the only

interesting thing about it is its material.[339] The composition of the

type is naive and its execution rough. All this allows us to believe

that metal seals were very rare and never came into general use.

Oriental artists, at least during the period of which we are now

speaking, hardly ever practised any kind of gem-cutting but intaglio,

but there are two stones in existence in which first attempts at a

process that must have led in time to the production of cameos, may be

traced. “In one of these gems, an onyx, the upper layer is cut away

from the one below it and an inscription left. In the other the eyes

and neck of a serpent are rendered with the aid of three different

tints in the stone.”[340]

§ 9. _The General Characteristics of Chaldæo-Assyrian Sculpture._

We have now reached the end of our inquiry into the history of

Mesopotamian sculpture--an inquiry that we have endeavoured to make

as complete as the existing remains would allow. So far as Chaldæa is

concerned, these are very few in number. On the other hand, the three

centuries over which the Assyrian power extended are pictured in such

a vast number of reliefs that we are embarrassed by their number as

much as by their want of variety. Our difficulty in the case of Assyria

has been to make a selection from a vast quantity of objects that tell

us the same thing again and again, while, in the case of Chaldæa, it

has been to insure that none of the scanty salvage from so great a

wreck should be lost. We have more than once had to make induction and

conjecture take the place of examination and assertion before we could

complete even a rough sketch of the development of Chaldæan art.

There is one question that must have been asked by many of our readers

before these pages came in their way, but is now, we venture to hope,

fully answered, and that is, whether the Semites of Chaldæa drew

their first inspiration from a foreign source, or whether it was an

original result from the natural aptitudes of the race. Ancient as

civilization may have been in the Euphrates valley, it was still more

ancient, to all appearance, in the valley of the Nile. And yet all who

have examined the figures we have placed before them must acknowledge

the originality and independence of Chaldæan art. No; the sculptors

of Memphis and Thebes were not the masters of those of Babylon and

Nineveh; they preceded them indeed, but they left them no teaching and

no models to copy.

This is proved in the first place by the difference, we might say the

opposition, between the two styles. The Egyptian sculptor simplifies,

abridges, and summarizes form; the Assyrian amplifies it and accents

its details. The former seems to see the human body through a veil

of gauze, which hides the accidents of the surface and the secondary

forms, allowing nothing to be clearly grasped but the contour and the

great leading lines. One would say that the second studied nature

through a magnifying-glass; he insists upon what the first slurs over.

This is not the only difference between the two methods and the two

interpretations. The Egyptian artist can seize the character of a

movement with much justice and vivacity, but he endeavours to ennoble

it by giving it a general and typical value. This he does, for example,

in the gesture of the king who brandishes his mace or sword over the

head of his conquered enemy while he holds him by the hair with his

other hand.[341]

He thinks more about elegance in arranging the posture of his figures;

look, for instance, at the men and women carrying offerings, at the

dancers and musicians who abound in the reliefs and pictures. His

favourite attitude, however, is one expressive of force in repose.

We cannot deny that in his figures in the round the Mesopotamian

sculptor showed the same predilection, but his choice was suggested,

or rather imposed, by the resistance of the materials he employed and

the necessity of avoiding certain executive difficulties over which

he could not triumph. We can hardly see how he could have given his

figures more animation or have better expressed the freedom of their

limbs and the swing of their bodies; the stones he used were either

too hard or too soft, and he was without the needful skill in the

management of his tools.

It is in the reliefs, where he is more at his ease, that he allows us

to see whither his natural inclinations would lead him. They contain

hardly any seated figures. Man is there always on his feet and in

action. Movement, to interest the Mesopotamian artist, need not be the

expression of an idea, or the cause of graceful lines. It pleases him

for its own sake by its freedom and unexpectedness, I am almost tempted

to say, by its violence.

This feeling is visible chiefly in the battle pictures and hunting

scenes. In these, no doubt, the drawing of limbs, &c., often leaves

much to be desired. The hand has been unable to render all that the eye

has seen. The unveiled human body has not been displayed often enough

to the sculptor for him to know thoroughly the construction of its

framework and the mode of attachment of its limbs. On the other hand,

when animals have to be treated, with what singular power and complete

success the same artist has often represented the tension of the

contracting muscles, the speed of the horse as he stretches himself in

the gallop, the spring of the lion as he throws himself upon the spear

(see Fig. 161), and, finally, the trembling of the flesh in the last

struggle against suffering and death! It is in the Assyrian monuments

that these things are treated with the greatest success. A people of

soldiers and hunters, whose truculent energy gave them the empire of

all western Asia, they had neither the mild humour nor the fine taste

of the Egyptians, they were less easily moved, and we find ourselves

wondering that they never hit upon the fights of gladiators as a

national pastime. They were touched and interested by force passing

from repose into action, by force putting forth all its energies in

contempt of danger and in spite of the most determined resistance.

[Illustration: FIG. 161.--Assurbanipal attacked by

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

The temperaments of the two nations were, then, vastly different,

and by the time their mutual relations became close and continuous,

each had thought too much, had worked too much, and created too much

for itself to be in any great danger of losing its originality under

the influence of the other. Moreover, the two civilizations never

penetrated within one another. Their moments of contact were short

and superficial. Under the great Theban conquerors of the eighteenth

dynasty, the Egyptian armies advanced to the Euphrates, and the princes

of Mesopotamia may, for a time, have recognized the suzerainty of

the Pharaohs; this is proved to some extent by the numerous scarabs

engraved with the name of Thothmes III., which have been found in the

valley of the Khabour,[342] but after the nineteenth dynasty their

hold upon these distant conquests must have been lost. Their access to

them was barred by the Khetas, in Syria, and, a few centuries later,

it was the Sargonids who invaded Egypt and admired its monuments so

much that they carried some of them away, such as the lion found at

Bagdad. It bears the oval of a Pharaoh who is believed to be one of

the shepherd kings.[343] In the interval the importation of objects of

luxury, which was carried on through the Phœnicians, had introduced a

few foreign motives into the repertory of the Assyrian artists, such as

the crouching sphinx and the lotus flower; the winged globe may also

be Egyptian; but these borrowings never go beyond details; even if

they were far more numerous than they are, they would not deprive the

sculpture of the Mesopotamian Semites of its right to be considered an

independent and autonomous form of art, whose merits and defects are

to be explained by the inborn genius of the race, by its manner and

beliefs, by the natural conditions of its home, and the qualities of

the different materials employed.[344]

It is in the same order of ideas that we must seek a reason for the

differences we have remarked between the art of the early Chaldæan

monarchy as it has been revealed to us in the monuments recently

discovered, and Assyrian art as we have known it ever since the

explorations at Khorsabad, Nimroud, and Kouyundjik. In all this there

is a most interesting question for the study of the historian. Of what

nature was the bond by which the sculptors of Calah and Nineveh were

allied to those who had chiselled the Sirtella statues, perhaps a

thousand years before? What place does the brilliant and prolific art

of Assyria occupy in the series of phases whose succession was governed

by the laws that have presided over the development of human societies

in every age and place? Until within the last few months we should have

found it difficult to give a satisfactory answer to this question.

Assyrian art offered contradictory features to the observer, and it

was not easy to understand how, with so lively a feeling for form, and

especially for movement, it could have admitted so much conventionality

and repeated itself with so much insistence and prolixity. The

combination of skill and awkwardness, of energy and platitude, was more

than surprising. But the problem resolves itself as soon as we go back

to the art of Chaldæa, the first-born of the two sister nations, and

the pioneer of Mesopotamian civilization.

Assyrian art, even in its most ancient productions, was not, as we once

believed, a primitive or even an archaic art; neither was it what we

call a classic art, an art employing the skill it has acquired for the

renewed study of nature and the sincere imitation of its beauties. We

shall not call it a debased art or an art in its decadence; to do so

would be to exaggerate our meaning; but it was an art no longer in its

progress, an art that, for the sake of rapid and ample production,

made use of conventional formulæ invented by deceased masters and

handed down by tradition.

Perhaps we may give a clearer notion of what we mean by a comparison.

Under all the reserves implied by such collations, we should say that

Chaldæan art was to that of Assyria what the Greek art of Phidias,

Praxiteles, and Lysippus was to the Alexandrian and Græco-Roman art

which we now call _Hellenistic_. In the studios of Nineveh, as

in those of Pergamus, of Rhodes, of Antioch, of Rome, great activity,

great skill, and no little science were to be found; even originality

was sought for, but it was sought rather than won. Thus we find in

Macedonian and Roman Greece, here a school drawing attention by

audacious and perhaps theatrical execution, there another devoting its

skill to pathetic subjects, and attempting to render physical agony by

contracted muscles. So it is in Assyria. The ease with which alabaster

and soft limestone could be cut allowed the artists who worked for

Assurnazirpal to give to the ornamentation of the rich stuffs they

figured a delicacy and refinement that were impossible in the stubborn

stones of Chaldæa. Two centuries later the sculptors of Assurbanipal

sought a new element of success in the complication of their scenes,

in the grace of their execution, in the picturesque details of their

landscape backgrounds, in the increased slenderness of their figures,

and in a certain elegance spread over their compositions as a whole.

It is certain that neither the Greek of the later centuries nor the

Assyrian invented and created in the proper sense of the word. The

Greek sculptor, thanks to a deeper comprehension of the true conditions

of art and to the necessity under which he laboured of reproducing the

nude, certainly did not remit his care for modelling, but he looked

at the contours and the significance of the human body rather with

the eyes of his masters and predecessors than with his own. It was to

those masters that he was indebted for his propensity to see one set of

features rather than another, and to give that interpretation to form

that, taken altogether, constitutes the Greek style.

The Assyrian sculptor was in much the same case, but as his figures

were draped, almost without exception, it was much easier for him to

put nature aside altogether and to fall into manner and routine. It is

only when he has to represent animals that he seems to work from the

living model. The human body, hidden under its long and heavy robes,

did not discover enough to awake his interest; all that he sees--the

features and the profile of the face, the throat, the lower parts of

the arms and legs--he treats after the examples left to him by his

Chaldæan leader. In the whole of Assyrian sculpture there is no passage

studied from nature with faith and sincerity, like the hand, the

shoulder, and the back in the statues of Gudea. The Chaldæan sculptor

had a taste for strong modelling, and in this his Assyrian pupil copied

him with such an excess of zeal that he arrived at exaggeration and

pure convention. He knotted the knees of his figures, he gave them

knee-caps standing out like huge bosses, and muscles so stretched and

salient that they look like cables rather than flesh and blood. It is

an early edition of what is now an old story. The master is betrayed by

the pupil, who copies his mannerisms rather than his beauties and turns

many of his fine qualities into defects.

We may now see how much the Chaldæan excavations and the collection

which the Louvre owes to M. de Sarzec are calculated to teach the

historian of art. These discoveries, by their intrinsic importance and

by the light they have thrown on the origin of a great civilization,

may almost be compared to those of Lepsius and Mariette, to the

systematic researches and happy finds that have revealed the Egypt

of the ancient empire to us. Assyrian art is no longer a puzzling

phenomenon. Like the Egyptian art of the Theban epoch, it was preceded

by a realistic and naturalistic, an inquisitive, simple-minded, and

single-hearted art, which had faithfully studied the human form and had

thus created one of the original styles of antiquity, a style, perhaps,

in which Greece at its first beginning found the most useful lessons

and the most fertile suggestions.

As we have already confessed, we can form but a very imperfect notion

of what the art of Chaldæa was in its best days, in its period of youth

and freshness. The remains are few and small; they are heads separated

from the bodies to which they once belonged, chips from broken reliefs

and a few small bronze and terra-cotta statuettes. Even supposing that

new discoveries come to fill up the gaps, so that the development of

Chaldæo-Assyrian art may be embraced as a whole, even then it would,

we believe, be interior to that of Egypt. No doubt it possesses certain

qualities not to be found in the latter. The statues from Tello have

a freedom and vigour of modelling in certain parts that can hardly be

prized too highly, and the Memphite artist never chiselled anything so

full of intense life and movement as the animals at Kouyundjik; but

without again referring to faults already treated at length we may

say that the supreme defect of Mesopotamian sculpture is its want of

variety.

It is a powerful but monotonous art. For each class of figures it had

but one mould. It seems never to have suspected how unlike men are to

each other when they are looked at closely; we are tempted to believe

that it never made a portrait in the true sense of the word. It held

through many centuries to the general and abstract types created at

first, and repeated them with a constancy that inevitably causes some

weariness in the spectator. It also committed the mistake of spreading

a single colour, speaking metaphorically, over all its pictures; as

a musician would say, all its compositions were in the same key; it

was always serious; it did not understand how to laugh or unbend. In

the elaboration of its demons it certainly cast about for as much

ugliness as it could find, but that was to frighten and not to amuse.

In all the remains of Assyrian art there is no trace of playful humour,

of the light-hearted gaiety that is so conspicuous in more than one

Egyptian monument. In the subordinate parts of some of the reliefs

from the Sargonid period we find certain groups and scenes belonging

to what we should call _genre_, but neither here, nor in the

bronzes, nor in engraved gems, nor even in the terra-cottas, do we find

anything that approaches caricature. The comic element, without which

no representation of life can be faithful and complete, is entirely

wanting.

A final defect of Assyrian art is the almost total absence of woman

from its creations. In Chaldæa we found her in the small bronzes and in

a few clay figures; the canephorus with bare arms and bust, the nursing

goddesses who bear a child in their arms or who press their breasts

with their open hands, will be remembered, but it would seem that such

subjects were treated only in figures of very small dimensions. In

the fragmentary reliefs and statues from Chaldæa there is nothing to

suggest that female forms, either wholly or partially nude, were either

cast or chiselled in anything approaching life size. Still less were

such things made in Assyria, where no terra-cotta figure even of the

deity to whom the names of Istar, Beltis, Mylitta, and Zarpanitu have

all been given, has yet been found. It was, however, at Kouyundjik

that the only nude female torso yet discovered in Mesopotamia was dug

up. It bears the name Assurbilkala, and is now, as we have said above,

in the British Museum.[345] Among the ivories, indeed, we find female

statuettes in which we are tempted to recognize the same goddess; but

where were those ivories carved? We have good reason to believe that

not a few are of Phœnician workmanship.

The real national art of Assyria must be sought in the palace reliefs,

and in that long illustrated chronicle of the court, the chase, and

the royal campaigns, woman plays a very subordinate part. It has been

thought that a tall, beardless individual who occurs near one of the

doorways of Assurnazirpal’s palace, in the place generally reserved

for divinities, should be accepted as a goddess (Fig. 162).[346] She

is winged, and her hair is gathered together at the back of the neck,

one long knotted and tasselled tress falling nearly to her loins. Her

right arm is raised, her left lowered; in her left hand she holds a

small wreath or garland. A wide girdle at the waist confines a long

robe falling to the feet, and a fringed and flounced mantle. Nothing

is seen through this drapery, such as amplitude of bosom or hips, to

suggest the female sex, while the jewels that may be noticed on the

neck and wrists and in the ears are also to be found on figures that

are certainly male. In fact there is nothing to suggest a woman but

the arrangement of the hair and a certain unwonted refinement in the

execution of the features. And it is only by external signs like these,

by the pose and the costume, that the few women in the bas-reliefs

are to be recognized. This observation holds good for the queen of

Assurbanipal as well as for the musicians who celebrate his victories

and the captives led into slavery by the Assyrian armies.

[Illustration: FIG. 162.--Figure of a goddess. British

Museum. Drawn by Wallet.]

We can hardly say then that woman had any place in Assyrian art; she

was represented, if at all, only by her robes. In the long series of

reliefs you find none of the charming variety given to Egyptian art by

the slender forms of goddesses, queens, dancers, and players on the

mandolin, who crowd the pictures and allow the graceful contours of

their youthful bodies to be seen through their transparent robes. In

spite, then, of all its merits, the art of the Assyrian sculptor is

far from complete. His neglect of the soft nobleness inherent in the

beauty of woman deprived him of a precious resource; his works are

without the telling contrasts that nature has set up between the forms

of man and those of his mate. We have endeavoured to do him justice;

we have sought to put in full light the merits by which he attracts our

admiration, but we cannot help seeing that he lacks something that we

have found in Egypt and shall find again in Greece; he is without the

charm of grace and light.

[Illustration]