MANUAL
OF
ORIENTAL ANTIQUITIES
INCLUDING THE
=Architecture, Sculpture, and Industrial Arts=
OF
_CHALDÆA, ASSYRIA, PERSIA, SYRIA, JUDÆA,
PHŒNICIA, AND CARTHAGE._
BY
ERNEST BABELON,
_Librarian of the Department of Medals and Antiques in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris._
NEW EDITION,
WITH A CHAPTER ON THE RECENT DISCOVERIES AT SUSA.
With Two Hundred and Fifty-five Illustrations.
NEW YORK: G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS
LONDON: H. GREVEL AND CO.,
1906.
_Printed and bound by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury,
England._
PREFACE.
The domain which we are about to traverse in this little work embraces
all the civilisations of the ancient East except that of Egypt. It
includes the Chaldæans, the Assyrians, the Persians before Alexander,
the Hittites of Syria, Cappadocia, and Asia Minor, the Jews, the
Phœnicians, and even Cyprus, ending with the Carthaginians and their
colonies. So vast a field, which, in the monumental work of MM. G.
Perrot and C. Chipiez, occupies four volumes, can only be explored here
in a summary manner, and the author claims no more than to have written
a modest abridgment. It must not be supposed, however, in spite of the
diversity and remoteness from one another of the peoples that we have
just enumerated, that the subject lacks cohesion and unity. If the
reader will have the goodness to follow us to the conclusion, he will
be, on the contrary, struck by the perfect homogeneity of the book and
the connection of all its parts. The picture, so to speak, contains many
figures, but all concur in a common action, and the spectator grasps, at
the first glance, the harmony of the composition.
For, in these old Eastern civilisations which held sway over the world
before Greece and Rome, only two streams of artistic influence are
really to be traced--that which rises in Egypt and that which issues
from Assyria. Often they took a parallel course, side by side, sharing
like brothers the empire of the arts; sometimes they opposed or
obstinately excluded one another; or else they joined forces, mingled
closely with one another, and united their original capacities in a
common fund. But if these varying conditions produced in certain
countries a local and indigenous art which is neither purely Egyptian
nor purely Assyrian, we can always decompose its elements and make a
chemical analysis of it, so to speak; and, when we have restored to
Egypt that which properly belongs to her, and to Assyria all that has
been borrowed from her, we perceive that nothing remains at the bottom
of the crucible. Thus it may be said that, properly speaking, there is
no Persian art, or Hittite art, or Jewish art, or Phœnician or
Carthaginian art; everywhere we find the forms of Egypt or those of
Assyria grouped, mixed, perhaps altered, in proportions which vary
according to time, environment, and political conditions.
Leaving Egypt on one side, it is the Asiatic, or, more strictly, the
Chaldæo-Assyrian stream that we have undertaken to study exclusively. We
see it at its source, almost on the site of that Garden of Eden where
Genesis and the Chaldæan legends place the ancestors of mankind; we
follow it into Assyria, and observe its progress and transformations.
Before long it overflows and passes on all sides beyond the limits of
the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates; on one side, in Persia, it
invades the palaces of Susa and Persepolis; on the other side, among the
Hittites, the Aramæan populations of Syria, and the Jews, it spreads and
divides into many rivulets, until it arrives at the frontier of Egypt
and the heart of Asia Minor. Far from losing itself in the waves of the
Mediterranean, it reaches all the shores of that great lake, Cyprus,
Sicily, Africa, Spain; even passing beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
It seemed to us, then, that it would be a work of interest to draw a
picture of Chaldæo-Assyrian art not only in its native country where it
develops at its ease, but in its many ramifications among the
neighbouring nations where it comes into collision with its rival and is
interpreted by foreigners, until the day when Greece snatches the torch
of the arts from the failing hand of the East. This Asiatic art, as we
shall see, has no cause to be ashamed by the side of the Egyptian art.
Chaldæa possesses a genius as spontaneous as that of Egypt, and the
valley of the Euphrates is not less fertile than that of the Nile. The
ambitions of her architects and sculptors were as high and noble as
those of the artists who flourished at the court of the Pharaohs, and
the staged towers were the equals of the Pyramids. Both nations pursued
an ideal which contains a part of the truth, for in making a building
colossal and imposing by its size, they thought that they attained to
supreme greatness and perfection. The Greeks, through their greater
refinement, did not fall into these excesses. But who will ever be able
to say how much the powerful originality of the Hellenic genius borrowed
from the imperfect models furnished by Egypt and Assyria? Who will ever
be able to define with clearness and precision the kind of influence
which Chaldæo-Assyrian art, in particular, imported by the ships of
Phœnicia into all maritime countries, had on the origin of art in
that younger civilisation of which Athens was the centre?
The ancient peoples of Asia, which form a compact group from the point
of view of the history and development of the arts, are also akin in the
complete destruction which has overtaken their architectural monuments.
As if by a providential chastisement, from the table-land of Iran to the
Pillars of Hercules, at Susa, at Babylon, at Nineveh, as at Jerusalem,
Tyre, Carthage, and Gades, nothing is left of those temples, palaces,
and towers which threw a challenge in the face of Heaven, and which wore
out so many generations of slaves in the building of them. While the
Pyramids still rise opposite to the Parthenon, and our astonishment is
still excited by the imposing ruins of Egypt, Greece and Rome, nothing
remains of the grand monuments which were the pride of the capitals of
Asia. Everywhere we have to dig into the bowels of the earth and uncover
the base of crumbled walls. Everything is reduced to dust like the image
with the feet of clay, and a shroud of ashes covers that world the
material culture of which is to be brought to life again, as far as
possible, in the following pages.
* * * * *
In the first English edition, M. Babelon’s work was somewhat enlarged,
and occasionally revised by the translator--Mr. B.T.A. Evetts, then of
the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum. In
the present edition will be found a new chapter by the author on the
recent finds at Susa.
A.S.G.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
CHALDÆAN ART.
PAGE
§ 1. ARCHITECTURE 3
§ 2. STATUES AND BAS-RELIEFS 22
§ 3. MINOR SCULPTURE AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS 35
§ 4. ENGRAVED SEALS 44
CHAPTER II.
ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.
§ 1. THE PRINCIPLES OF BUILDING 52
§ 2. PALACES 66
§ 3. TEMPLES AND STAGED TOWERS 72
§ 4. TOWNS AND THEIR FORTIFICATIONS 79
CHAPTER III.
ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE AND PAINTING.
§ 1. STATUES, STELÆ, OBELISKS 85
§ 2. BAS-RELIEFS 91
§ 3. PAINTING AND ENAMELLING 114
CHAPTER IV.
THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS IN ASSYRIA.
§ 1. CERAMICS 121
§ 2. METALS 125
§ 3. WOOD AND IVORY 134
§ 4. LEATHER AND TEXTILES 138
§ 5. ORNAMENTS AND SEALS 142
CHAPTER V.
PERSIAN ART.
§ 1. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE 147
§ 2. SCULPTURE 159
§ 3. PAINTING AND ENAMELLING 167
§ 4. RELIGIOUS AND SEPULCHRAL MONUMENTS 172
§ 5. ENGRAVED STONES AND ORNAMENTS 180
CHAPTER VI.
THE HITTITES.
§ 1. HITTITE MONUMENTS IN SYRIA 186
§ 2. HITTITE MONUMENTS IN CAPPADOCIA 191
§ 3. HITTITE MONUMENTS IN ASIA MINOR 199
CHAPTER VII.
JEWISH ART.
§ 1. THE TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM 205
§ 2. THE DECORATION AND FURNITURE OF THE TEMPLE 223
§ 3. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE 230
§ 4. TOMBS 233
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ART OF PHŒNICIA AND CYPRUS.
§ 1. TEMPLES 239
§ 2. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE 246
§ 3. TOMBS 253
§ 4. PHŒNICIAN SCULPTURE 262
§ 5. CYPRIOTE SCULPTURE 269
§ 6. PHŒNICIAN AND CYPRIOTE POTTERY 277
§ 7. PHŒNICIAN GLASS 283
§ 8. BRONZES AND ORNAMENTS 288
§ 9. ENGRAVED STONES 294
CHAPTER IX.
ARCHÆOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES AT SUSA.
§ 1. M. DE MORGAN’S MISSION IN SUSIANA 299
§ 2. CHRONOLOGY OF THE RUINS ACCORDING TO RECENT DISCOVERIES 303
§ 3. THE PRINCIPLES OF BUILDING 313
§ 4. STONE SCULPTURE 316
§ 5. BRONZE METAL-WORK 326
§ 6. JEWELLERY AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS 331
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FIGURE PAGE
1. Brick from Tello 5
2. Plan of the palace at Tello 9
3. Section of pillar 10
4. Corbelled vaulting at Mugheir 14
5. Socket for pivot of door from Tello 18
6. Terra-cotta cone from Tello 18
7. Drainage pipe at Mugheir 20
8. Foundation cylinder from Khorsabad 22
9. Bas-relief from Tello 23
10. Bas-relief from Tello 24
11. The Vulture Stela 25
12. The Vulture Stela 25
13. The Vulture Stela 26
14. Chaldæan head 27
15. Chaldæan head 27
16. Chaldæan statue 28
17. Chaldæan statue 29
18. Foot of Chaldæan vase 31
19. Bas-relief from Tello 32
20. Bas-relief from Tello 32
21. The “Caillou Michaux” 34
22. Stela of Marduk-nadin-akhi 34
23. Chaldæan statuette in bronze 35
24. Chaldæan statuette 36
25. Canephoros of Kudurmapuk 37
26. Chaldæan statuette in bronze 38
27. Chaldæan statuette in terra-cotta 40
28. Chaldæan statuette in alabaster 42
29. Bas-relief on the tablet of the god Samas 42
30. Chaldæan head in steatite 43
31. Chaldæan cylinder 45
32. Chaldæan cylinder 46
33. Chaldæan cylinder 46
34. Cylinder of Sargani 47
35. Chaldæan cylinder 48
36. Tomb at Warka 51
37. Masonry at Khorsabad 53
38. Section of wall at Khorsabad 53
39. Vaulted and domed houses 56
40. Vaulted drain 57
41. Vaulted drain at Khorsabad 58
42. Vaulted drain at Khorsabad. Slope of the bricks 59
43. Façade with pilasters 62
44. Base of column 62
45. Assyrian capital 63
46. Capital of Sassanian period from Warka 62
47. Shrine with columns 64
48. Base of small column 65
49. Plan of Dur-Sarrukin 67
50. Plan of the palace of Sargon 68
51. South-eastern façade of the palace of Sargon 69
52. Birds’-eye view of the palace of Sargon 71
53. The staged tower of Khorsabad 75
54. Temple of the god Haldia 77
55. Walls of Babylon 80
56. Chaldæan plan of a fortress 81
57. Assyrian plan of a fortress 82
58. Siege of a fortress 83
59. Plan of a gate at Khorsabad 84
60. Gate of Khorsabad 84
61. Statue of Assur-nasir-pal 86
62. Statue in the hareem at Khorsabad 87
63. Stela of Samsi-Rammanu 88
64. Stela of Assurbanipal 89
65. Obelisk of Shalmaneser 89
66. Assur-nasir-pal sacrificing a bull 91
67. Genius with the beak of an eagle 92
68. Two-winged genius 92
69. Four-winged genius, Khorsabad 93
70. Winged and human-headed lion 94
71. Front face of a winged bull 95
72. Battle scene 96
73. The Assyrian army in a mountainous country 97
74. Siege of a fortress 98
75. Navigation scene 99
76. Eunuchs 101
77. Assurbanipal and his queen 102
78. Jewish type from a bas-relief from the palace of Sennacherib 103
79. Assurbanipal in his chariot 102
80. Sargon 105
81. Wounded lioness 107
82. Slaves carrying a lion and birds. Bas-relief 108
83. Envoy bringing apes as tribute 109
84. Fragment of threshold, Kouyunjik 111
85. Slaves dragging a winged bull 112
86. Deer-hunt. Bas-relief 113
87. Painting on plaster, Nimroud 115
88. Portion of an enamelled archivolt at Khorsabad 116
89. Enamelled brick, Nimroud 117
90. Izdubar. Terra-cotta 122
91. Head of a monster. Terra-cotta 122
92. Tablet with figure of boar in relief 123
93. The Divine Mother. Terra-cotta 124
94. Istar. Terra-cotta 124
95. Gates of Balawat 126
96. Fragment of metal band of Balawat gates 127
97. Bronze dish, Nimroud 128
98. Assyrian archers 128
99. Various forms of the Assyrian helmet 128
100. Bronze lion 129
101. Bronze siren 129
102. Bronze siren 130
103. The demon of the south-west wind 130
104. Bronze plaque 131
105. Bronze plaque 132
106. Standard in a bas-relief from Khorsabad 133
107. Foot of a piece of furniture 133
108. Tent serving as the royal stable 136
109. Sennacherib’s throne. Bas-relief 136
110. Assyrian chariot 137
111. Ivory plaque 137
112. Assur-nasir-pal offering a libation 139
113. Richly caparisoned horse and rider 140
114. Assyrian deities carried in procession 142
115. Archaic Assyrian cylinder 144
116. Assyrian cylinder 145
117. Assyrian cylinder 145
118. Assyrian cylinder 145
119. Median cylinder 146
120. Platform of the palace of Cyrus 149
121. Basement at Persepolis 150
122. Gate and windows of the palace of Darius 151
123. Persepolitan capital 153
124. Plan of the Apadâna of Artaxerxes 154
125. Susian capital restored 155
126. Base of a column 156
127. Façade of the Apadâna of Artaxerxes 157
128. Cyrus. Bas-relief 160
129. Bas-relief at Persepolis 161
130. Bas-relief at Persepolis 162
131. Bas-relief from Persepolis 163
132. Bas-relief at Persepolis 164
133. Bas-relief at Persepolis 165
134. Portico at Persepolis 166
135. The lion frieze 168
136. Susian archer 169
137. Polychrome decoration of the palace of Artaxerxes 171
138. The tower of Jur. Restoration 173
139. The Gabr-i-Madar-i-Soleiman 176
140. Tomb of Cambyses I. 177
141. Façade of tomb at Nakhsh-i-Rustam 178
142. Cylinder of Darius 181
143. Persian cylinder 182
144. Persian seal 182
145. Seal of Artaxerxes 182
146. Persian seal. Conical 182
147. Persian seal 183
148. De Luynes’ bas-relief 184
149. The lion of Marash 186
150. Stela from Birejik 187
151. Fragments of sculpture from Carchemish 188
152. Bas-relief at Rum-Qalah 189
153. Stela at Marash 189
154. The sphinx of Euyuk 192
155. Rock sculptures at Iasili-Kaïa 193
156. Rock sculptures at Iasili-Kaïa 194
157. Rock sculptures at Iasili-Kaïa 194
158. Rock sculpture at Iasili-Kaïa 195
159. Rock sculpture of Iasili-Kaïa 195
160. Rock sculpture of Iasili-Kaïa 196
161. Tomb of Gherdek-Kaïasi 196
162. Sculpture at Iasili-Kaïa 198
163. Rock sculptures at Ghiaur Kalesi 199
164. Rock sculpture at Ibriz 200
165. Rock sculpture at Nymphio 201
166. Boss of Tarkudimme 203
167. Hittite cylinder 203
168. Site of the Temple on Mount Moriah 206
169. Plan of Herod’s restoration 211
170. The Jews’ Wailing-place 213
171. The western door. Present state 215
172. Interior view of the Double Gate 216
173. Plan of Herod’s Temple 218
174. Bird’s-eye view of Herod’s Temple 219
175. The Altar of Burnt-offerings 221
176. Egyptian naos and cherubim 225
177. Egyptian ark and naos 225
178. Egyptian table of offerings 226
179. Seven-branched candlestick 226
180. Capital of the bronze columns 227
181. The brazen sea 228
182. Movable basin 229
183. The tomb of Abraham at Hebron 233
184. Absalom’s tomb 234
185. Sepulchral chamber at Medaïn Salih 235
186. The monolith of Siloam 236
187. Tomb in the valley of Hinnom 237
188. Shrine at Ain el-Hayât 240
189. Coin of Paphos 241
190. Plan of the Giganteja 244
191. Roman wall at Byrsa 245
192. Terra-cotta house 248
193. Plan of the harbours at Carthage 250
194. Jetty of Thapsus 252
195. Tomb at Amrith. Plan 253
196. Tomb at Amrith. Section 253
197. Sepulchral chamber at Amrith 254
198. Mighzal at Amrith 254
199. The Burj el-Bezzâk 255
200. Chamber of the Burj el-Bezzâk 255
201. The Burj el-Bezzâk. Restoration 255
202. Section of a tomb at Saïda 256
203. Entrance of a tomb at Gebal 256
204. The sarcophagus of Eshmunazar 257
205. Sarcophagus in human form 258
206. Tomb at Amathus 260
207. Sepulchral chamber at Amathus 260
208. Plan of a tomb at Carthage 261
209. Phœnician slab at Amrith 263
210. Cypriote statue 265
211. Votive stela from Carthage 266
212. Stela from Lilybæum 267
213. Stela of Hadrumetum 268
214. Colossal head from Athieno 270
215. The colossus of Amathus 272
216. The priest with the dove 273
217. Bas-relief of Heracles and Eurytion 274
218. Sarcophagus from Amathus 275
219. Phœnician chariot in terra-cotta 277
220. Pygmy in terra-cotta 278
221. Pygmy in terra-cotta 278
222. Terra-cotta head from sarcophagus 279
223. Astarte. Phœnician terra-cotta 279
224. Terra-cotta from Cyprus 280
225. Cypriote terra-cotta 280
226. Cypriote terra-cotta 281
227. Cypriote terra-cotta 281
228. Mask from Carthage 282
229. Terra-cotta mask from Carthage 282
230. Transparent glass vase bearing name of Sargon 285
231. Phœnician glass 287
232. Glass vase from Jerusalem 288
233. Patera from Palestrina 289
234. Dish from Dali 290
235. Handle of a bronze crater 291
236. Phœnician gold ornament 292
237. Phœnician earrings 293
238. Cylinder in the De Clercq collection 294
239. Cylinder in the British Museum 295
240. Scarabæoid seal 297
241. Scarabæoid seal 297
242. Bone cylinder, showing the earliest stage of cuneiform writing 305
243. Fragment of an Elamite tablet inscribed with arithmetical
calculations 306
244. Cylinder showing giants, lions, and bulls, glazed pottery 307
245. Brick Column. Susa 315
246. Triumphal stela of Naram-Sin 318
247. Fragment of bas-relief representing figure of Negrito type 323
248. Stela of Hammurabi, on which his code of laws is engraved 324
249. Kudurru (unfinished), Kassite period 325
250. Bronze bas-relief fragment 328
251. Bronze statuette. Temple of Shushinak 331
252. Gold and silver statuettes 332
253. Silver mask. Elamite period 333
254. Head-dress. Elamite period 334
255. Figure of a woman, ivory 335
ORIENTAL ANTIQUITIES.
CHAPTER I.
_CHALDÆAN ART._
The extensive region of Western Asia to which the Greeks gave the name
of Mesopotamia was already, at the period which lies farthest back among
the memories of mankind, the centre of a mighty civilisation rivalling
that of Egypt, and disputing with the latter the glory of having formed
the cradle of the arts in the ancient East. Babylon and Nineveh were by
turns, according to the course of political events, the intellectual
hearth at which the bold and original genius was kindled, which marks
the artistic productions of Chaldæa and Assyria, and the reflection of
which is shown in the monuments of Persia, Judæa, Phœnicia, and
Carthage, the island of Cyprus, and the Hittite races. Yet it is neither
in the capital of Chaldæa nor in that of Assyria that the oldest traces
have hitherto been found of this great civilisation, extinct now for
twenty-four centuries; it is not among the ruins of these famous cities
that we can hear, as it were, an echo of the first wailings of the
genius of plastic art, observe its groping efforts, touch with our
finger its rudest attempts. In the country, formerly so fertile, called
Lower Chaldæa, where, according to the popular tradition preserved by
Berosus, the fish-god Oannes taught men in the beginning “all that
serves to soften life,” the traveller comes, almost at every step, upon
artificial mounds known as _tells_, concealing under a veil of dust the
remains of cities which yield in point of antiquity neither to Babylon
nor Nineveh; and it is there that modern archæologists have had the good
fortune to disinter ruins far more ancient than those of the palaces of
Sargon, Assurbânipal, or Nebuchadnezzar. Though a number of tumuli
remain unexplored, and, as we may conjecture, future excavations will
afford much new matter for science, nevertheless a brilliant light has
already been thrown by numerous and important discoveries on the
oriental origin of art and on the degree of material culture reached by
the nation which founded Babel and the other Chaldæan towns of Genesis.
The ruins of Abu Habbah, identified with the two Sipparas (Sepharvaim,
that of the god Samas and that of the goddess Anunit), have yielded to
our curiosity several monuments of the highest interest; those of Abu
Shahrein (Eridu), Senkereh (Larsa), Mugheir (Ur, the native city of
Abraham), the great necropolis of Warka (Uruk, the Erech of the Bible),
are sites which have all furnished already an important harvest of
remains belonging to the most distant ages, incomplete as their
exploration has been. But the extensive and methodical excavations
undertaken from 1877 to 1881 by M. E. de Sarzec at Tello (Tell Loh) have
enriched the Louvre with a collection of monuments unique in the museums
of Europe, and enable us to give, at the present time, an exact and
precise account of the character of Chaldæan architecture and sculpture
long before Nineveh and Babylon had succeeded in imposing their
supremacy upon these regions. Tello, fifteen hours north of Mugheir,
twelve hours east of Warka, seems to represent the ancient Sirpurla.[1]
Its ruins, which cover a space of four miles and a quarter, consist of a
series of mounds at a short distance from the course of an ancient canal
dug by the hand of man, the Shatt el Hai, which starts from the
Euphrates and flows into the Tigris twelve hours below Bagdad. The
principal tell contained the substructures of a palace which was, two or
three thousand years before our era, the dwelling of a prince named,
according to Assyriologists, Gudea. Hither we must especially transport
ourselves, as well as to the mounds of Mugheir, Warka, and Abu Shahrein,
where the English explorers Loftus and Taylor made some excavations with
good results. The narrative of these excavations and the monuments which
they have yielded to our museums, will help us to determine the peculiar
features of an essentially self-made art, born spontaneously on the soil
where it flourished, and apparently in no degree borrowed from its
neighbours.
I. ARCHITECTURE.
One of the fundamental characters of Chaldæo-Assyrian architecture is
the exclusive use of bricks as the constructive material. This is
required by the very nature of the soil of Mesopotamia, in which
building-stone and wood suitable for carpenters’ work are entirely
wanting, while the clay is thick, adhesive, and peculiarly adapted for
fashioning in the mould and baking in the kiln. Accordingly, while the
modern inhabitants of the country continue to make bricks, their
manufacture is already recorded in the biblical reminiscences of the
Tower of Babel: “Go to,” say the men who would build a tower that should
reach to Heaven, “let us make brick and burn them thoroughly: and they
had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar.”[2] The prophet Nahum
informs us of the method of brick-making: “Draw thee waters,” he says,”
... go into clay, and tread the mortar, make strong the brick-kiln.”[3]
There were two kinds of bricks. The unbaked brick is a square of whitish
clay, mixed with fine straw and simply dried in the sun when it comes
out of the mould; it was generally from 8 in. to 1 ft. square by 4 in.
thick. The month in which the heat of summer first becomes intolerable
in these regions, namely the month of Sivan (May-June) was called “the
brick month,” or that in which the clay cakes were submitted to the
action of the sun. To judge by what is done in Egypt at the present day,
one workman could by himself make from one thousand to fifteen hundred
bricks a day. The baked brick was subjected to the action of fire in
proper kilns, like those of our modern brickyards; it acquired, through
the baking, a reddish colour, and was less sensible than the crude brick
to the decomposing action of damp; it was also more limited in its
dimensions, in order that the heat might penetrate the internal
substance of the mass, without danger of calcination on the surface. On
one side of every brick, baked or unbaked, the name and official titles
of the reigning prince were stamped by means of a matrix or a die used
as a seal; thus, at Tello most of the bricks were marked with the name
of Gudea, and at Babylon bricks of Nebuchadnezzar are found by hundreds
of thousands.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Brick from Tello (Louvre).]
While describing the construction of the fortifications at Babylon,
Herodotus shows the process followed by the Chaldæans in building a
wall: “As they dug the moat, they made bricks of the earth taken out of
the trench, and when they had made a certain number of bricks they baked
them in kilns. Then, using boiling bitumen as mortar, and inserting mats
of woven reeds at every thirtieth course of bricks, they built first the
borders of the moat, and next the wall itself in the same way.”[4]
Mesopotamia possesses abundant wells of bitumen, notably at Hit and at
Kalah Shergat; as for the tall reeds which still grow in abundance in
the marshes of Lower Chaldæa, their employment in building had the
effect of giving more solidity and cohesion to the courses of bricks.
For walls less carefully constructed, or for partition-walls in the
interior of the houses, a simple mortar of clay was used instead of
bitumen. In great structures, such as Birs Nimroud at Babylon, the
bricks are bound together by mortar made of lime, solid enough to stand
all tests. The ruins of Mugheir have revealed the use of a mixture of
ashes and lime, which is still employed by the natives, and called by
them _sharûr_.
The necessarily limited size of bricks baked in kilns or dried in the
sun must have helped to bring about a speedier disintegration of the
structures, and have been a serious obstacle to the erection of walls of
a height to be compared, for instance, with that of the Egyptian
temples. At certain seasons of the year in Mesopotamia the rain falls in
torrents, and, filtering through walls in bad repair, would soon open
cracks and bring about the ruin of the structure. In these lowlands
furrowed with watercourses, the crude brick of the foundations often on
this account ran the risk of returning to its condition of clayey mud
without consistency. Greek tradition relates that the Medes and
Chaldæans saw a part of the walls of Nineveh fall of themselves, when
they prolonged a blockade which forced the besieged to admit the waters
of the Tigris during many weeks into the moats beneath the ramparts. The
cuneiform inscriptions themselves, while the empire founded by
Nebuchadnezzar was flourishing, often point out temples and palaces
falling to ruin, which the kings strive without ceasing to repair or
rebuild.
The old sanctuaries of primitive Chaldæa, E-saggil, E-zida, the Temple
of the Great Light, E-parra, E-anna, E-ulbar, and others consecrated to
Sin, to Samas, to Nana, to Bel Marduk, to Nebo, are restored at great
expense by Nabonidus, the last King of Babylon, who sets himself the
task of recalling in his inscriptions the material difficulties of this
work worthy of a pious antiquarian. Let no one be surprised after this
at the striking contrast between the ruins of Mesopotamia, and those of
Egypt as we now see them. In the valley of the Nile building-stone
abounds, and the architect has only to make his choice among the various
qualities of material. Accordingly he hews out gigantic monoliths,
erects imposingly majestic pylons, rears to an aerial height forests of
pillars which seem to uphold the sky, plants in the middle of the desert
those massive Pyramids which will defy to the end of time even the most
determined of Vandals. On the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, on the
contrary, there is now nothing but the uniform plain of the desert,
broken here and there by mounds of _débris_ covered with sand; here it
may be said with truth that the very ruins have perished. Only in
thought can the archæologist reconstruct vast buildings in accordance
with the vast material buried in disorder in the mud. The use of bricks
in building has been, to a greater extent than political events, the
auxiliary of Jehovah’s wrath against Nineveh and Babylon.
If the nature of the soil forced the Mesopotamian architect to build
with bricks, the neighbourhood of rivers and canals for irrigation and
the want of outlet for the water obliged him at the same time to have
recourse to an expedient peculiar to Chaldæo-Assyrian architecture. He
had to raise the actual dwelling on an artificial terrace removed from
the level of a soil impregnated with unwholesome damp. This platform or
basement of unbaked brick on which the building was placed is met with
everywhere, not only at Nineveh and Babylon, but from the beginning in
the substructures of Mugheir, Tello, Warka, and Abu Shahrein. In the
palace of the _patesi_ Gudea, the mass forms a sort of immense pedestal
39 ft. high, and nearly 655 ft. at the base; at the present day the
sides form in relation to the plain a slope of 164 ft. Formerly the
platform was mounted by a gentle slope intended for horses and chariots,
and by one or more flights of steps which broke the outline of the
terrace. The stone staircases by which the terrace of the palaces of
Persepolis is ascended, are still in place; in Chaldæa and Assyria,
where they were built of brick, they have almost everywhere disappeared.
However, Taylor discovered two on the side of the platform of the palace
of Abu Shahrein; one has only twelve steps 2 ft. broad; but the other
was a monumental staircase of stone, 16 ft. broad, with a slope of more
than 65 ft.
The edifice which surmounts the platform at Tello is of bricks cemented
together with bitumen; its exterior walls are 5 ft. 10 in. thick, and
form a parallelogram 173 ft. long and 101 ft. broad. Like the palaces of
Warka and Mugheir, its orientation is according to the Assyrian
custom--that is to say, the angles are turned towards the cardinal
points, not the sides as in the Egyptian monuments. The two longer sides
bulge slightly towards the middle, thus describing two opposite
elliptical curves--a peculiarity which gives to the plan of the edifice
something of the appearance of
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Plan of the palace at Tello (after Heuzey).]
a barrel, or of two trapeziums joined at the base. The outer surface of
the walls is not everywhere uniform and flat; the adjacent sides of the
northern angle are ornamented by projections alternately curved and
rectilineal--a system of decoration which has also been observed at
Warka, among the ruins of the temple called Wuswas, and is found later
in the Assyrian monuments. The great north-eastern façade exhibits in
the middle, besides the outward swell of which we have spoken, a
projection 3 ft. 3 in. thick and 18 ft. long. The wings of this
projection are formed of square pilasters and half-columns 1 ft. 7 in.
in diameter, which recall the clustered pillars of our cathedrals, and
form one of the most interesting peculiarities of the primitive
architecture of Chaldæa. Taylor[5] and
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Section of pillar (after Heuzey).]
Loftus[6] had already remarked, at Abu Shahrein and Warka respectively,
pillars and half-columns of brick-work; M. de Sarzec has found the same
architectural features in one of the secondary mounds of Tello, which he
calls the _tell of pillars_,[7] and which seems to represent the ruins
of the temple of the god Nin Girsu. Two of these pillars, which measured
6 ft. in thickness, and were separated by a space of 6½ ft., still
consisted of twenty-four courses of bricks. “Each pillar,” says M. de
Sarzec, “is formed of a cluster of four round columns close together,
and built entirely of brickwork.... If one of the four round columns is
taken to pieces it is found that every alternate course is formed of a
circular brick in the centre, round which radiate eight triangular
bricks grooved at their interior angle, and rounded on the outer
surface, so that they describe by their union a complete circle. In the
next course the circle is composed, on the contrary, of eight triangular
bricks ending in a point, which are united at the centre of the column,
and of six other curved bricks which enclose the first eight. The space
between the four circles thus formed is filled up with two large bricks
hollowed out in the form of an arc of a circle, which fit exactly into
it. These curious pillars, thus ingeniously constructed, recall the
Egyptian order, modelled upon vegetable forms, which imitates four
lotus-stalks in a bouquet; they show how skilfully the Chaldæans could
dispense with the stone column. The base consisted of a square mass of
bricks forming a pedestal projecting on all sides 2 ft. 11 in. beyond
the shaft. The whole group was covered with a thick bed of plaster.”[8]
Yet, whatever skill was displayed in the manufacture of these specially
moulded bricks, round, triangular, or forming a section of a circle,
pillars of this construction could not, like the Egyptian column, show
sufficient solidity to support a heavy mass; they would soon have bent
under the burden. Accordingly they could only be employed exceptionally
and almost entirely for decoration, whether to support the roof of a
grand staircase or to shelter the _cella_ in which a deity delivered his
oracles.
The defective side of Chaldæan architecture, therefore, consists in the
lack of stone supports rising proudly into space like the Egyptian
column, and upholding on their bold heads, quite as well as the thickest
walls, the foot of the arch, the architraves, the roof, the upper
terraces or the upper stories of the building. But the proof that the
architects would have hewn columns of stone, if nature had furnished
them with the necessary material, is just this ingenious artifice by
which they succeeded in replacing them; and moreover they did not
hesitate to employ small columns of wood or metal in the construction
of small buildings, such as the shrines of their gods. A stela of King
Nabu-ablu-iddin (about B.C. 900), found at Abu Habbah, represents the
shrine of the god Samas, supported by small wooden pillars, covered with
plates of bronze overlapping each other so as to resemble the trunk of a
palm tree (see fig. 29). The base and the capital are alike; they are
composed of a double volute shaped like a lotus-flower, approaching
somewhat the Ionic capital; in short, the Chaldæans knew how to make use
of the column in minor architecture.
One doorway at least was opened in each façade of the palace of Tello,
but these openings were not on the axis of the structure, nor even
symmetrical. The principal side (the north-east) had two entrances; the
largest, nearly in the middle of the swell, had an opening 3 ft. 11 in.
broad. It was constructed at a later period--that is to say, at the time
near the Christian era when the Græco-Parthian kings of Characene
conceived the idea of restoring Tello and installing themselves there.
Like the Arab houses of our day, the outer walls of the palace of Gudea
show no other openings; there are neither windows nor lights of any
sort, admitting the air and the day, and looking out over the country or
the town.
Let us now penetrate into the interior of the Chaldæan edifice, of which
the blind and dumb walls leave in our imagination an impression of gloom
and cold uniformity. The walls seem never to have exhibited the smallest
architectural decoration; they are entirely bare, and only characterised
from time to time by depressions and projections; no traces of
mouldings, of plinths, of cornices, and of those devices to which the
architects of all countries have recourse in order to break the lines of
the walls, and to call forth effects of light and shade. It must be
supposed that the interior decoration of the palace consisted entirely
of colouring and hanging draperies. The thickness of the wall varies
from 8 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft. 7 in. All the partitions cut one another at
right angles, forming thirty-six square or rectangular chambers; the
largest measures 39 ft. 4 in. by 12 ft. 2 in., and the smallest 10 ft.
11 in. by 9 ft. 9 in. The disproportion which exists, especially in the
state saloon, between the length and breadth, the extreme thickness of
the walls, even of those which are the least important in the structure,
form essential peculiarities to which we shall draw attention later in
the Assyrian edifices. At Nineveh it has been proved that it is the
thrust of the semicircular vaulting, which roofs the chambers, that has
forced the architect to bring the parallel walls near to one another and
to give them an enormous thickness. Are we, in the absence of palpable
proof, to draw the same conclusion with regard to the palaces of old
Chaldæa? Are we authorised to assert that the vault was known three
thousand years before our era? In a word, how were the halls of Gudea’s
building covered? Was it everywhere by means of transverse rafters
supporting a floor and a terrace? or was it oftener by a bricked vault?
As far as we have read M. de Sarzec’s narrative, or M. Heuzey’s studies
on the excavations of Tello, we have found no direct answer to this
question. Perhaps the present state of the ruins or the successive
alterations to which the primitive structure has been subjected do not
allow a categorical solution of the problem to be given. However,
important indications authorise us to believe that the Chaldæans of the
time of Gudea already understood the vault and used it for roofing their
houses. In several parts even of the palace of Tello, M. de Sarzec found
small vaulted passages, 3 ft. 3 in. high and 1 ft. 11 in.[9] thick, in a
perfect state of preservation; in one of the secondary mounds he brought
to light a small vaulted drain which carried the sewage of the town far
away into the plain. Taylor found, in an underground chamber of the
necropolis at Mugheir, the most primitive kind of vault that has ever
been known--that called the corbelled vault. In this false vault the
courses of bricks ascend in parallel rows on each side until they meet
one another, every fresh course projecting perceptibly beyond that
beneath it, until the opposite courses touch and form one.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Corbelled vaulting at Mugheir (after Taylor).]
It was, then, as it seems, the Chaldæans who invented the vault;[10] the
want of timber compelled them in early times to contrive to defend
themselves at once against the heavy rains and the ardour of a torrid
sun; the creation of the vault was in their case instinctive and
spontaneous. They raised, two or three thousand years before our era,
vaults and domes like those which are built to this day by the rudest
masons at Mosoul or Bagdad. No doubt the present state of the Chaldæan
ruins and the insufficient explorations which have been undertaken among
them do not enable us to say whether these Proto-Chaldæans knew every
kind of vault, as the Assyrians did in the age of the Sargonids, or the
Babylonians at the epoch of Nebuchadnezzar; but the remarkable
perfection observed in their monumental structures, and in the very
manufacture of the bricks, are so many arguments in favour of the
inference that the palaces and houses of the Chaldæans in the time of
Gudea were surmounted, for the most part, by semicircular vaults or by
cupolas, as were later, according to Strabo,[11] the houses of the
Babylonians. The vaults supported a terrace formed of clay; this layer
of earth would be less thick over rooms roofed only with a ceiling of
palm-beams and reed-matting. The ascent was by staircases, an example of
which seems to have been found in the palace at Tello.[12]
While clearing away the material accumulated between the courts A and B,
the workmen employed by the French explorer came into contact (at the
point H) with a structure of baked brickwork, which proves that the
Chaldæans at the remotest epoch had already invented one of the most
interesting and characteristic elements of their architecture--the
_zikkurat_ or staged tower. The lower layers in the palace of Gudea
alone exist, and are composed of two solid masses in stages one above
the other. In its present condition the upper terrace is a mass 26 ft.
square, 13 ft. less on all sides than the lower stage; perhaps there
still exists a third and lower step, which has not been reached by the
soundings, which are imperfect at this point. The _zikkurat_ of Tello
was not in any case so lofty or so important a structure as those of the
Ninevite palaces or those represented by the ruins of Babil or Birs
Nimroud at Babylon. It was even much less considerable than that which
Taylor observed at Abu Shahrein, and which was equally old. These towers
always had, from the first, seven stages, each painted of a different
colour, and connected with the worship of the sun (Samas), the moon
(Sin), and the five planets of the astronomical system of the Chaldæans.
The disposition of the royal apartments showed a striking analogy with
that which we shall meet with again later in the palaces of Nineveh;
there were the convenience and comfort which we find in the palaces of
modern oriental sovereigns. To the Chaldæans again we must give the
credit of having invented that architectural arrangement which springs
from the necessities of oriental life, and is so well fitted to its
needs that for four thousand years it has never varied. There were in
the palace of Gudea three interior courts (A, B, C, fig. 2), round each
of which the rooms radiated, and from which they received air and light.
Each of these three groups had its own entrance, and communicated with
the next group only by a single passage easy to guard or to close. The
group of chambers situated in the northern angle (C) was especially
isolated and removed from the others; it was the hareem or women’s
apartments. At the eastern angle (B) were the rooms composing the
seraglio or _selamlik_--that is to say, the part of the palace
inhabited by the king and his officers; there was the saloon for
official receptions, of which we have given the dimensions. This part of
the royal dwelling communicated on one side with a state courtyard,
measuring 55 ft. 8 in. by 68 ft. 9 in., and on the other with the
outside by means of a smaller room serving as an antechamber; beside the
door opening on the façade, boxes or recesses had been arranged in which
the guards were posted. The third group of chambers, on the south-east
(A), formed the _Khan_--that is to say, the dependencies of the palace,
the kitchens, the slaves’ lodgings, and the stables.
All the rooms were paved with bricks; they very rarely led into one
another, and had an opening looking on to the court. The largest of the
doorways, that which opened into the state saloon, was of the unusual
breadth of 6 ft. 6 in.; it was probably a folding door. Under each of
the principal doors there was a great threshold of marble or alabaster,
sometimes covered with an inscription and placed on a bed of bitumen and
crushed bricks; under this concrete, finally, cylinders of precious
stone and talismanic amulets were generally found.
The leaves of the door turned on pivots, the point of which rested in a
cavity hollowed out for this purpose in a great block of diorite. M. de
Sarzec brought to the Louvre a large number of these natural blocks,
which were found buried in the pavement so as only to rise an inch or
two above the surface. On the smooth surface of each of them it is seen
that the socket, hollowed out in the form of a conical cup, has
undergone an incessant friction; round the hole an inscription,
sometimes circular, was engraved (fig. 5). To prevent the wooden pivot
of the doors from wearing out too rapidly, it was enveloped in a metal
sheath, which took the form of a funnel, and which was fixed to the wood
by means of nails. One of these bronze cups has been found at Tello,
still in place on the socket.[13]
[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Socket for pivot of door, from Tello (Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Terra-cotta cone from Tello (Louvre).]
The discoveries of Loftus and Taylor show us how the façades and the
rooms of the Chaldæan palaces were decorated. The principal façade of
the buildings at Abu Shahrein and Warka had a mural decoration of a kind
as primitive as it was singular.[14] First it was plastered with a thick
layer of clay stucco; then, before this plaster was completely dry,
cones of baked clay were buried in it, like metal nails. Only the head
of these cones is visible on the surface of the wall. While the stem is
plunged into the thick clay and sticks there unseen. To the heads of
these cones, disposed at regular distances, and acting perhaps also as
talismans, various colours are applied; they are black, red, white, or
yellow. Moreover, each head is separated from its neighbours by coloured
geometrical lines, so that it became to the eye the centre of a lozenge
or a square.
If the interior of the rooms was lined in monochrome with white stucco,
or with fresco painting, nothing of this decoration is left. But we have
in sufficiently large quantities, although always much mutilated, the
remains of another more original system of wall decoration, of which the
Chaldæans are the inventors--that is to say, enamelled bricks. By
applying a coloured paste, which the fire would vitrify, to one of the
surfaces of the bricks before baking, a glaze or enamel was produced,
closely united to the clay and immovably solid. It was again necessity
and their ungrateful climate which induced the Chaldæans to have
recourse to this ingenious method. They were in great need of a remedy
for the want of stone and a means of preventing the heavy rains from
spoiling the colours applied to the walls. They succeeded so perfectly
in this that even at the present day the brilliancy of these glazed
tiles is not affected. The colours with which they are painted are of
the simplest, and vary little; they are blue, white, black, yellow and
red. Unfortunately, those fine fragments which have been brought to our
museums are only so far interesting that they teach us the technical
methods of a manufacture which involves that of opaque glass; even those
which are least mutilated contain at the most a few floral designs or
portions of the figures of animals, and moreover these last are not
older than the epoch of Nebuchadnezzar.
The trenches dug among the massive terraces of Chaldæa have revealed
other curious details of construction. We know, for instance, what steps
were taken to prevent the sewage of the houses or the rain-water which
fell upon them from filtering through the platforms of crude brick on
which the buildings stood; a rapid disintegration would have followed.
They, therefore, planned a complete system of water-channels and
drainage. In one of the mounds at Tello, M. de Sarzec found a series of
cylindrical pipes or tubes of baked clay, fitted into one another, and
forming together a conduit for the water.[15]
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Drainage pipe at Mugheir (after Loftus).]
But the place where this method has been carried out with peculiarly
ingenious skill is the necropolis at Mugheir. The top of the platform,
in the body of which the tombs are sunk, is covered with a brick
pavement laid with special care, in which every chink is filled up with
bitumen. Under this upper crust the coffins are ranged in order, one
above the other, each one being placed separately in a small chamber. At
intervals brick tubes are met with, fitted into one another and forming
a sort of immense flue hidden in the structure. The lower extremity of
the pipes opened into a drain; the upper end, on a level with the
surface of the pavement of the terrace, was furnished with a cap pierced
with an infinite number of small holes like a skimmer. Through these the
rain-water was carried off, and this system of drainage was so
wonderfully well understood and carried out, that it has remained intact
to our own day, and, according to Loftus, the tombs have been so well
preserved that they are found perfectly dry, including the bodies and
their furniture. We shall see the Assyrians take similar precautions to
preserve the terraces of the Ninevite palaces from the percolation of
water.
The construction of a temple or palace was the occasion of a religious
ceremony analogous to that which we call the laying of the first stone.
In a hollow formed in the foundation-wall a cylinder of baked clay was
deposited (fig. 8), on which an inscription was written describing the
erection of the building and setting forth the piety and great deeds of
the prince; this cylinder was accompanied by various talismanic objects:
cones and statuettes of bronze and baked clay, cylindrical seals, votive
tablets, sometimes of silver or gold. Among the foundations of the
palace of Gudea, M. de Sarzec found four of these cavities in the wall
measuring 1 ft. 1 in. by 10 in. by 4 in.; they still contained the
cylinders and amulets deposited there.
Hiding-places of the same kind have been observed at Senkereh, at
Mugheir, and among the ruins of almost all the Chaldæan and Assyrian
buildings. The Assyrians themselves, when they wished to restore an old
ruined temple, took pains first to find out the hiding-place of the
foundation-cylinder or _timmennu_.
The last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, relates in one of the official
inscriptions of his reign how he happened to find the _timmennu_ of the
earliest builders of the temple of the Sun at Larsa. King Kurigalzu
(about B.C. 1350), and later Esarhaddon (B.C. 680-667), and
Nebuchadnezzar himself, had repaired this venerated sanctuary, and
sought vainly for the hiding-place of the talismans. “Then I, Nabonidus,
inspired by my piety towards the goddess Istar of Agade, my sovereign,
caused an excavation to be made. The gods Samas and Rammanu granted me
their constant favour, and I found the foundation-cylinder of the temple
of E-Ulbar.” It bore the name of the king Sagasaltias (about b.c. 1500).
After reading the inscription, Nabonidus restored it to its place and
himself made another cylinder to record his researches and his own
works; he deposited it in the foundation by the side of the ancient
cylinder. Modern explorers, no doubt also favoured by Samas and Rammanu,
found in a sufficiently good state of preservation the mysterious
hiding-places and the precious objects which had been piously placed
there 550 years before our era.[16]
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Foundation-cylinder from Khorsabad (Louvre).]
II. STATUES AND BAS-RELIEFS.
The discoveries of M. de Sarzec at Tello, and those of other explorers
in Chaldæa, allow us to go back almost to the origin of sculpture in
Western Asia. Our museums possess, in fact, bas-reliefs and statues
belonging to a rudimentary stage of art, the remote age of which is
still attested by the archaic inscriptions which accompany them, and
these most ancient
[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Bas-relief from Tello (Louvre).]
monuments are followed, as in the case of Egypt and Greece, by other
statues and bas-reliefs which, descending a chronological scale across
the ages, represent the graduated phases of artistic progress in Chaldæa
before the Ninevite supremacy was imposed upon this country. Among the
fragments of sculpture at Tello, that which M. Heuzey considers most
primitive, and which should be placed at the head of the productions of
oriental sculpture, is a bas-relief of greyish limestone, 10 in. broad
and 5 in. high. Four figures alone remain of the complicated scene which
decorated this stone panel. One of them is seated, with the profile
turned to the left; it is a beardless man rather than a woman, and his
face is half covered by an exaggerated eye seen from the front as in
children’s drawings. His hair consists of two long tresses falling to
his shoulders, and almost to be mistaken for the lappets of the high
tiara with which he is crowned. This tiara seems to be adorned with two
bulls’ horns. The bust is draped with a large shawl which leaves the
right shoulder bare. The hand, raised to a level with the face, looks
like a simple fork; it holds a cup, as if the scene represented a
libation, and in fact we still see a part of the deity to whom the
offering is directed. On the right a bearded man with square shoulders,
crowned with a low cap, dressed in a large robe without folds, holds in
his right hand a sort of club, with which he seems to deliver a blow
upon the head of his companion, whom he seizes by the hand. It will be
seen that the explanation of this picture is exceedingly doubtful; but
looking from the point of view of the history of art, we must recognise
in it without hesitation a fragment which comes down from remote
antiquity. The relief is low, the outline of the figures is timid and
uncertain, the details are disproportioned, as if the rude chisel which
carved them had been held in the unskilful hands of a child; the design
is full of elementary mistakes, though limestone is soft and easily
worked.
[Illustration: Fig. 10. Bas-relief from Tello (Louvre).]
A more advanced art marks the fragment of a bas-relief which M. Heuzey
called “the Eagle and Lion Tablet,” and which is dated by an inscription
mentioning the king Ur-Nina (B.C. 2500). An eagle is seen here with
outspread wings standing upon a lion. The sculpture is equally flat and
without modelling, but the graceful outline of the figures is clearly
chiselled, and with a surer hand; the extremities of the wing feathers
of the eagle are indented, the body of the lion is remarkably correct in
outline, except the head, which still remains barbarous.
A third stage of Chaldæan sculpture may be represented by the “Vulture
Stela,” on which the names of two kings have been read, one of whom is
the son of Ur-Nina. The three fragments of this limestone stela are
carved on both sides. On one of them a flock of vultures carry away
human remains in their flight--heads, hands, and arms. The human heads
denote an art which has left the gropings of childhood behind: they are
entirely shaved, the nose is always aquiline, the eye of an exaggerated
size and triangular. The vultures, more rudely drawn, are nevertheless
well characterised by their long curved beak and their claws of
exaggerated length; the markings of the feathers and wings are brought
out. On another fragment of the same stela it seems that we witness the
construction of a sepulchral tumulus.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--The Vulture Stela (Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--The Vulture Stela (Louvre).]
Men dressed in a short tunic, fringed, and tightened at the waist, carry
on their heads wicker baskets, probably containing earth to cover the
pile of corpses heaped one upon the other in symmetrical and alternate
rows. The third piece of the same monument seems to represent a scene of
carnage. As for the back of the stela, it is less ornamented; however,
on one of the fragments (fig. 13), a pole surmounted by an eagle with
outspread wings is seen, and then a large human head, incomplete but
highly interesting; it exhibits, from an anatomical point of view, the
same character as the smaller heads which we have just considered; but
its head-dress is a most curious feature,--a sort of tiara decorated
with bulls’ horns. “By an archaic conventionality,” observes M. Heuzey,
“these two horns are seen in profile, curved forwards and backwards; but
in reality they were attached to the sides of the cap.... The cap is
also surmounted by a crest of four large feathers, in the middle of
which rises a cone decorated with a quaint head also crowned by a
crescent; this little decorative head, drawn in full face, has an
exceedingly long and broad nose without any sign of a mouth, so that it
may be doubted whether it be the head of a man or of an animal.”[17] The
same tiara is found with unimportant modifications on Assyrian cylinders
and bas-reliefs, in which it forms the head-dress of deities or
pontiffs. The artistic superiority of the bas-reliefs of the Vulture
Stela over the monuments quoted previously is abundantly evident, and
already allows us a foretaste of the sober and vigorous art revealed to
us by the large statues found in the palace of Gudea.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.--The Vulture Stela (Louvre).]
It was in the most spacious court of the palace that M. de Sarzec found
assembled nearly all the Chaldæan statues which he had transported to
the museum of the Louvre. To the number of ten, they are of blackish
diorite with a bluish tinge; all are headless and bear inscriptions in
the name of Gudea or of Ur-Bau. At the moment of discovery they were
lying on the slabs of the court-yard,--on one side those which represent
upright figures, on the other the seated statues. A separate head,
appearing to belong to one of the statues, was also found in the same
courtyard. The other heads were unearthed elsewhere, and it is
impossible to say whether they had been removed from the headless
statues that we know. All these heads, though exhibiting common
characteristics, are distinguished from one another by peculiarities
which disclose the surprising skill and the fecundity of the Chaldæan
genius at this remote epoch. The man’s head (fig. 14) found in the great
courtyard is of life-size, the hair and beard completely shaven, as in
certain Egyptian statues. The eyebrows form an exaggerated projection
above enormous eyes; the skull is remarkably elongated; the mutilated
nose alone prevents us from having the complete type of the Chaldæan
race, with its hard features and thick, sensual lips.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Chaldæan head (Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Chaldæan head (Louvre).]
In a neighbouring tell M. de Sarzec found another head of the same size
and of an equally interesting type. It is less severe in aspect than the
preceding one, but carved with equal skill. The face is round and
almost smiling, the chin broad and powerful, the nose flat. The very
original head-dress is composed of a woollen cap fitting closely to the
head, and furnished with a thick border, which, turning up, forms a sort
of crown; the meshes of the woollen tissue are conventionally marked by
a number of symmetrical rolls. Even at the present day in Lower Chaldæa
the Christian priests of the Chaldæan rite envelop their heads in a
turban of black stuff, which allows of a similar arrangement.[18]
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Chaldæan statue (Louvre).]
As for the headless statues whether seated or standing, they have all
the same characteristics, exhibit an identical type, and are
incontestably of the same school of sculpture. Here is a personage
seated on a sort of stool not fully carved out; he recalls involuntarily
the Greek statues of the sacred way of the Branchidæ at Miletus, and is
in the same religious attitude. A cloak without sleeves is crossed over
his breast and thrown back over his shoulder; a handsome fringe,
delicately
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Chaldæan statue (Louvre).]
carved, falls over the whole depth in front; the hands are clasped on
the breast in the oriental posture of meditation and devotion; the bare
feet are chiselled with an attention to detail never to be surpassed in
later times, even by the Ninevite artists. On the knees of the personage
lies a tablet intended to receive an inscription or a design. In fact,
another statue like this, though of smaller proportions, holds on its
knees a similar tablet, on which the plan of a fortress with its
bastions and posterns is engraved in outline, just as an architect of
the present day would draw it. A graduated rule, that is to say, one
subdivided into fractions of unequal but proportional length, 10¾ in.
long, is carved in relief beside the plan, for which it serves as a
scale; finally, at the side lies the style with which the architect
engraved his design (see fig. 53). The standing statues answer almost to
the same description; they also are bare-footed, with the hands crossed
upon the breast but the arrangement of the long shawl, which seems to
form the only garment of all these personages, becomes more
intelligible. The Arab still drapes himself in the same fashion in his
burnoos,--that garment, at once so simple and so dignified, of the
shepherd of the desert. It is a piece of woollen stuff, the borders of
which are adorned with a fringe; it is folded in two, and wrapped round
the body obliquely, so that it covers one arm and leaves the other bare;
the upper corner, held fast by wrapping the garment once round, is
enough to keep the whole in place. We shall find this large shawl again
on the Ninevite bas-reliefs, just as we shall observe the persistence
and exaggeration of this sober and nervous style, which, as early as the
Proto-Chaldæan epoch, lays too much stress on the muscles, and lingers
with an excessive fondness over anatomical details.
The Chaldæan statues were intended to be seen all round, and not laid
flat against a wall; they are completely finished behind as well as in
front. Compared with the statues found in the temples of Cyprus, for
instance, they show us that the artist has sought to spare neither his
time nor his trouble. Amid this sobriety of treatment and this
uniformity of attitudes we feel that Chaldæan art is already far from
the hesitation and incorrectness of the first age; the chisel attacks
the hardest stone with vigour and success; the artist’s hand is
experienced and sure of itself. This archaic art is above all realistic,
and aims at a precise and even affected following of nature. The bare
shoulder is modelled and copied with surprising truth, the hands and
feet are studied even to the knuckles, the nails, the wrinkles of the
skin. At the same time the figures are thick-set and, it may be said,
far too short--a fact which contributes to increase the impression of
strength and muscular energy produced by an attentive observation of
them.
The suppleness of the Chaldæan genius at the time of Gudea appears again
in a singular monument of the De Sarzec collection, which may be taken
to be the foot of a vase rather than the base of a small column (fig.
18). Small figures in high relief, nude, and seated on the ground, lean
against a cylindrical stem. The best preserved figure has an oval face
of rare refinement, and of a type entirely foreign to that of the large
statues; with his beard cut in a point, and his head covered with a
woollen turban, he looks straight in front of him with a smiling aspect;
in all Assyrian sculpture no countenance of such originality could
perhaps be found. We do not know what is the meaning of these little
figures crouched round this sort of basin. They seem to hold the place
of the winged bulls and lions or other fantastic genii, whom Assyrian
art will soon multiply everywhere in the capacity of architectural
supports or ornaments.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Foot of Chaldæan vase (Louvre).]
In front of the palace at Tello stood a large stone basin decorated with
sculpture, some fragments of which have come down to us. This monolithic
trough, 8 ft. 2 in. long by 1 ft, 7½ in. broad, served, perhaps, to
water the camels and the flocks which halted at the gate of Gudea’s
dwelling; or rather, on account of its rich ornamentation, may we
believe that it was a basin consecrated to the service of the temple,
like the brazen sea in the Temple of Jerusalem, or the vase of Amathus?
However it may be, there were,
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--Bas-relief from Tello (after Heuzey).]
[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Bas-relief from Tello (_Rev. arch._, t. i.,
1887, p. 265).]
on its two longer surfaces, in low relief, women with arms outstretched,
holding magic vases, from which two jets of liquid gushed, on each side
of an ear of corn, a graceful symbol of the proverbial fertility of
Mesopotamia, enclosed by the sacred streams of the Tigris and Euphrates,
which were adored under the name of Naharaim, the two rivers _par
excellence_. The fragment reproduced here (fig. 19) shows us that the
Proto-Chaldæans already gave to flowing water the conventional form of
undulating lines (see also fig. 34); the woman is drawn with surprising
truth.[19] The same technical skill is remarked in a bas-relief from
Tello, which represents a bearded personage, in full face, with a
costume in which M. Heuzey has recognised the fleecy stuff called
_kaunakes_ by the Greeks. Observe the delicacy with which the Chaldæan
artists treated the costume and the beard. It may almost be said that
Mesopotamian art has no further progress to make, and that it already
shows its full proportions at the fabulously remote epoch represented by
the antiquities of Tello.
There is less modelling in the figures which adorn the upper part of the
_Caillou Michaux_; the relief upon it is dry and flat, and the drawing
affects a hieratic stiffness which would suggest an epoch of decadence,
or at least a time when Chaldæan art was arrested in its upward march.
This monument, dated in the reign of Marduk-nadin-akhi, King of Babylon
about B.C. 1120, was perhaps a stone rolled down by the waters of the
river, which was made into a sacred object; the cuneiform inscription
contains the donation of a landed estate, settled as a dowry.[20] The
curious figures, under the protection of which this contract is placed,
show us, as they do in many cylinders, that at this epoch Chaldæan
mythology was turned to profit by the artists, who knew how to unite
human to animal forms without falling into monstrosity or deformity, and
to give symbolical figures to the stars and to the invisible genii
conceived by their wild imagination. The drawing of these strange
figures is not unskilful; they inspire terror without degenerating into
the caricature and grotesque forms which mark the images of the gods
among barbarous peoples. Chaldæan art is as learned as the secrets of
its mythology are complicated. Examine, for instance, this winged goat
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--The _Caillou Michaux_ (Cabinet des Médailles).]
[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Stela of Maduk-nadin-akhi (British Museum).]
lying before an altar; the angular outlines of its horns are rendered
with truth, the muscles of its legs, perhaps badly placed anatomically,
are analysed in their smallest details, and the movement of this animal,
which is making an effort to rise, is very natural, though lacking in
life and suppleness. We shall recognise the same characters of dryness
and rudeness in the black basalt stela of the same king,
Marduk-nadin-akhi. Here, as in the _Caillou Michaux_, the relief is
flat, nothing supple, graceful, or amiable; the Chaldæan genius cannot
smile. Of those ample garments of the Oriental, those draperies with
which the Greek artist will be able to produce so powerful an effect,
the Chaldæan artist is satisfied with scratching in outline, so to
speak, the folds and fringes; he makes heavy embroidered copes of them,
like those of Catholic priests. But, in compensation, he looks at these
embroideries through a magnifying glass, and excels in analysing and
reproducing the richness of the tissue, the innumerable and complicated
forms of the design. We can henceforth foresee that the sculptor, losing
sight of synthesis so as to place his ideal exclusively in the
infinitely little, will never rid himself of the narrow formula in which
he so early imprisoned his talent. All his figures in statuary or in the
bas-reliefs, so highly finished in detail, show as a whole a hieratic
and conventional stiffness, which will unhappily descend as a heritage
to the Assyrian artist.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--Chaldæan statuette in bronze (Louvre).]
III. MINOR SCULPTURE AND THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.
The Chaldæans could work in bronze as skilfully as in stone. M. de
Sarzec has collected some bronze figures which, compared with other
monuments already secured, allow us to fix some precise landmarks in the
gradual development of the art of casting and chiselling metals in
Chaldæa. A certain statuette of a man or woman (fig. 23) may be
considered the most rudimentary attempt.[21] It has simply the shape of
a cylindrical stem, the upper part of which is furnished with two arms
and a human head like the _xoana_ of the Greeks. This head, surmounted
by small horns, is strangely barbarous; it recalls the art of the men of
the bronze age and the most rustic of the Cypriote terra-cottas.
Progress is manifest in other
[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Chaldæan statuette (Louvre).]
bronzes--separated, perhaps, from the former by several hundred years.
These are statuettes which, instead of being fixed on a base, end in a
reversed and much elongated cone, which must have served to plunge them
into a soft matter such as mortar. One represents a recumbent bull, the
other (fig. 24) a kneeling man holding in his hands the base of the
cone; he is bearded and covered with the tiara with several pairs of
horns, reserved for gods and genii. A third, lastly, is a woman carrying
a basket on her head, whose body has remarkably the appearance of an
elongated ingot. This canephoros, whose female form is only indicated by
the breasts and the width of the hips, leads us naturally to speak of
another canephoros (fig. 25), found at Afaj on the Euphrates, bearing
the name of the king Kudurmapuk (B.C. 2000). It may be seen by this
statuette that the art of working in bronze followed closely the
progress of sculpture in stone. Though the head and arms are still the
work of half-trained artists, the head is very remarkable; the arch of
the eyebrows and the eyes are treated as in the large diorite statues;
the hair is completely shaved. The same characters are observed in a
remarkable figure of a bearded priest, wearing a tiara of moderate
height, dressed in a long tunic with flounced fringes.[22] Here is a
mutilated statuette from Tello (fig. 26); it is a god standing on a
crouching lion; the head of the roaring beast has a ferocious and
natural expression, but the god’s robe is cylindrical, without amplitude
and without modelling, and the artist has tried in vain to conceal this
stiffness, which betrays his impotence, by engraving the fringes and
rosettes of the drapery. Remark that the long hairs of the lion are
treated like the woollen shag of the priest’s cap which we examined just
now (fig. 15). The animal has very small wings; his forelegs are those
of a bull, his hind-legs end in lion’s claws; the study of nature here
is perfect, but in those conventional lines which are meant to express
the swell of the muscles, we feel the tendency to exaggeration and
trivial rudeness which we remarked in the statues.
[Illustration: Fig. 25.--Canephoros of Kudurmapuk (Louvre).]
In one of the smaller mounds at Tello, M. de Sarzec discovered a
fragment of a large bronze statue. “It was,” he says, “a life-sized
bull’s horn, of bronze plating mounted on a wooden frame, but the wood
was carbonised by the action of fire.”[23][24] He had also found a
sword, which was stolen and destroyed by an Arab. But we can cite
another weapon of the same kind in the possession of Colonel Hanbury;
the blade, curved like a scythe, and triangular, bears a votive
inscription in the name of the Assyrian king Rammannirari, the son of
Pudil (B.C. 1300). The curious peculiarity of this weapon is that on one
of its surfaces a small recumbent deer is to be seen engraved, and this
is the maker’s mark: from this time onward the jealousy of craftsmen
comes into play and declares itself by the same measures as in our day.
[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Chaldæan statuette in bronze (Louvre).]
Surprising as the phenomenon is at first sight, Chaldæan pottery was far
from following the progress of sculpture. The excavations of Tello have
enriched the museum of the Louvre with five hundred terra-cotta cones,
bearing the name of Gudea and Ur-Bau, but these are only industrial
products, without artistic character, and belonging to the brick
manufacture. The necropoles of Warka and Mugheir, where we might have
expected to meet with works of art, as in the tombs of Greece or
Etruria, have only furnished coarse vases which bear witness to the
complete inferiority of pottery among the Chaldæo-Assyrians. They are
all singularly barbarous and rustic, whether they come from the archaic
tombs of Warka and Mugheir, or issue from the ruins of the palaces
where, nevertheless, the art of sculpture soars and displays itself in
its perfect development. Assyrian pottery, even that of the best epoch,
resembles, sometimes so much as to be mistaken for it, the most archaic
pottery of Greece proper and the Islands of the Ægean. But here it is
only the beginning of art, the first effort of the potter who before
long will fashion masterpieces; there, on the contrary, these vulgar
kitchen receptacles form the whole art, and represent at once the start
and the finish.
This neglect of ceramics by the Chaldæo-Assyrian artists results from
geological and climatic causes analogous to those which, as we shall
see, developed sculpture in bas-relief to the detriment of sculpture in
the round. It is especially owing to the bad quality of the clay in
Mesopotamia, which, though quite fit to be turned into square bricks,
has not a fine enough grain for the purpose of fashioning from it the
fragile frame of a broad crater, or of a slim amphora, and still less
for the purpose of lending itself to all the details of face and drapery
in graceful and slender figurines like those of Tanagra, Cyme, or
Myrina.
The cohesion of the Mesopotamian clay is so imperfect that the
Babylonian terra-cottas which have come down to us crumble almost at the
first touch, in spite of the process of baking to which they have been
subjected. It is observed that, to give some consistency to the body of
the vases and to prevent cracks, the potter has been obliged to mix the
clayey paste with chopped straw. It was impossible then to make the
sides thin, or to fashion them with art; consequently it would not have
been natural to decorate with rich and careful painting vases which
could only be heavy and coarse. It was enough to trace out geometrical
designs, bands of colour, ovals, symmetrical festoons round the neck of
the amphoræ; nothing in this sort of decoration has been borrowed from
the animal or vegetable world or from history, of which the artist
could, however, make so wonderful a use in the decoration of metal
vases, or of knicknacks in ivory, wood, or stone.
The Chaldæan terra-cotta figurines, however coarse they may be, are not
entirely divested of interest for the history of art and mythology, and
M. Heuzey has been able to appreciate them with delicacy from this point
of view.[25]
[Illustration: Fig. 27.--Chaldæan statuette in terra-cotta.]
The statuettes collected in great quantities by Loftus, at Warka, are of
solid clay, and were manufactured in a mould in one piece; the back is
flat and modelled with the hand. The clay is of a greenish grey, or
sometimes brown; it is well baked and very hard. The attitude of these
grotesque little figures offers singularly striking analogies to the
terra-cotta figurines of the first Egyptian dynasty; they are men in
long robes, with their beards cut in the Assyrian fashion, women dressed
in tight tunics and wearing falling head-dresses like the Egyptian
figurines; their hands are clasped on their breast in the religious
attitude which we know already from the Tello statues. It is, however,
very difficult to give the precise date of these figurines, which,
perhaps, for the most part, are not anterior to the time of
Nebuchadnezzar. Besides, we shall return to them later on. It is enough
for the moment to observe how little varied and meagre was the theme
worked out by the Chaldæan modellers in clay, at a time when sculpture
and the other arts were nevertheless already most flourishing.
The monuments which we have just reviewed allow us to appreciate the
degree of prosperity and perfection attained side by side with the
higher branches of art by various industries in Chaldæa, such as
tapestry, weaving, and the embroidery of stuffs. The stela of
Marduk-nadin-akhi, for example (fig. 22), bears witness to the wonderful
skill of the women of the royal hareem, or of the men employed in the
workshop, whence issued that robe with golden fringe, covered with
elegant designs and precious stones set in the web of the tissue, that
tiara adorned with feathers and wide-open daisies, those sandals, the
broad lozenge-shaped stitches of which can be counted.
M. Heuzey[26] has demonstrated that the stuff called _kaunakes_
(καυνἁκης) by the Greeks, who gave this name to a Babylonian garment,
goes back at least as far as the epoch of Gudea. The representation of
this woollen tissue shows several series of tufts arranged in rows one
above the other; the principle of the manufacture of the _kaunakes_ is
the same as that of plush or velvet, only the woollen pile is longer and
arranged less closely. This sort of material, invented by the Chaldæans,
continued to be made by the Assyrians and Persians; in this way the
Greeks came to know it, and Aristophanes speaks of it in his comedy of
the _Wasps_. Garments made of _kaunakes_ are frequently met with on the
Chaldæan monuments, especially on the cylinders, where they have been
mistaken for robes of a gathered and gauffered material. They are worn
both by women and by men, as is proved by the bearded personage whom we
reproduced above (fig. 20), and a female statuette in alabaster which
shows all the characteristics of Chaldæan art contemporary with the
monuments of Tello (fig. 28).
[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Chaldæan statuette in alabaster.]
[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Bas-relief of the tablet of the god Samas
(British Museum).]
The tablet of the god Samas (fig. 29), found at Abu-Habbah (Sepharvaim),
and dated in the reign of the Babylonian king Nabupal-iddin (B.C. 850),
shows together the two principal Chaldæan garments--that made of
kaunakes, and that of a plain material, open in front, which we shall
often meet with again in Assyria. Moreover, this bas-relief, if it is
closely studied, throws a remarkable light on the different industries
in wood, iron, stone and wearing material. The tabernacle in which the
god Samas is seated on his throne seems to be an iron niche, the upper
part being curved to imitate a shallow vault; in the front of the shrine
there are small pillars of wood or iron; the stem is covered with scales
in imitation of the trunk of the palm-tree, and made, no doubt, of
plates of metal laid over it; for base and capital there are volutes
something like the Ionic capital. The solar disk, the symbol of the god,
is supported by cords held in the hands of two genii, who seem to play a
purely ornamental and decorative part. The throne of the god, and the
table on which the radiated disk is placed, are elegantly sculptured
pieces of furniture, and reveal a civilisation which strives after the
highest refinement in its luxuries.
[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Chaldæan head in steatite (Louvre).]
As for ornaments of precious metal, none have yet been found in Chaldæa,
though we know that from the most distant ages gold and silver flowed
into Babylon and the towns of Chaldæa as well as into Egypt. The
goldsmith’s art must have been on a par with that of the seal-engraver,
the monuments of which are so numerous, as we shall now see. To these
branches of art belongs a small head in steatite, carved in the round
and forming the gem of the Tello collection; better than anything else,
this head, treated in so realistic and, at the same time, so highly
finished a manner, brings us into contact, so to speak, with the
brilliant superiority of the Chaldæan artist when he devotes himself to
these secondary forms of art, which at the present day require the use
of the magnifying-glass, and in which we are at a loss whether to admire
most the patience of the artist, the steadiness of his hand, or the
delicacy of his talent.
IV. CHALDÆAN SEAL-ENGRAVING.[27]
Though we do not yet possess more than a limited number of pieces of
sculpture and statues, those imposing witnesses of Chaldæan art in the
time of Gudea or Hammurabi, we can at least supply this want by the
numerous and varied productions of the seal-engraver’s art. The
Chaldæans invented the carving of precious stones, and no people ever
made a more constant use of those cylinders, cones and seals of every
form, on which are seen, engraved in lines fine and deep, the same
images which monumental sculpture drew upon the walls of temples and
palaces. These stones carved in intaglio, whether hæmatite, porphyry,
chalcedony, marbles or onyx of every variety, were worn round the neck,
on the finger, on the wrist, or fastened to the garment; they were at
the same time prophylactic amulets against sickness or witchcraft, and
seals with which impressions were made at the end of public or private
documents.
The most ancient of the Chaldæan cylinders reveals to our eyes the very
origin of seal-engraving, the first attempts to carve the round, ovoid,
or cylindrical gems of the necklaces of the stone age. The burin and the
puncheon, handled for the first time, do not yet trace out more than
zigzags, lozenges, straight and semicircular lines crossing one another.
Soon attempts are made to trace buildings, figures of animals, antelopes
feeding (fig. 31), or fish. The joints and swells of the quadrupeds’
bodies are represented by round holes, the limbs by simple strokes.
[Illustration: Fig. 31.--Chaldæan cylinder (De Clercq collection).]
Soon, with greater mastery over his instruments, the artist--for we may
now give him this name--will seek to reproduce on the cylinders the
human figure, and then that of the divine beings or the heroes begotten
of popular fancy, whose image is to increase the talismanic virtue of
the stone. There are monsters standing on their hind-legs, struggling
with one another, and giants killing lions or human-faced quadrupeds. M.
Menant has remarked that the figures of animals are always represented
in profile, while the human figures, with long beards, are in full face
even when the body is in profile. There are double-faced genii,
quadrupeds with a single head and two bodies. One of the most remarkable
cylinders of this primitive epoch is, without contradiction, that of the
rich De Clercq collection, the design of which we give here (fig. 32).
Men and various animals are here seen: a goat with wavy horns browsing
on the leaf of a tree; a rhinoceros, antelopes, bulls, fish, an eagle,
and some trees; two demons subduing fantastic animals, scorpions, and
palm-trees. We think of the biblical scene of Adam and Eve in the
earthly paradise surrounded by all the living beings in creation.
[Illustration: Fig. 32.--Chaldæan cylinder (De Clercq.)]
Fresh progress is marked by the appearance of inscriptions at the sides
of the figured scenes. Every possessor of a cylinder makes a point of
having his name or that of a favourite deity engraved upon it.
Accordingly the names of several _patesis_, who governed Chaldæan towns
three or four thousand years before our era, have been found upon
cylinders. The cylinder on which M. Oppert read the name of Asrinilu,
_patesi_ of Umalnaru (fig. 33), represents an episode in the Chaldæan
epic. The hero Izdubar, with curly beard and hair, seizes with each hand
by a hind-leg two lions hanging head downwards. The scene is completed
by trees, an antelope, a small human figure, a lion-headed scorpion, a
human-headed bull. What is here especially striking is the archaism of
the cuneiform signs, formed of strokes, which cross one another, but
have not yet the form of wedges, which they are to assume later, and
also the modelling and suppleness of most of the figures; the instrument
is no longer felt through the work.
[Illustration: Fig. 33.--Chaldæan cylinder (De Clercq).]
[Illustration: Fig. 34.--Cylinder of Sargani (De Clercq).]
Chaldæan seal-engraving reaches its apogee with another cylinder of the
De Clercq collection, which has the advantage of being dated, at least
relatively: it bears the name of Sargani or Sargon the First, king of
Agade, about 3800 years before our era. M. Menant mentions it as marking
an important stage in the history of art. The picture, which is very
simple, is composed of two symmetrical scenes: Izdubar, with one knee on
the ground, on the bank of a river, holds with both hands the sacred
ampulla, from which a double jet of water escapes, and at which a bull
with long striated horns comes to drink.[28] Here the artist possesses
all the secrets of his art: never, at any epoch, will he be able to
reproduce with greater delicacy and truth the powerful muscles of the
bull and the giant. And as it must certainly be admitted that monumental
sculpture advances as rapidly as seal-engraving, I do not know which
should astonish us most--the degree of perfection to which the Chaldæans
had carried the plastic arts, or the prodigiously distant epoch to which
such monuments transport us.
A cylinder in the museum at New York (fig. 35), which from the
characters of the writing seems almost contemporary with that of Sargon
the First, is executed with a still greater perfection. The play and
graceful suppleness of the muscles of the bull and the lion are rendered
with the precision which the direct study of nature brings, and with the
ease which betrays an artist who can overcome technical difficulties.
[Illustration: Fig. 35.--Chaldæan cylinder (New York Museum, after
Menant).]
If all Chaldæan cylinders could be classed chronologically and by
schools, epochs of perfection or of decadence would no doubt be
observed, and also greater activity in some artistic centres than in
others, the choice of subjects being modified from town to town and from
age to age. In the present state of our knowledge we can only hazard
conjectures with regard to this. M. Menant looks upon the cylinders
which represent the goddess Istar holding her child upon her knees and
receiving the homage of the faithful, as issuing from the workshops of
Uruk (Erech); it is the prototype of the divine mother whose worship is
to spread even into Greece. At Ur cylinders of very different types, but
of a dry execution, which is rather a mark of decadence than of
archaism, were manufactured: there are scenes of worship or initiation
into mysteries, and sacrifices, among which that of the kid is the most
frequent. On certain monuments M. Menant recognises a representation of
human sacrifices: the most marked scene of this kind shows us a
sacrificer, who, raising his right hand, brandishes a dagger over a
kneeling child, whom he seems to prepare to slay, in the presence of a
pontiff and of the statue of the god. One of the commonest figures on
Chaldæan cylinders is that of the goddess Istar, sometimes decked with
rich ornaments, sometimes entirely naked, in full face, with her hands
clasping her breasts: this last type, profusely reproduced by the
modellers in clay, was perpetuated all over the East up to the time of
the Greek and Roman supremacies.