_INDUSTRIAL ARTS._
§ I. CERAMICS.
The causes which impeded the development of pottery in primitive Chaldæa
had the same unhappy influence on Assyrian pottery and on Chaldæan
pottery in the age of Nebuchadnezzar. Though a few terra-cottas are
fashioned with a certain elegance and present graceful features, their
walls are always extremely thick, on account of the friable nature of
the clay, and the types created by the modeller are totally wanting in
variety. Botta found under the pavement of the courtyards at Khorsabad
little cavities containing, besides cylinders and other amulets,
terra-cotta statuettes of talismanic character, intended to conjure and
drive away the infernal powers. “These statuettes,” says M. Heuzey, “are
designed with a remarkably sure hand, in grey clay, which is almost
crude, and pitted with small holes, as if it had been mixed with chopped
straw or hay, according to the process followed in the manufacture of
bricks.”[43] The example which we reproduce represents the hero Izdubar,
so often drawn upon the bas-reliefs and cylinders as he is here, that
is to say, with curled beard and long hair in ringlets. His countenance
is expressive, and shows signs of careful work. The same praise must be
given to the head of a fantastic animal, also found at Khorsabad (fig.
91); this head, in whitish clay, is covered with a glaze of a fine
bluish green, resembling, and perhaps imitated from, Egyptian pottery; a
similar figure of a monster roaring at winged genii appears among the
bronze monuments; in both cases the art is realistic, and has rendered
ugliness and ferocity with all the force of ideal expression.
[Illustration: Fig. 90.--Izdubar. Terra-cotta (Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 91--Head of a monster. Terra-cotta (Louvre).]
The terra-cotta vases discovered during the excavations in Assyria no
doubt denote a real progress when compared with Chaldæan ceramics; but
they are still nothing but heavy amphoræ, with or without handles, with
a more or less elongated neck and a more or less broadened body, and
they could never be compared to any but the most archaic productions of
Greece. They are sometimes decorated with brown or yellowish paintings,
or with designs in relief, representing floral scrolls, geometrical
lines or diapers, but never with anything that reflects the beauty of
the Ninevite sculptures. Among them all there are no vases which formed
part of the luxuries of a refined civilisation, as the Greek vases did;
neither in Assyria nor in Chaldæa have any clay vessels been discovered
except vulgar jars and pots. This is, perhaps, the place to notice
fragments of two small circular vases of steatite or soapstone
discovered at Nimroud and Sherif Khan, near Kouyunjik. They are probably
of the age of the Sargonids, and are dedicated to certain deities. The
thin walls give these vessels almost the appearance of porcelain, of
which Layard supposed them to be, and the figures carved upon them in
relief, give them an artistic character which the Assyrians could never
impart to their pottery. One of the fragments is engraved by Layard.[44]
[Illustration: Fig. 92.--Tablet with figure of boar in relief (British
Museum).]
At Babylon, whither the seat of government was transferred after the
fall of Nineveh, the modellers seem to have made a great artistic
effort. Mr. Rassam obtained from the ruins of the southern capital a
small terra-cotta tablet, 1¾ in. by 2¾ in., on which the figure of a
boar, such as lived among the reeds and marshes of Mesopotamia, is
modelled in relief. The forms of the animal are here reproduced with all
the excellence of the later Assyrian artists, by Azaru, of the tribe
Esaggilai (doubtless connected with the great Chaldæan Temple), whose
name inscribed on the back adds to the interest of the little work.
Solid figurines have
[Illustration: Fig. 93.--The Divine Mother. Terra-cotta (Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 94.--Istar. Terra-cotta (Louvre).]
been found in Chaldæa, like those in Assyria, moulded on one side only
in greenish clay, forming remarkable examples of Babylonian art. The
chronological position of these figurines is, however, difficult to
determine, but they seem to us to be, perhaps, contemporary with
Nebuchadnezzar. They represent priests or gods, standing upright in
their long robes, with their hands clasped in the attitude of respect;
women dressed in fringed garments, carrying a vase upon their breast;
nude goddesses, standing upright, and suckling the divine child. One of
these last (fig. 93) is, says M. Heuzey, “A purely Asiatic type, the
rather full forms of which are modelled with charming truth and rare
delicacy; I do not fear to describe it as a little wonder of its
kind.”[45] Another and commoner example is the goddess Istar, nude and
holding her hands against her breasts, adorned with bracelets and
necklaces, with her hair elaborately dressed: this naturalism and
immodest freedom in the representation of Istar form a contrast with the
ordinary habit of Chaldæo-Assyrian art. This series of figurines is
chronologically terminated by the statuettes of the Achæmenid or
Parthian epoch, modelled of the same clay, but showing all the
characteristics of decadence. The forms are less carefully studied;
sometimes Istar, the goddess of Erech, is represented in these figurines
of terra-cotta or alabaster, half-reclining on a banqueting couch, like
that described by Herodotus in the temple of Bel-Marduk at Babylon; her
head is often crowned with the crescent, her proper symbol, in the
centre of which a garnet or other sparkling stone is set. In short,
these coarse images of the voluptuous goddess condemn at once the art
and the manners of the people who produced them.
§ II. METALS.
The art of working in metals, which was already so highly developed
among the primitive Chaldæans, reached its apogee under the Sargonids.
We find statuettes, bas-reliefs in repoussé, vases and utensils of every
sort, weapons and ornaments, so that there is no use of the precious
metals, or of iron and bronze, to which they were not put by the
industry of Ninevite craftsmen. Among the ruins of Sargon’s palace,
objects of iron and bronze, such as hooks, rings, chains, pickaxes,
hammers, plough-shares, weapons, fragments of chariots, and tools of all
sorts, were picked up. From the strictly artistic point of view, we
have already described the wooden pillars plated with overlapping scales
of bronze, so as to imitate the bark of the palm tree.
[Illustration: Fig. 95.--Gates of Balawat. Restoration.]
The most important of the Assyrian monuments in bronze hitherto
discovered is the famous decoration of the gates of the palace of
Shalmaneser III. (857-822), at Balawat. It consists of metal bands, 9
in. broad, decorated in repoussé with reliefs representing the campaigns
of Shalmaneser. They were fixed horizontally, at intervals, on wooden
gates, which may have been quite 7 or 8 yards high; the scenes are
reproduced upon them with the same ease and the same details as on the
limestone slabs: battles, landscapes, trees, rivers and mountains are to
be seen; the figures, however, are treated more roughly, and the muscles
are marked with less precision and delicacy. Each band (fig. 96) is
divided into two compartments by a row of rosettes, imitating the heads
of nails. “Taking them all in all,” says M. Perrot, “these bronze
reliefs are among the works which do most honour to Assyrian art.”[46]
[Illustration: Fig. 96.--Fragment of metal band of Balawat gates
(British Museum).]
The perfection of the work in certain Assyrian bronze vessels makes
these monuments real masterpieces. Pateræ found at Nineveh, sometimes
incrusted with gold and silver, present on their inner surface, in an
exquisite style, concentric zones of rosettes and symmetrical festoons
of figures engraved in outline or standing out in relief (fig. 97).
Symbols are encountered
[Illustration: Fig. 97.--Bronze dish, Nimroud (British Museum).]
[Illustration: Fig. 98.--Assyrian archers. (Bas-relief in British
Museum.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 99.--Various forms of the Assyrian helmet.]
which have evidently been borrowed from Egypt, such as the winged
scarabæus and the figures of Hathor and Bes. Similar in form, in the
metal of which they are composed, in the gold and silver incrustations,
and even in the choice of subjects, to the Phœnician vessels from
Cyprus (figs. 233 and 234), the pateræ of Nineveh are not, for the most
part, of Assyrian manufacture; they were brought thither by Phœnician
commerce, and were probably fashioned in the workshops of Tyre or Sidon,
where the artistic traditions of Egypt and Assyria were united. The
glass found among the Assyrian ruins was also probably of Phœnician
manufacture, as it will be seen in the chapter on Phœnician art. Much
more exclusively Assyrian are the bronze seals which the bas-reliefs
show us in the hands of priests or genii. We find among them lions’
heads, flowers and elegant rosettes on the bottom, on the border, or at
the point at which the handles are attached.
[Illustration: Fig. 100.--Bronze lion (Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 101.--Bronze siren.]
The equipment of an Assyrian soldier consists of a bow and arrows, a
lance or javelin, a club, a sword, a dagger, a helmet, a coat of mail,
and a buckler; the battering-rams which sap the walls had a metal
carapace and head. Might it not be imagined that these Assyrian
soldiers, wearing the conical helmet, and entirely covered, with the
exception
[Illustration: Fig. 102.--Bronze siren.]
[Illustration: Fig. 103.--The demon of the South-west wind. Bronze
(Louvre).]
of their arms, nose and eyes, with a long coat of iron mail, were
mediæval knights? The shape of the Assyrian helmet varies according to
the time, and perhaps also according to military rank. There is the
helmet formed of a conical basin, without ornament, the helmet provided
with cheek-pieces, as among the Greeks, the helmet decorated with an
elegant crest bearing an aigrette of feathers or of horsehair. But the
essential form is always that of a hemispherical basin, covering the
head, but leaving the face bare. A votive shield, preserved at the
British Museum, has, like those represented in the bas-reliefs, the form
of a large round disk, convex in its central part; this metal disk, 34
in. in diameter, is decorated like the pateræ with a central rosette and
several concentric zones containing lions and bulls in relief.
The preceding examples prove the existence of a manufacture of metals
which had reached a high degree of perfection, and was in possession of
all the technical methods. Accordingly, we believe that the scanty
number of statues or statuettes in bronze of human beings or of Assyrian
deities must be attributed to an unfortunate chance. They must have been
produced in large numbers, as in ancient Chaldæa, and a good proof of
this is the large cow’s head disinterred near Bagdad and preserved at
the British Museum[47]; another example is the statuette of a lion found
at Khorsabad (fig. 100); this has, doubtless, serious defects, such as a
singular disproportion between the head and the body, between the fore
legs and the hind legs; but what truth of expression in the muzzle with
its gaping mouth, and in those powerful claws!
[Illustration: Fig. 104.--Bronze plaque. De Clercq collection.]
A statuette in M. de Vogüé’s collection, found at Van, represents a sort
of siren which seems to have acted as an ornament attached to a vessel
or a piece of furniture (figs. 101 and 102). The oriental appearance of
the head, the hair in ringlets, the large eyes, the bracelets upon the
outstretched arms behind the wings, and the artistically marked
feathers, make of this little monument one of the most precious relics
of the art of working in bronze among the Assyrians. A similar figure is
preserved in the British Museum, and in this instance the loose ring by
which the vessel was held is still in place.
[Illustration: Fig. 105.--Bronze plaque. De Clercq collection (other
side).]
The Louvre possesses the figure of a monster with four wings which
represents the demon of the south-west wind, as the cuneiform
inscription upon it teaches us (fig. 103). Nothing can be imagined more
hideous and more expressive than the head with its glaring eyes, roaring
throat, horned brows, crooked fingers and fleshless body with lion’s
claws. It leads us naturally to cite a bronze plaque from the collection
of M. de Clercq, in which M. Clermont-Ganneau has recognised a
representation of the Assyrian hell. One
[Illustration: Fig. 106.--Standard in a bas-relief from Khorsabad
(Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 107.--Foot of a piece of furniture. De Vogüé
collection.]
side (fig. 104) is occupied by a monster with four wings and eagle’s
claws, looking over the top of the plaque; on the other side (fig. 105)
the monster’s head is seen, and under it scenes arranged in four rows:
first the symbolical figures of the stars, then a procession of seven
creatures dressed in long robes and having the heads of various animals:
these are the heavenly genii called Igigis. Below this we witness a
funeral scene: two creatures with human bodies combined with the head
and body of a fish, like the god Oannes, stand by a bed on which a
corpse is laid out, swathed in its mummy-clothes; near them stand two
monsters like the demons which appear in a battle scene belonging to
the campaigns of Assur-nasir-pal, and, of larger size, on the walls of
Assurbanipal’s palace; they face one another in the same attitude here
as there, and seem to be disputing or quarrelling. The lowest row shows
a stream of water in which are fish. In a boat is a kneeling horse; on
his back is a monster holding serpents in his hands; lion-cubs are
springing forwards towards him; another monster stands on the brink of
the water; in the background are trees and fragments of different kinds,
looking like the remains of a banquet. There is some artistic merit in
several portions of this curious scene. The monster on the other side is
boldly designed, and his form is vigorous and supple.
In the chiselling of a royal standard (fig. 106), the artist really
attained to the highest technical skill: the bulls’ heads and the lions’
heads arranged along the pole are masterpieces of taste, and might be
proposed as models at the present day. In the palaces fragments of
thrones have been found formed of bronze plating. One of the most
remarkable pieces, found at Van, belongs to M. de Vogüé (fig. 107); the
deep sculpture in the claws of the crouching lion reminds the spectator
of a bronze statuette from Tello (fig. 26).
§ III. WOOD AND IVORY.
No people of antiquity carried as far as the Chaldæo-Assyrians their
taste for elegant furniture, which is as delicately sculptured among
them as the most precious bronze utensils. We shall never know,
doubtless, except through the testimony of literature, what that carved
wood-work was, and what those ceilings of cedar were, to which the
prophets of Israel allude with such jealous enthusiasm, and which the
kings boast of having had executed, speaking to us in their inscriptions
of palaces in which “the gates are of ebony, with fittings of silver
plating and polished iron, the pillars of cypress-wood, the posts of
cedar carved by skilful craftsmen, and coated with plates of wrought
metal.” But the bas-reliefs place before our eyes wooden furniture in
which the superiority of the Assyrian genius is conspicuous, and which
reveal to us a people gorged with wealth, among whom luxury in furniture
holds an important place. The animal and vegetable kingdoms are turned
to profit by the craftsmen with astonishing skill in the decoration of
the tables, stools, beds, tripods, umbrellas and fly-flaps. At every
opportunity lions’ heads and claws, goats, panthers and bulls occur,
fancifully arranged, but always in perfect harmony and excellent taste;
flowers, festoons, undulating and interlacing lines, rosettes and
geometrical figures are all found in endless variety and in perfect
equilibrium; nowhere has such work been better done, neither in Egypt
nor in Greece.
The bas-relief (fig. 77), which represents Assurbanipal drinking with
one of his wives, shows us some of the furniture of a royal palace. The
prince reclines upon a divan, the queen sitting upon a chair, with a
stool under her feet; before them is a table. Are not the sculptured
couch, the table with its feet carved in the form of lions’ claws, and
the chair, lavishly decorated with sculpture and ivory ornaments, as
rich and as skilful in workmanship as any such objects to be found in
European drawing-rooms? Another bas-relief (fig. 108) shows a tent
erected in the open plain during a military expedition; it is simply the
stables, as it seems. Notice the elegance of the wooden pillars, the
shafts of which are decorated with geometrical designs, and terminate in
floral ornaments on which slender kids, ready to spring, are poised.
Wood formed the framework of these chairs, coffers, and shrines, but
disappeared more or less completely under the bronze or gold plating,
the incrustations of ivory, coloured glass, lapis lazuli, and brilliant
stones, or, lastly, the embroidered rugs and the carpets. In the camp
before Lachish, Sennacherib sits upon a throne, the sides of which are
composed of three rows of figures, raising their arms to sustain the
bars of the chair.
[Illustration: Fig. 108.--Tent serving as the royal stable (Bas-relief
in British Museum).]
[Illustration: Fig. 109.--Sennacherib’s throne. Bas-relief (British
Museum.)]
Wood was the essential part of the structure of the chariots, the wheels
of which have spokes turned in the lathe, and the body of which is of
woven wicker-work, while the pole, describing a graceful curve, ends in
an elegant horse’s head or in the head of a deer, a bull, a lion or a
swan. The very weapons, lances, daggers and bows have shafts, hilts, and
handles carved into figures of animals, crouching, sleeping, springing
or folded in two, similar to the figures drawn and carved by the
mediæval decorators.
[Illustration: Fig. 110.--Assyrian chariot (from a bas-relief).]
These objects, however, are not always of wood; oftenest, perhaps, they
are of bone or ivory, as it is proved by the ivory tablets and the
toilette articles, such as combs and pins, which the excavations have
brought to light.[48]
[Illustration: Fig. 111.--Ivory plaque (British Museum).]
But side by side with these knick-knacks in the Ninevite style, there
are others which, though found in Mesopotamia, seem to be of foreign
origin. Witness to this is borne by an ivory plaque found at Nimroud,
which was certainly part of the incrustation of a piece of furniture
(fig. 111). The relief is clear, the work highly finished; the figure,
which holds in its hand a large lotus-stalk, has woolly hair like an
Ethiopian, and bears the Egyptian Uræus on its brow. Another tablet
from Nimroud represents the head of a woman, whose hair is arranged in
Egyptian fashion. She is enclosed in a frame which resembles a window
with a balustrade, the capitals of which, original in style, seem to
have been coloured. An ivory statuette of the goddess Istar, found at
Nimroud, has the same heavy coiffure in successive rolls, and resting
upon the shoulders; here we have again the Egyptian style with an
exaggerated naturalism proper only to the Phœnicians. We may conclude
that these ivories were fashioned, like the bronze dishes, in the
workshops of Phœnicia. Thence caravans transported all these small
objects as far as Nineveh; we know that the merchants of Tyre and Sidon
had numerous stores in the very heart of Mesopotamia. Phœnician
commerce was the great vehicle by which Egyptian and Assyrian art was
carried abroad.
§ IV. LEATHER AND STUFFS.
The art of embroidery and tapestry, which we have seen so highly
developed in primitive Chaldæa, and a most remarkable example of which
was furnished us in the costume of Marduk-nadin-akhi, did not cease to
flourish during the whole existence of the Ninevite empire, and was more
prosperous than ever at Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Can robes
of greater richness be imagined than these worn by Assur-nasir-pal,
Sargon, Sennacherib, or Assurbanipal? Are there, even at the present
day, any embroideries or tapestries of more wonderful delicacy or in
more exquisite taste? Assyrian stuffs are celebrated throughout the
ancient
[Illustration: Fig. 112.--Assur-nasir-pal[49] offering a libation
(Bas-relief in the British Museum).]
world for the beauty of their varied tints, and above all for the
marvellous embroideries which the chisel of the Assyrian sculptor has so
delicately reproduced? All this decoration, in which we find figures in
adoration before the sacred tree or the symbol of the supreme deity,
genii struggling with lions, fights between animals, the mystical
pinecone, flowers, and a hundred other varied designs elegantly and
symmetrically arranged, reveals extraordinary manual skill. History,
mythology, botany, and real or fanciful zoology are turned to profit
with inimitable perfection, and we are forced to take everything
literally that has been related by ancient authors about the tapestries
which adorned the palace-chambers. In the banqueting-hall of Ahasuerus,
king of Persia, there were, according to the
[Illustration: Fig. 113.--Richly caparisoned horse and rider (Bas-relief
in the Louvre).]
Book of Esther, white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of
fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble. In the
description of a picture portraying the adventures of Themistocles,
Philostratus the Elder also speaks of the various subjects embroidered
by the Babylonians upon their stuffs, and of the golden threads
skilfully mingled with the tissue; we have seen that the Babylonian
stuff called _kaunakes_, and characterised by rows of long fringes, was
still celebrated among the Persians and the Greeks. Pliny, the natural
historian, claims for the tapestry-weavers of Babylon the honour of
having been superior to all their rivals in other countries in the art
of harmonising colours and representing figures. “In fact,” says M. E.
Müntz, “the words, Babylonian tapestries,--_Babylonica peristromata_,
recur constantly in the Latin poets, who are never satisfied with
praising them. Roman connoisseurs bought such hangings for their weight
in gold. Metellus Scipio spent 800,000 sesterces in _triclinaria
Babylonica_. Nero paid, for the same stuffs, an even higher price:
4,000,000 sesterces.”[50]
Thus the East, which remains to our days the classical land of
embroidery and tapestry, has only perpetuated the traditions bequeathed
to her by Nineveh and Babylon when they ceased to exist.
The industries of saddle-making and working in leather, which are still
so flourishing among the Turks, Persians, and Arabs, can be traced back,
according to tradition, to the Assyrians who raised them to the dignity
of an art. Notice the harness of the king’s chariot horses. The leather
straps, embroidered with red and yellow threads, form variegated
trimmings. Sometimes a leather band, crossing the chest and fastened on
the withers, is decorated with a double row of tassels, and finished off
by bells. Another embroidered band descends from the top of the head,
and sustains under the jaw a tassel formed of three tufts, one above the
other, also adorned with bells. Above the head rises a superb plume with
a triple crest. The head-piece is adorned with rosettes, and above the
horse’s eyes there is a band formed of overlapping scales, joined to the
head-stall by a double tassel. Everything, including even the strap
which holds the bit, and that passed under the nostrils, is relieved by
rosettes and brilliant trimmings, and probably also by metal disks,
perhaps of gold and silver.
§ V. ORNAMENTS AND CYLINDRICAL SEALS.
The excavations in Chaldæa and Assyria have, down to this day, scarcely
furnished us with any ornaments of gold or silver. However, we know from
the inscriptions that these metals occupied the first rank, and were
abundantly employed in the ornaments of the Ninevites and Babylonians.
The tombs of primitive Chaldæa contained bronze bracelets and ear-rings
of the simplest form. These are circular rings, sometimes thinner at the
two ends, which are both pointed. At Khorsabad Botta found necklaces
formed of precious stones pierced with holes, which were spheroidal in
form or elongated like olives; these balls of marble, jasper,
chalcedony, amethyst, lapis lazuli, were sometimes mixed with cylinders
or other seals of conical shape. At Kouyunjik a necklace was discovered,
formed of little golden balls alternating with little cylinders of the
same metal. A bronze bracelet at the Louvre has lions’ heads at the two
extremities.
[Illustration: Fig. 114.--Assyrian deities carried in procession.
Bas-relief (after Layard).]
But we learn more from the bas-reliefs about the taste for ornament
among the Assyrians, and about the goldsmiths’ work at Nineveh and
Babylon. Kings and genii wear necklaces, ear-rings, diadems, and
bracelets. Their forms are always elegant and present great variety. The
diadems are circles, perhaps of gold, broader in the middle, and
generally decorated with a rosette, in the centre of which a glittering
gem was doubtless conspicuous. Deities carried in procession wear high
tiaras also surmounted by a rosette, the essential element of which is a
precious stone. Bracelets are worn above the elbow and on the fore-arm;
these are circular disks, sometimes closed and decorated with rosettes,
at other times ending in two lions’, deers’, rams’, or serpents’ heads;
some are twisted two or three times round the arm. Among the ornaments
which hang from the necklace, the cross, of that form which we call the
Maltese cross, must be cited; the same symbol, which reminds us of the
Egyptian _crux ansata_, is also found in the ear-rings (fig. 63).
As for seal-engraving, its abundant examples do not surpass in artistic
merit the Chaldæan work which we have already described. Assyrian
cylinders, that is to say, those which were especially manufactured at
Nineveh, are distinguished from those of Babylon and Chaldæa by a drier
and more commercial style of work.[51] Inscriptions are rarer, and
engraved in Ninevite characters: the myths represented by the engravers
are the same as at Babylon, but the figures have a more modern
appearance: for instance, the winged bulls with human heads, and the
genii with eagle’s beaks and four wings, are copied from the bas-reliefs
in the palaces of Khorsabad, Nimroud and Kouyunjik. The Assyrian
cylinders of the archaic epoch present the technical characteristics
that we have already indicated in Chaldæa: the joints of the limbs are
rendered by means of a drill producing small hemispherical holes, and
the rest of the body is executed with another instrument which hollowed
out parallel lines. These peculiarities are clearly distinguished on a
fine cylinder which we give after M. Menant (fig. 115): it represents
three figures who seem to sacrifice upon a tripod to the sun, the moon,
and the seven planets.
[Illustration: Fig. 115.--Archaic Assyrian cylinder (after Menant).]
[Illustration: Fig. 116.--Assyrian cylinder. De Clercq collection (after
Menant).]
The cylinders of the Sargonid epoch prove a progress parallel to that of
Chaldæan glyptics; the traces left by the action of the saw and the
drill have disappeared to make room for the modelling of the figures,
which sometimes reach a degree of suppleness true to nature. We will
cite as examples a cylinder of the De Clercq collection, representing
two genii in adoration before the sacred tree (fig. 116), and a cylinder
in the British Museum (fig. 117) on which the god Rammanu is seen, armed
with a bow and arrows, standing upon a crouching lion and receiving the
homage of a pontiff. The two cylinders are very fine: on the first,
extreme exactness is to be noticed in the details of the costume, and
great delicacy in the features of the two genii. On the second, on the
contrary, the forms have a freer and easier pose, and the scene has more
life; the palm is remarkable for truth; the ibexes, above all, are
absolutely pure in design; the modelling of their thighs and flanks
reminds us of the lions on the Chaldæan cylinder which we admired before
(see fig. 35); it also reminds us of the famous lioness among the
sculptures of Assurbanipal’s palace (fig. 81), which is probably
contemporary with it. Assyrian glyptics has produced nothing more highly
finished; like sculpture on a larger scale, it excels in the rendering
of animal forms.
[Illustration: Fig. 117.--Assyrian cylinder. De Clercq collection (after
Menant).]
[Illustration: Fig. 118.--Assyrian cylinder. De Clercq collection (after
Menant).]