BAS-RELIEFS
The bas-relief was the favourite, and undoubtedly the most successful expression of the artistic genius of both Babylonians and Assyrians from the earliest to the latest times. Their first efforts in this direction were crude indeed, but this is a fault incidental to the beginnings of any art. One of the most ancient bas-reliefs yielded by Babylonian excavations is reproduced in Fig. [25], A. We have here a representation of a man apparently engaged in some act of worship, or in the performance of some unknown ceremony. His large, almond-shaped eyes are portrayed full face, his aquiline nose stands forth in an altogether aggressive fashion, his long hair hangs down his back, while a fillet surrounds his head, from which two long feathers emanate; these feathers sometimes adorn the heads of Asiatic princes represented on early Egyptian monuments. His otherwise nude bust is to some extent relieved by the presence of a somewhat lengthy beard, and his clothing consists in the characteristically Sumerian square shawl arranged skirt-wise. With his left hand he grasps one of the three sacred poles before which he stands: the poles are surmounted by a knob, more or less identical in shape with the early Babylonian mace-heads. The inscription, written in very archaic line characters, which still preserve in part, traces of their pictorial origin, contains a list of offerings and also a mention of the god Nin-girsu and of his temple E-ninnû. This most ancient sculpture was found by De Sarzec on the site of the earliest buildings at Tellô. It is made of white limestone and is about seven inches in height.
Two of the fragments of another very archaic bas-relief found in the same neighbourhood are seen in Figs. [25], B, C. In all the faces portrayed in these two fragments we observe the same prominent nose, and the same large, lozenge-shaped eyes already alluded to, but in other respects they differ from the type illustrated in Fig. [25], A. The most striking and probably the most consequential individual in the present group occupies the left end of Fig. [25], B. His importance is evidenced by the excessive length of his long hair, and by the hooked sceptre which he carries on his shoulder, probably in token of his royal attributes. In his left hand he holds what appears to be a fillet, which he is presenting to the trusty warrior who stands before him, lance in hand. On the other fragment (Fig. [25], C) we have two other types represented, one characterized by the luxuriancy of his hair and the profusion of his beard, the other being distinguished by the complete absence of hair from both the head and face. In both cases they are clad after the same fashion, their one and only garment consisting in a short skirt, the lower portion of which is represented in a most archaic fashion by a series of tongue-shaped strips, and the upper portions of which are inscribed in archaic line characters, while their hands are clasped across their breast in an attitude of submissive if not subservient obedience. The why and the wherefore of the absence of hair from the head and face of one of these figures is of course unknown, but M. Heuzey suggests with some plausibility that the figure is thus represented in virtue of his sacerdotal character. Both of these fragments once formed part of a round socket which probably served to support a votive stave or weapon; they are made of hard limestone, and were found amid the débris of a building belonging to the time before Ur-Ninâ.
In Fig. [25], F, we have a reproduction of an early limestone votive tablet from Nippur,[90] in the upper register of which a naked and clean-shaven worshipper is offering a libation to a seated and bearded god, the whole being represented in duplicate. Below, a goat and a sheep are followed by two men, one of whom bears a vessel on his head and the other holds a stick in his right hand, while both are clad in the ordinary Sumerian skirt. Another interesting votive-tablet (cf. Fig. [25], E) from Nippur shows us a similar scene—a naked worshipper standing before a seated god is offering a libation, the god being reversed on the left, but the unique interest attaching to this fragment is in the ploughing-scene represented below; we see a man ploughing with a horned animal, probably a gazelle or an antelope, which appears to indicate that this archaic fragment dates from a period when neither the ox nor the ass were used as beasts of labour, while a third[91] bas-relief (cf. Fig. [25], D), also religious in character and emanating from the same site shows a seated goddess accompanied by a bird, while a burning altar, and a lighted candlestick stand before her. She holds a pointed cup in her right hand and behind her we see a long-bearded priest leading a clean-shaven worshipper who carries a goat in his right arm, into the presence of the goddess.
Fig. 26.—Musée du Louvre. (Cat. pp. 81, 96; Déc. en Chald., Pl. 1 tert, 2 bis.)
The extraordinary popularity of what may be termed the bas-relief mode of sculpture among the Sumerians is strikingly illustrated by its employment in the decoration of mace-heads and other objects; in Fig. [26], B we have a large mace-head made of hard white limestone, seven and a half inches in height, and having a diameter of little over six inches. The scheme of decoration takes the form of a procession of lions, six in number, all following in the same direction, and each burying his teeth in the back of the lion going before. The bodies of the lions are portrayed side-wise, but the colossal-eyed heads are seen full face. These lions are, despite their crudeness, already surprisingly true to life; the top of the mace-head (A) is not left unadorned, but has been made good use of by the sculptor who has carved the heraldic lion-headed eagle of Lagash upon its smooth surface. It bears an inscription of Mesilim, king of Kish, who is known from another inscription to have flourished and ruled over the country some time before the foundation of the first dynasty of Lagash by Ur-Ninâ, in the neighbourhood of whose building this mace-head was actually found, though at a slightly lower level.
PLATE XII
Musée du Louvre: Déc. en Chald., Pl. 3, ii.
Portion of the Vulture-Stele of Eannatum, Patesi of Lagash
We now come to the time of Ur-Ninâ, the most interesting of whose monuments, at least from the pictorial point of view, is the sculpture reproduced in Fig. [26]. This relief, which is divided into two registers, introduces us to Ur-Ninâ, his family and his courtiers. The king himself is of colossal size, indicative doubtless of his colossal power; in the upper register he is portrayed standing, his left hand on his nude bust as in the lower register, while with his right hand he is balancing a basket, which, as M. Heuzey has pointed out, probably contains the clay and foundation brick for the temple of Nin-girsu, rather than offerings for the god. This view is further supported by the inscription written alongside the figure of the basket carrier, the first line of which contains a mention of the temple of Nin-girsu. Ur-Ninâ is thus represented as the servant of his god, and the honour attaching to the menial task in which he is engaged may be judged by the fact that he alone is apparently accounted worthy, his sons and followers merely standing by, their hands clasped in a reverential attitude. Below, the king is seen in a more comfortable and homely pose, though here too he would seem to be attending to his religious duties; he is raising his cup either to drink to the honour of the gods, or else to offer a libation, but in either case the task must have been less arduous and possibly more pleasant than that which occupies him in the upper register. With one exception all the heads and faces are devoid of hair, and all are clad in the Sumerian short woollen skirt, though the king’s skirt is more flounced than those of his courtiers, as becomes royalty. The type of vesture met with here, as well as on the Vulture Stele and on so many of the early Sumerian sculptures, was called “Kaunakes.” The figure immediately in front of the standing king in the upper register is distinguished from the others not only by being taller, and wearing a skirt resembling the king’s garment, but also by having long hair. Opinion differs as to whether we are to see in this figure the daughter of the king, or whether, on the contrary, we have here a portrait of the king’s eldest son, as both Heuzey and Radau think, and in support of their view, the improbability of assigning such a leading part to a woman at this period has been aptly urged; the dress differs from that of Ur-Ninâ in being suspended over the left shoulder, and in this respect recalls Eannatum’s mantle on the Vulture Stele (cf. Pl. [XII]). The round or square hole in the centre of many of these early plaques was without doubt destined to serve as a socket for some votive stave or weapon, and the plaques pierced with such holes must accordingly have been laid in a horizontal and not in a vertical position. Ur-Ninâ was succeeded by Akurgal, who in turn gave place to Eannatum, whose famous Stele of Victory we now come to consider.
This monument was unfortunately not found intact and complete, but six fragments, some small, others comparatively large, but all full of interest, were unearthed at Tellô by M. de Sarzec. The scenes depicted and the events portrayed on the surviving fragments of this renowned stele, are instructive both from a religious as well as from a historical point of view. In Pl. [XII] we have a reproduction of perhaps the most interesting of these fragments. The scene here is divided into two registers, in both of which the troops of Eannatum are seen engaged on active service. The king leads the vanguard in person and on foot; above his head the title “Conqueror for the god Nin-girsu” is inscribed. His apparel consists in the “kaunakes” skirt, to which allusion has already been made, while over it is a mantle suspended over the left shoulder and passing under the right arm. His head is protected by a helmet, pointed at the top like those of his warriors, but differing from theirs in being furnished with ear-pieces; his long hair for the most part hangs down his back, some of it however is gathered up and bound by a fillet at the back of his head. In his right hand he holds what purports to be a species of boomerang.
His troops are drawn up in a wedge-shaped formation, and if this representation is intentional, it is a surprising testimony to the skill in military tactics to which the Sumerians had attained at this extremely early date, but it may on the other hand be merely due to ignorance of perspective on the part of the artist. Their offensive weapons consist of lances some six or eight feet in length, while for defence they hold large rectangular shields which cover the whole of their bodies from neck to ankle. Were there any doubt as to the fortunes of this army of Eannatum, it would be immediately dispelled by a glance at the feet of the troops engaged, who are ruthlessly trampling on the prostrate bodies of their vanquished foes.
Below we have another battle-scene: the king again leads his troops to action, but here he is mounted in his chariot, his dress is identical with that worn by him in the upper half of this relief, and in his right hand he grasps a boomerang similar to the one with which he is armed above, but in his left hand he poises a long stave, the end of which is unfortunately not visible owing to the poor preservation of this part of the sculpture, but without doubt the point of this formidable weapon was once in immediate contact with the shaven head of a conquered enemy, while before him there is a quiver packed with arrows.
Fig. 27.—Musée du Louvre.
| A, B. (Cf. Cat., pp. 105, 107.) C. (Cf. Cat., p. 123; Déc. en Chald., Plate 5, bis.) |
His followers in this instance are armed with a long lance and a battle-axe, but are protected by no shields, though their heads are covered with the same conical-shaped helmets, and they are clad in the familiar “kaunakes” skirts. Perhaps we are to see in these troops a detachment of the king’s personal bodyguard. What strikes one at once about this sculpture is the extraordinary disparity between the crudeness of the art on the one hand, and the elaborate equipment and arrangement of Eannatum’s army on the other, from which it is clear that the energy of the Sumerians at this time was spent in the battle-field rather than in the pursuit of the peaceful arts.
Another fragment of this remarkable sculpture is reproduced in Fig. [27], A. We have here a veritable heap of corpses piled on top of each other. They are entirely naked, and their heads are shaven in apparent contradistinction to the troops of Eannatum. The bodies are extended and are arranged so that the head of each lies in contiguity with the feet of his next door neighbour; two figures clad in short archaically-fringed skirts are ascending this heap by means of a rope; the free hand of each is engaged in balancing a basket on the head which may contain offerings for the fallen, but more probably earth wherewith to bury their corpses. It is a matter of dispute as to whether these superimposed corpses represent the fallen warriors of Eannatum’s army, or the smitten foes of Lagash; but the fact that the bodies are naked, and the further fact that in none of the Babylonian or Assyrian battle-scenes is there a single example of a warrior of the victor’s army being represented as killed, and lastly the improbability of the artist having accentuated the losses of Eannatum in such a conspicuous manner, and especially upon a stele of victory, all militate against the former and for the latter view. In that case we have a striking testimony to the clemency exhibited by the Sumerians of the earliest times, the enemy being apparently allowed sometimes the privilege of burying their dead.
In Figure [27] B we have another fragment of this unique specimen of Sumerian art. The representative of Lagash is here portrayed on a colossal scale; his head has a profusion of hair, and from his face hangs a long streaked beard similar to that worn by Gilgamesh on the cylinder-seals. Possibly, as Heuzey suggests, this figure is a representation of that hero of Babylonian folk-lore, but it is probably a picture of the god Nin-girsu himself. In any case, it can hardly be Eannatum, as the latter is on this same stele portrayed clean shaven. This colossal figure grasps in his left hand the heraldic arms of Lagash, while in his right hand he holds a round-headed mace similar to that seen in other early bas-reliefs. Before him lie a number of prisoners confined in a net or a cage (cf. Hab. I. 15); one of these unhappy victims has thrust his head through the meshes of his prison with a view to evading the next blow, but this laudable attempt does not seem to have met with the success which it deserved, for the head of the mace is seen in immediate contact with that of the individual in question. All the figures here portrayed, whether belonging to Eannatum’s army, or to that of the enemy, exhibit the same type of face, the most distinguishing characteristics of which are the large almond-shaped eyes and the aquiline nose. The stele is known as the “Vulture Stele” and derives its name from another fragment on which are portrayed a number of vultures making off with the heads, and sharply severed limbs of the slain. Eannatum, whose victories are here depicted, was succeeded by Enannatum, and after him Entemena, the nephew of Eannatum ascended the throne. Unfortunately the artistic relics of his time are few in number, but those that have survived are peculiarly interesting. In a subsequent chapter (cf. Fig. [45]) we shall devote some space to an examination of the silver vase of this ancient ruler, but here (cf. Fig [27], C) we have a specimen of the sculpture of his reign.
This little sculptured block, which is made of a mixture of clay and bitumen, and in appearance resembles black stone, was found in the neighbourhood of a building composed of bricks bearing the name of Entemena. In the upper register we see the heraldic device of the city of Lagash—a lion-headed eagle grasping two lions facing in opposite directions, doubtless indicative of the power exercised by Lagash over the peoples of Sumer and Akkad. We have already seen it on the Vulture Stele, and it occurs also on the yet earlier monuments of Ur-Ninâ, but a comparison of the royal arms as here represented with the device on the Vulture Stele (cf. Fig. [27], B) shows a marked advancement from the artistic point of view. The eagle is still sufficiently stereotyped, and the extraordinary amount of detail with which the artist has treated his subject has had the undesirable effect of making it even more formal than it would otherwise be, but the lions are much more animated and vigorous in conception than in the earlier sculptures. Instead of walking along in an impassive, lifeless manner, they literally writhe under the grip of their victorious foe, whose wings they seek to gnaw with their teeth. Below, we have a representation of a crouching calf or heifer, one of whose front legs is raised as though about to leap up. As Heuzey says, the pose of this animal is wonderfully natural, and must have been studied from nature; it at once recalls the procession of animals engraved on the silver vase of Entemena (cf. Fig. [45]). No doubt the animal here portrayed is a sacrificial victim. To the right of the central hole found so frequently in these early sculptures, stands the worshipper, of gigantic size, holding a staff in his left hand. He is clean shaven, and is nude down to the waist, from which hangs the usual kaunakes skirt. The lower part of this little block is decorated with the scroll design so frequently encountered on cylinder-seals. The size of its reproduction here however is entirely out of proportion to the rest of the sculpture, and it may therefore in this case represent a skein of wool as another form of offering. The mention of the priest Dudu, whose name also occurs on the silver vase of Entemena, removes any uncertainty there might be as to the period to which we should assign this little block, though a judgment based on an examination of the style of art here exhibited would have independently placed it in the same category as the silver vase of Entemena. The line-characters in which the inscription is written are more developed than those found on the monuments of Ur-Ninâ and Eannatum, many of them already betraying the wedge-shaped formation characteristic of the writing called “cuneiform.”
Stele of Victory of Narâm-Sin
Sufficient perhaps has been said to give a general idea of the artistic merits or demerits of the old Sumerian bas-reliefs of the first dynasty of Lagash. The next Babylonian school of art which specifically compels both attention and admiration is that to which the era of the kings of Akkad or Agade gave birth. From some points of view Mesopotamian art reached her climax at this period; neither before nor after was the same success in the reproduction of human figures attained, and the sculptures belonging to this period are in some ways unique in the history of oriental art. The most famous of these monuments of Babylonian genius is reproduced in Pl. [XIII]. This stele, which was found at Susa in the course of M. G. de Morgan’s epoch-making excavations on that site, was fashioned to commemorate some notable victory achieved by Narâm-Sin of Agade. The king is seen in the act of ascending a high mountain; behind him march his trusty warriors armed with spears or lances, and apparently carrying standards. The king himself is armed with a bow and arrow, and also a battle-axe, while his head is protected by a horned helmet; before him crouches one of the enemy, into whose neck an arrow has sunk deep, while another grasps the broken end of a spear. The figure of the king is full of vitality and animation, and offers a very striking contrast to the lifeless conventionalism characteristic of the older Babylonian and the later Assyrian representations of human beings. The whole scene is alive with action, and the effect is not marred by any undue disproportion between the figure of the king and those of his followers. Above the king’s head are the remains of an inscription by Narâm-Sin, but upon the cone intended to represent the mountain which the king is scaling, is an inscription occupying seven lines and bearing the name of Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, king of Elam, which seems to indicate that the stele had been captured by the Elamites and carried off to Susa as a trophy. An interesting basalt bas-relief of this same king was discovered near Diarbekr (cf. Fig. [28] “A”). Narâm-Sin is standing on the right of the inscription, clad in a kind of plaid and wearing a conical hat. His beard is long and pointed, while bracelets encircle his wrists, and he carries a short staff in each hand.
Fig. 28.—A. (Hilprecht, Old Bab. Inscr., II, p. 63, No. 120.)
B, C, D, E, F, Musée du Louvre. (Cf. Cat., pp. 131, 133, 139, 151, 147; Déc. en Chald., Plates 5, 22, 23, 24.)
The remains (cf. Fig. [28] “B,” “C”) of another very interesting stele belonging to about the same epoch or a little earlier, and military in character, were discovered by De Sarzec at Tellô. In the top register of fragment “B” three warriors are seen proceeding in file, two of whom are archers and carry quivers which are decorated with large leaves, while a leg is all that remains of the third. In the second register an archer is seen in the act of drawing his bow; his attitude is fixed and steady, and his bow is bent to the utmost, while his quiver hangs over his shoulder; before him a smitten foe lies prostrate on his back, and in contradistinction to his vanquisher who is clad in a long tunic, is entirely naked, while his right hand is raised in supplication. We next come to another warrior clad in a short fringed skirt and wearing a conical helmet: with his left hand he is seizing the beard of an enemy, who is also naked like his prostrate brother in the same register, and his right hand is raised, about to bring down his knotted club upon the face of his defeated prisoner. Below, is the figure of another warrior armed with a long pike. In “C” we have another fragment of this interesting sculpture, in the top register of which two warriors are seen marching in file; the one behind is carrying a battle-axe at the trail. In the register below, a warrior clad in a short skirt and wearing a helmet is engaged with a prostrate enemy; one of his feet is firmly planted in the unfortunate man’s stomach, and with his right hand he is further punishing him with the aid of his knotted club. Behind these two figures we have another like scene represented; here the all-powerful warrior is armed with a long lance, which he is carrying at the port; with his right arm he is marching along a prisoner much shorter than himself, whose arms are bound behind his back; the prisoner is naked, like most of the defeated enemies of Sumer and Akkad as portrayed by the sculptor. All that remains of the third register is the head and the upper part of the bow of an archer.
Apart from the spirit which animates these little figures, the chief point of interest in connection with them lies in the general scheme of artistic representation here adopted. No longer is the conquering army portrayed en masse as on the Vulture Stele of Eannatum, but the idea conveyed and the event commemorated are precisely the same in either case. The all-prevailing idea is that of victory, only the picture of a phalanx of armed troops trampling the nude bodies of their foes beneath their feet, has given place to a series of selected incidents of individual combat, represented after the Homeric fashion. This sculpture clearly belongs to the same school as Narâm-Sin’s stele of Victory, which, however, it probably somewhat antedates, as the cuneiform signs found on the second fragment are of a more archaic character than those used on the monuments of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin. The little that remains of the inscription is of considerable interest as it contains a mention of the city of Agade, the centre of the Semitic Empire established by the two last-named kings.
We must now pass from the epoch of the Semitic kings of Agade or Akkad, to the later period of Sumerian civilization, the age in which Ur-Engur and Dungi, kings of Ur, and Ur-Bau and Gudea, rulers of Lagash, lived and reigned. We are unable to assign a definite date to any of these rulers, but they probably flourished somewhere about the middle of the third millennium B.C. One of the most interesting bas-reliefs belonging to this time is reproduced in Fig. [28], “D.” We have here a representation of a god seated on a throne. He wears a long square beard, and his head is surmounted by the horned cap emblematic of divinity; his mantle covers nearly the whole of his body, the right arm alone being excepted. The head, which in its contour and general appearance recalls the heads of the Assyrian winged human-headed lions and bulls of some fifteen or sixteen centuries later (cf. Plate [XXV]), is like them, depicted full face, the seated body being sculptured in profile; in his left hand the god holds a sceptre, the end of which is fashioned like a leaf. In Fig. [28], “E,” we have a reproduction of what is probably the largest fragment of an early Babylonian bas-relief in existence. It was excavated at Tellô and measures about four feet in length. The upper part of the relief is occupied with a procession of four figures apparently engaged in the service of the gods, while below, a seated figure is seen playing an elaborate instrument of eleven strings, the lower part of the frame of which is decorated with a horned head and the figure of a bull. This relief would appear to have formed part of a stone socket.
As might be expected, the material used for most of the Babylonian as well as the later Assyrian bas-reliefs was a species of limestone and alabaster, as this kind of stone lends itself readily to the impress of the chisel, but the harder stones were also sometimes utilized for the purpose.[92] Thus in Fig. [28], F, we have a sketch of what remains of a black steatite relief belonging to this period. The fragmentary inscription gives us the name of the goddess Ningal, who is here portrayed in a singularly attractive manner, and with an extraordinary amount of detail. An elaborate robe covers the whole of her body, and a necklace adorns her throat; her hair hangs over her shoulders, while the crown of her head is encircled by a fillet. The general technique of this little sculpture is surprising in its fidelity to nature; the attitude of the goddess, her body half turned and her left arm resting negligently on the back of her chair is life-like, and the face itself is not without a beauty of its own. The difficulty involved in the portrayal of a human eye in profile, so painfully manifest on the Vulture Stele and other earlier Sumerian monuments, where the eye is portrayed full-face, the rest of the head being done in profile, has here been surmounted, and we have before us a perfectly naturally conceived and executed face and head.
Some few centuries after the time of Gudea the city of Babylon became the centre of the chief power in Southern Mesopotamia. Unfortunately the excavations have not yielded us a rich harvest for the study of the artistic development of sculpture during this period, but the material at hand would tend to show that there was far less development in the interval between the later dynasty of Lagash, the age in which Gudea lived, and the establishment of the first Semitic dynasty of the city of Babylon, than there was in the period separating the first dynasty of Lagash from the epoch of Sargon and Narâm-Sin, the Semitic kings of Agade.
| PLATE XIV | |||
| Photo. Mansell | Musée du Louvre | Photo, Mansell | British Museum |
| Stele engraved with Khammurabi’s Code of Laws | The Sun-God Tablet | ||
In Pl. [XIV] we have a reproduction of the sculptured stele of black basalt upon which is inscribed the world-renowned legal code of Khammurabi, the most illustrious king of this first dynasty of Babylon. The king is seen standing in reverential attitude before the Sun-god Shamash, from whom he is receiving the laws inscribed below. The king wears a long robe reaching down to his ankles, but leaving his right arm, which is raised in adoration, untrammelled by the folds of his mantle. The seated deity likewise has a long beard, but his high horned cap differentiates him at once from his adoring servant, while from his shoulders tongues of fire are seen shooting forth, doubtless representing the rays of the sun. In his right hand he holds the ring and staff emblematic of dominion and power. He is similarly represented in Nabû-aplu-iddina’s tablet (cf. Pl. [XIV]) and also on two contemporaneous stelæ in the Louvre, in one of which he is in a standing position. Beneath his feet are the mountains portrayed in miniature. The laws enacted on this stele, which is now one of the treasures of the Louvre, number about two hundred and eighty, and deal with all kinds of subjects. It was set up in E-sagila, the temple of the chief god Marduk in Babylon, so that every aggrieved party at law could go and consult it. Like so many of the monuments of Babylonian antiquity, this stele was captured by the Elamites and removed to Susa, where it remained until the French excavations on that site brought it once more to light.
As we have already seen[93] the dynasty to which Khammurabi belonged was brought to an end some time later by an invasion of the Hittites, a powerful mountainous people whose home lay in Cappadocia. A century or so afterwards, i.e. about 1800 B.C., another mountainous nation known as the Kassites swept down from their strongholds in the Elamite territory on the east of the Tigris into the defenceless Babylonian plain, where they established and maintained their supremacy for a long time to come. Unfortunately the artistic relics of the Kassite period are few, and for the most part unimportant. Meanwhile, however, the Assyrians in the north had asserted their independence, and ultimately (i.e. about 1275 B.C.) succeeded in reducing Babylonia and establishing their sway over the whole of Mesopotamia. In spite of this fact, we have practically no specimen of the sculptor’s art during the long interval separating the fall of the First Dynasty of Babylon and the ninth century B.C., and it is not till the time of Ashur-nasir-pal, king of Assyria, and Nabû-aplu-iddina, king of Babylon, that we are able again to study in detail the work of the sculptor in the Tigro-Euphratian valley. To the former king we are indebted for a large series of bas-reliefs taken from the walls of his palace at Nimrûd (Calah), while to the latter we owe one of the most interesting and instructive Babylonian bas-reliefs in existence (cf. Pl. [XIV]).
One of the earliest specimens of Assyrian bas-relief as yet discovered is that which was found by Taylor at a village called Korkhar, situated some fifty miles north of Diarbekr. The relief in question was sculptured on the natural rock, which had been smoothed for the purpose by order of Tiglath-Pileser I (circ. 1100 B.C.).[94] The king is represented in a standing posture, his right arm is extended and he is pointing with his forefinger, while in his left hand he holds a mace; the king’s figure and general appearance are already quite stereotyped, and show no more originality or vigour than the representations of the later Assyrian kings. This same monarch has further left us the upper part of an obelisk erected to commemorate his feats in the chase, on one side of which there is a small relief in which Tiglath-Pileser is seen receiving the submission of various vassal-chiefs, while above their heads are the emblems of certain deities, the most interesting of which is the winged human-headed disc of Ashur, the patron god of Assyria. But these reliefs, interesting as they are, afford us little material upon which to form an estimate of the sculptural ability of the Assyrians at this period; the chief inference which they permit us to draw is that Assyrian art seems to have neither advanced nor declined appreciably, during the interval of two hundred or more years which lapsed between the time of Tiglath-Pileser and Ashur-naṣir-pal. The latter king succeeded his father Tukulti-Ninib II as king of Assyria (885 B.C.). Tukulti-Ninib had largely restored the fallen fortunes of the northern country, thus paving the way for the successes of future reigns, but Ashur-naṣir-pal extended the power of Assyria in every direction, as well as consolidating her rule over the districts reduced by his father. It is accordingly by no means unnatural that he should have desired to commemorate and perpetuate the record of his triumphs in pictorial fashion upon the walls of his palace at Nimrûd, and it is with his reign that the history of Assyrian bas-reliefs really commences, so far as our present material goes.
Assyria was in some ways the natural home of the bas-relief, for she contained a plentiful supply of alabaster and limestone, the softness of which facilitated the work of the artist and reduced his difficulties to a minimum: Babylonia on the other hand yielded practically no stone, and all that was used had to be quarried at a distance and transported at great cost and labour, and that fact makes the early efforts of the Babylonians in this direction all the more praise-worthy, and the proficiency to which those efforts gave birth, as seen for example in Narâm-Sin’s stele of Victory, the more astonishing. But this notwithstanding, the bas-relief was more highly developed in the northern country, where it played an all-important part in the artistic life of the people. The general object of these bas-reliefs was to commemorate the king’s victories over his enemies and his conquests in the chase, rather than to produce a purely æsthetic effect. In other words they are pictorial records rather than artistic products, and that fact is further borne witness to by the cuneiform texts with which they are generally inscribed. At the same time however, they afford material for the study of Assyrian sculpture. The art of sculpture in Assyria suffered all the drawbacks which befall every art once it becomes professionalized; it lacks spontaneity which is the very connotation of art, it is made to order, and therefore it inevitably knows no freedom but is the dull slave of conventionalism. But in spite of all this, the bas-reliefs of Ashur-naṣir-pal and his successors, hampered as they are by those universal enemies of human art, professionalism and conventionalism, still enshrine, or imprison if you will, the artistic genius of the people, and on this account, if for no other, are deserving of careful attention.
The reliefs which covered the walls of the palace of Ashur-naṣir-pal at Nimrûd (Calah) consist either of single figures of gigantic size, or else in a series of small scenes divided into two friezes by cuneiform inscriptions. In Pl. [XV] we see Ashur-naṣir-pal followed by a winged mythological being; both are engaged in the performance of a religious ceremony, the king with the bow and the arrow which he holds in his hands, the attendant with the cone which he holds up in his right hand. The semi-divine character of the winged creature is evidenced by his head-gear which consists of the horned cap, but the faces of both figures are more or less identical, a lamentable characteristic of all Assyrian portrayals of human or semi-humanly conceived beings. The chief peculiarities of this type of face are the large eyes, the curved nose, and the profusion of hair on both head and face. Both figures are clad in a long robe and deeply fringed mantle which extend to the feet. The footwear consists of sandals fastened by thongs passing over the instep and round the big toe. The muscular arms of both are adorned with bracelets, the pattern of the decoration on which is a replica of the ubiquitous rosette so characteristic of Assyrian art. The king’s head-gear consists of a helmet from which two tails hang, and in its appearance generally, is not unlike a bishop’s mitre. Both king and divine attendant carry what appear to be two daggers tucked into their waistbands. The muscularity noticeable in the arms is yet more aggressive in the left leg of the mythological being, which, unlike that of the king, is left exposed. This grotesquely realized conception of strength is but the decadent descendant of the naturally expressed vigour so noticeable in the statues of Gudea. And here may be mentioned one characteristic peculiarity of Assyrian sculpture; it will be observed that a long cuneiform inscription is chiselled right across the relief, pursuing the even or uneven tenor of its way quite recklessly through wings, garments, bodies and hands, and there is no obstacle which it fails to overcome, not even excepting the deep fringe on the mantles.
The subjects of the smaller reliefs of Ashur-naṣir-pal are many and various, though they all revolve round one of two themes, the battle-field or the chase. In one, Ashur-naṣir-pal has alighted from his chariot and is receiving the submission of the enemy; in another we see a number of fugitives swimming to a fortress on inflated skins. Here we see tributary chiefs bringing offerings to lay them at the feet of their imperious lord, while further on we see the bowmen of Ashur-naṣir-pal mounted in their chariots and discharging arrows against the enemy. In one relief the king himself is seen erect in his chariot with his bow fully drawn; elsewhere Ashur-naṣir-pal is represented in the act of crossing a river; the king has not however dismounted from his chariot, but is being rowed over, chariot and all.
One of the most luminous of these small bas-reliefs is reproduced in Pl. [XVI(2)]. Ashur-naṣir-pal and his army are storming a beleaguered city; the walls of the city are crenelated after the regular Mesopotamian fashion. Immediately before the walls the movable tower resting on six small wheels and containing the battering ram is stationed, the efficacy of which may be judged from the bricks falling from the battered walls. Mounted on the top of the tower is an archer with bow bent, whose person is protected by another warrior bearing a shield. The king is portrayed behind the movable tower in the act of drawing his bow; his head-gear differs from that of the warriors, who wear a conical helmet. In Pl. [XVI(3)], we see the warriors of Ashur-naṣirpal returning victorious from the battle-field. On the right of the picture are two three-horse chariots, both of which carry standard-bearers; above them we see a vulture making off with his prey, which in this instance consists in a human head, and in front are the infantry who appear to be gloating over the gory heads of their smitten adversaries, while to add to the ghastliness of the scene two musicians are playing on stringed instruments.
Ashur-naṣir-pal was however quite as proud of his victories in the chase as he was of his conquests in the battle-field, as is attested by the numerous hunting scenes which he caused to be carved in relief on his palace walls. In Pl. [XVI(4)] we see Ashur-naṣir-pal, erect in his chariot, in the act of dispatching a lion by the aid of his bow and arrow. The lion is treated with considerable boldness, and the skill of the artist in the portrayal of animal life—or death, as here—when compared with the stereotyped lifelessness of the king, is sufficiently striking. But Assyrian art does not reach its climax here, as we shall see when we come to consider the lions on Ashur-bani-pal’s bas-reliefs; the latter show a certain delicacy in the handling, and an intuition into all those infinite subtleties and varying nuances which are the hall-mark of life, animal or human as the case may be, and which apparently are not felt or at all events not successfully realized in the earlier works. The portrayal of the lion here is strong and life-like, but the spectator can never get away from the consciousness of the fact that it is a pictorial representation; he can never abandon the thought of the sculptor and the excellence of his art, or lose himself, be it only for a moment, in the reality itself. But in the reliefs of Ashur-bani-pal, one can for a brief space forget the artist and his work, and see the lion itself; one can catch a faint note of his dying gasp as he lies there motionless, his body transfixed with arrows, and it is in the effacement of the artist and the material which he uses that art attains the zenith of her power.
| 1 | PLATE XVI  | |
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| Photos. Mansell | British Museum | |
| Bas-reliefs of Ashur-naṣir-pal | ||
| 1. Libation over a dead bull | 3. Return from battle | |
| 2. Siege of a city | 4. Lion Hunt | |
But Ashur-naṣir-pal’s love for sport did not deter him from his religious obligations, on the contrary he appears to have attributed his triumphs in the chase to his god, for on his return he offers a libation over the body of the lion or bull which providence has delivered into his hand (cf. Pl. [XVI](1)). The cup he holds in his hand resembles the top of a champagne glass, while his left hand is leaning on a bow in the usual characteristic manner. Before him is an officer, evidently of high rank, for his dress is an exact replica of the king’s, but his head is bare and his hands are clasped in a deferential manner. By the side of this high official is an attendant or eunuch with a fly-flap, while behind him is another attendant, and last of all are two musicians playing stringed instruments. On the other side of the picture, immediately behind the king is an attendant with a ceremonial umbrella, followed by two servants with bows on their shoulders.
Although Ashur-naṣir-pal’s contemporary Nabû-aplu-iddina king of Babylon has left us but few memorials of his reign, we are nevertheless indebted to him for one unique specimen of Mesopotamian sculpture (cf. Pl. [XIV]). Reference has already been made to this tablet on account of the light which it throws on certain architectural problems, it now remains for us to consider it as a work of art and an historical monument. The text records the restoration of the temple of Shamash by two kings called Simmash-shipak and Eulmash-shakin-shum, both of whose reigns took place some time in the eleventh century B.C. It then proceeds to describe the condition into which the temple, its ornaments and accessories subsequently fell; the shrine of the god had been denuded of its treasures which had been misappropriated in one way or another; the sculptures which adorned the walls and the image of the deity himself had suffered violence at the hands of the godless. All this Nabûaplu-iddina set about to rectify; he restored the glory which the fane had enjoyed in early days, in particular he enriched the time-honoured statue of the god with gold and lapis lazuli, he re-established the temple worship in all its former pomp and splendour, and took vengeance upon the enemies of Shamash and the king who had perpetrated this sacrilegious outrage. The king himself celebrated the occasion of the temple’s re-dedication by a munificent supply of offerings, and issued detailed regulations as to the ceremonial vestments of the priests, and the days upon which in each case they were to be worn in future. In the scene above, Shamash is portrayed enthroned in his shrine at Sippar, holding a disc and rod in his right hand; the sides of the throne are sculptured with mythological beings, whose rôle seems to be to support the throne, while above and in front of the god’s head are three astrological emblems. The roof and supporting pillar of the shrine itself have been discussed elsewhere (cf. p. [164]): two divine beings are stationed on the top of the shrine; they hold in their hands two taut ropes which are attached to a large disc, emblematic of the sun, placed on an altar immediately in front of the shrine, and by means of which the disc is kept in position. Approaching the altar and advancing towards the shrine are seen three worshippers, the first of whom is the high-priest of Shamash, who is introducing the king into the presence of the divine symbol in a manner so frequently seen on Babylonian cylinder-seals, while last of all comes a goddess. One of the interesting points about this little sculptured tablet is that though it was made by a ninth century king of Babylon the style of art to which it conforms would indicate that it is not an original work of Nabû-aplu-iddina, but a copy of a much older archetype. The head-dress of the god for example is characterized by four tiers of horns, and is practically identical with that found even as early as the time of Gudea, the later Assyrian divine head-dress on the other hand generally having but two or three horns on either side: Shamash here too holds the disc and rod in his hand in precisely the same manner as he is represented doing on the famous stele of Khammurabi (cf. Pl. [XIV]); his long beard is likewise depicted in much the same way as it is there. In short, there seems little doubt that the original of this ninth century product must be sought for somewhere about the commencement of the second millennium B.C. Another particularly interesting feature about the discovery of this sculpture was the simultaneous discovery of two clay coverings for it. One of these was found to be broken, and was probably made by Nabû-aplu-iddina himself, but the other bears an inscription of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon from 625-604 B.C. During the two centuries which had elapsed between the time of Nabû-aplu-iddina and the reign of Nabopolassar, the oft-restored temple had again fallen into disrepair, and it fell to the lot of the last-named king to once more restore the time-honoured fane; he too, like his predecessor two hundred years before, made “offerings rich and rare” to the immortal Shamash. The object of these clay coverings was of course to preserve the sculpture from damage (cf. Fig. [5]).
PLATE XVII  | |
| Photo. Mansell | British Museum |
| Siege of a city by battering-ram and archers (Reign of Tiglath-Pileser III) | |
To return to Assyria, Ashur-naṣir-pal was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser II: we unfortunately possess but few bas-reliefs belonging to the time of this king, the best-known being those sculptured on the Black Obelisk; these reliefs have been illustrated and dealt with in detail in so many works, owing chiefly to the historic importance of the inscription on this monument, that it seems hardly necessary nor desirable to discuss them here. Shalmaneser’s immediate successors have left us few memorials of themselves, artistic or otherwise, and after their reigns a general decadence seems to have set in, from which Assyria did not recover till the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, or Pul as he is called in 2 Kings xv. 19 and elsewhere. This king restored the fortunes of the empire, and extended his power on every side, and happily for our subject he has immortalized his exploits in picture-fashion on hard stone, as well as in writing on clay cylinders and tablets, though unfortunately the bas-reliefs of this king which have survived are few in number. One of the best preserved is that in which Tiglath-Pileser III is seen conducting a siege (cf. Pl. [XVII]). The details of this sculpture vividly recall the words Isaiah is reported to have used in his endeavour to rally the failing courage of Hezekiah, king of Judah, who was inclined to surrender himself and his city to Sennacherib—“Thus saith the Lord concerning the King of Assyria, he shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields nor cast a bank against it.” All the means of attack here mentioned are represented in our bas-relief. The warriors have their bows bent, and doubtless have already dispatched many an arrow with deadly effect: their persons are protected by large wicker shields which cover the whole of their bodies. The “bank” in this case has clearly been “cast against” the besieged city, and the purpose that the “bank” was destined to serve is at once manifest. It consisted in an artificial mound up which the movable tower containing the battering-ram was advanced. On the top of the wall of the besieged city, a man is seen with hands outstretched suing for mercy. The defeat of the enemy and the reduction of their city is signalized in a highly realistic fashion; beneath the “bank” some of the vanquished are seen prostrate and naked, while above, on a level with the top of the wall a number of captives, also naked, are impaled on stakes. The inscription refers to the various articles of tribute brought by conquered peoples, but is not possessed of any especial interest.
Fig. 29.—Bas-relief from Khorsabad. (After Botta.)
Tiglath-Pileser III was succeeded by Shalmaneser IV, the most noteworthy event of whose reign was the siege of Samaria; the city held out two years, and fell in 722 B.C., after Shalmaneser had been dethroned by Sargon the usurper. Sargon reigned some eighteen years and achieved many victories, the most momentous of which was that gained over the united Egyptians and Philistines at Raphia, near the Egyptian frontier. His sculptural bequests are many, and they comprise the gigantic winged human-headed bulls and lions which are in some ways the most impressive and the most characteristic specimens of oriental art. These winged monsters are neither bas-reliefs, nor are they perfect round sculptures, but a mixture of the two, and will accordingly receive consideration in the second half of this chapter.
But the palace erected by Sargon at Khorsabad, which was excavated by Botta more than half a century ago has yielded a rich harvest of bas-reliefs pure and simple, one of which is reproduced in Fig. [29]. The scene is a familiar one in Assyrian sculpture; a fortress is being attacked, of course successfully, by Assyrian soldiers. The fortress appears to have been built on the top of a height, doubtless with a view to rendering it the more impregnable. It consists of three rows of towers, superimposed one on the top of the other, the largest row being at the base and the smallest at the top, the general contour not being unlike that of a ziggurat with its receding stages. One wing of the fortress is protected by two towers, with which it is connected by means of a wall, while the other wing apparently extends right down the slope of the height. Access to the fortress is gained by arched doorways, one of the many incidental proofs of the frequency with which the arch was used in Assyrian architecture. A number of small rectangular houses lie at the foot of the hill, the doorways of which are arched like those of the flanking towers, while in both cases the doors or gates themselves are double-leaved. The windows, or embrasures, which are very numerous, are all square, and the battlements are crenelated as usual. Three pairs of colossal horns crown the fortress, which Botta is inclined to think may be actual horns, the disproportion of their size being of course no argument against that view, for disproportion is a characteristic of early oriental art. In such case they could be only emblematic, and presumably indicative of strength, but it seems infinitely more probable that the horns represent the sculptor’s attempt to portray flames of fire, which are thus seen leaping up from the fired fortress. Some of the besieged are suing for mercy with outstretched hands, while others are evidently determined to fight to the last: they are armed with long spears and rectangular shields, while their backs are covered with the skins of animals. The enemy are literally at the gate, and it is impossible to tell when they will effect an entrance. Three of them are attempting to undermine the wall by means of long-handled prongs, two more are at work with their short swords, while to the left are two Assyrian spearmen of superhuman size, whose symbolic presence at once removes even the faintest shadow of doubt there might be as to the issue of the conflict. The attack is a strenuous one, as a mere walkover would bring no glory to the Assyrian arms, but at the same time, in spite of the severity of the battle raging round the fortress, the irresistible might of the Assyrian colossus is grimly suggested by the two giant warriors. The artistic treatment of the two heroes deserves some notice; the aggressive muscularity so characteristic of Assyrian representations of kings and warriors is not indeed altogether wanting in the legs, but the arms are wholly free from this all but universal defect, while the pose of both arms and legs is exceptionally natural and singularly true to life. They are armed with spears of the same type as those used by the beleaguered army, but their shields are round in contradistinction to the oblong shields of the enemy, and they are girded with short swords. Their clothing and helmets are of a frequently recurring type, while both of them wear armlets and one of them wears a plain bracelet on his left wrist.
Sargon was succeeded in 705 B.C. by his famous son Sennacherib, the principal event of whose reign was probably the destruction of Babylon in 689 B.C. But the name of Sennacherib is famous rather on account of his close relations with the kingdom of Judah, and the unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah, than for the conquests which he made, considerable as they were. The excavation of his palace at Nineveh has led to the discovery of a large number of bas-reliefs, many of which had been fractured as well as damaged by fire when the city was sacked by the combined forces of the Medes and the Babylonians about 609 B.C. For the most part they illustrate the campaigns undertaken by Sennacherib. What is noticeable at once in the bas-reliefs of this king is their complexity, as contrasted with the simplicity of those of Ashur-naṣir-pal. We have already observed that entire scenes are sometimes portrayed upon the bas-reliefs of the last-named monarch, though more often the relief is monopolized by two or three large and striking figures, one of which generally represents the king, but by Sennacherib’s time what had hitherto been the exception now becomes the rule, and the bas-reliefs of this king are practically all scenic in their effect and most elaborate in their composition. This exaggerated complexity is due not so much to the variety of subjects treated in each relief, as to the ignorance of perspective on the part of the artist, for the treatment of even a limited number of subjects or objects within the scope of a single picture demands that these objects be seen and represented in perspective, and if that demand is not met, confusion worse confounded is the inevitable result of the artist’s abortive attempt. This confusion is seen to perfection, if the “oxymoron” may be allowed, in the reliefs which adorned the palace walls of Sennacherib king of Assyria. A portion of one of the most instructive of these sculptured slabs is reproduced in Fig. [30].
Fig. 30.—Bas-relief of Sennacherib. (After Layard.)
The scene is one of great interest, not merely for the student of Assyrian art, but for the light which it throws upon the mechanical resources of which the Assyrians of that day availed themselves, resources which the very existence of the gigantic human-headed bulls and lions presupposes, but which are here illustrated in a specific manner by Sennacherib’s sculptors. The safe transport of a gigantic mass of solid stone was no easy matter even for the excavator of the nineteenth century,[95] how much greater the difficulties to be surmounted by a people whose mechanical knowledge was some two and a half millennia younger! In the artistic treatment of this sculpture there are of course obvious defects. There is the usual ignorance of perspective on the part of the sculptor, though this is less pronounced than elsewhere; the trees in the foreground and background are arranged in lines in a somewhat conventional manner, though the intentional or accidental diminution of size in the trees in the background as compared with those in the front of the sculpture, makes the general setting of the scene appear much more true in its arrangement than would otherwise be the case. Unfortunately it has not been possible to include the back row of trees without sacrificing the more important parts of the sculpture, hence their omission here.
All interest is centred round the bull, Assyrians and war-captives alike having but one work and that is the transport of this awe-inspiring monster. In the right-hand corner we see two carts, each being drawn by two prisoners and containing ropes and timber. The carts have two wheels, each wheel containing eight spokes in contradistinction to the four spokes of the early Babylonian wheels. The bull has been carefully laid on its side upon a sledge which is shaped like a boat in the front. Both ends of the sledge are pierced with round holes for the reception of the ropes. The latter, tightly secured to the sledge and bull, are about to be pulled by a number of prisoners who succeed under the gentle stimulus of the taskmaster’s lash in gradually moving the colossal monster. Before starting, however, it was seemingly necessary to give the sledge some assistance by means of a huge lever, one end of which is placed under the stern while to the other end three ropes are attached, by means of which a number of workmen are doing their utmost to move the lever on its fulcrum. To gain a greater leverage one of the workmen is engaged in inserting a wedge between the upper surface of the fulcrum and the under side of the lever, while the movement of the sledge is further facilitated by means of rollers which workmen are seen busily putting in position. Upon the top of the recumbent bull kneels the foreman engineer giving the signal for each successive and united effort to the men on the towing-ropes. The presence of three soldiers was apparently necessary to enforce the admonitions of the foreman—an early example of the invocation of the military to support civil authority. Below in the foreground, a number of captives are seen carrying rollers to be set down as the bull advances. They are accompanied by taskmasters who appear to have been wholly devoid of any sense of mercy.
Fig. 31.—Sennacherib at Lachish. (After Layard.)
But the best known, because from certain points of view the most interesting, bas-relief from Sennacherib’s palace at Kouyunjik is that in which Sennacherib is seen receiving the submission of the conquered inhabitants of Lachish (Tell el-Ḥesy) (cf. Fig. [31]). The king is seated on a throne of great magnificence, and his feet repose on a high footstool. The side of the throne is divided into three registers, each of which is occupied by a row of men with arms upstretched to support the bar above: the bars themselves are decorated with various geometrical devices, while the throne stands upon four large cone-shaped feet. The king’s robes are as elaborate as his throne, both mantle and tunic being richly embroidered and fringed with tassels, while his head-gear consists in a kind of mitre, apparently the usual state head-gear of Assyrian monarchs. Behind him are two attendants, probably eunuchs, each holding a fly-flap in his right hand and a bandlet in his left; their dress consists in a long robe reaching down to the ankle and tied round the waist with a girdle, while a variegated sash passing from the left shoulder across the chest relieves the monotony of the comparatively inornate costume. Their hair is long, and the ends are curled as in the other figures here represented, but they are beardless and hatless. Behind these two attendants is the royal pavilion, the roof-canvas of which is apparently raised either for ventilation or to keep off the sun. The king with a bow in his left hand and an arrow in his right, is listening to his chief officers who are reporting the incidents of the siege of Lachish. The personage who leads the procession carries no arms, but has his head bared and is clad more sumptuously than the attendant officers, as befitteth the king’s vizier; the warriors are armed with maces, short swords, bows and arrows, or spears as the case may be. At a respectful distance from the royal throne three representatives of the conquered inhabitants of the city are making their obeisance before the king, one of them literally grovelling on all fours. The prisoners have a thick, though not a long, crop of hair, while their beards are also thick and short, in contradistinction to those of the Assyrians. Their dress consists of a perfectly plain, short-sleeved tunic reaching from neck to ankle, while their feet are unshod. The dress of the Assyrian warriors will be considered in a subsequent chapter (Chap. XIII). The scene of this somewhat dramatic spectacle is outside the captured city, under the grateful shade of vines and fig-trees, while mountains covered with trees form a fitting background to the picture. The purport of the four-lined cuneiform inscription in front of the king is that Sennacherib, king of hosts, king of Assyria, sat upon his throne of state, and the spoil of the city of Lachish passed before him. But magnificent as is the throne upon which Sennacherib is here seated, it must have been far surpassed in splendour by his royal throne at Nineveh; the latter was apparently made of rock crystal, some of the fragments of which are still preserved.
Sennacherib was succeeded after some intestine feuds by his son Esarhaddon; Esarhaddon carried on the traditions of his predecessors in warring against Phœnicia, and reducing Babylonia, but the distinguishing feature of his reign was the occupation of Lower Egypt by the Assyrians in 672 B.C. Unfortunately we have very few sculptural monuments of this king, though it must not be assumed from this that he was a whit less proud of his feats than his father, but his reign has practically no interest for the student of art and affords us little material for the pursuit of our present subject. This remark, however, is very far from applying to Ashur-bani-pal, his all-glorious son, whose triumphs in the field of art were as great in their way as those achieved in the battle-field. Ashur-bani-pal came to the throne in 668 B.C. and ruled some forty-two years, during which he raised the power of Assyria to a point never reached before and never reached again. The more noteworthy events of Ashur-bani-pal’s reign as well as the consequential effects of his taste for literature have been treated of elsewhere; suffice it to say here that this outburst of military, intellectual and artistic activity was but the supreme effort of an empire whose strength was exhausted and whose vitality was impaired, and even before the death of Ashur-bani-pal the meteoric splendour of her glory had begun to pale. It was as it were the final sickness of an aged man who had weathered many storms and whose recuperative power had hitherto risen to every occasion, at last however the final crisis comes and all is over. But that golden era of Assyrian art, so brief and short-lived, has nevertheless been immortalized by the artists of that day in those stone slabs which now form one of the most precious possessions of the British Museum.
Ashur-bani-pal’s exploits in the hunting field have been already referred to, and it is these that he chose to record pictorially upon his palace-walls rather than his victories on the field of battle, and it is to this choice that we owe those masterpieces of animal representation, which otherwise might never have been crystallized into concrete and permanent results.
A large number of these bas-reliefs are concerned with lion-hunting; from Pl. [XVIII] it would appear that lions sometimes suffered themselves to become domesticated; we here see a lion and lioness, the one standing, the other lying carelessly stretched at its ease upon the ground, in a kind of garden, the cultivated character of which is manifest from the presence of a vine. The lion stands before the crouching lioness with head and fore-paws outstretched, in a manner well-illustrative of that dignity and majesty which is always and has always been associated with the king of animals. Unfortunately most of the head and the entire hind-quarters of the lion are missing, but sufficient remains of the animal for us to imagine the rest without much risk of our imagination leading us astray.
PLATE XVIII
| Photo. Mansell | British Museum |
| Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes: Lion and Lioness in a park or garden | |
PLATE XIX
| Photo. Mansell | British Museum |
| Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes | |
But the animals which were the victims of the royal sport must clearly have been wild; sometimes they admitted of being hunted in their natural state, but in Ashur-bani-pal’s time it was evidently necessary to capture them beforehand and keep them in cages till required for the hunt. In Pl. [XIX] we see one such captive specimen emerging from his temporary prison at the instance of the attendant who has pulled up the wicker gate of the cage. The lion’s satisfaction at his release is shown by the alacrity with which he sallies forth, little conscious of the doom in front of him. Though the end seems always to have been the same, the method by which the end was accomplished varied from time to time. Thus on one occasion the king is seen thrusting his long-shafted spear into the lion’s back, himself securely mounted in his chariot; at another time he is on foot, and is almost playfully stabbing the lion in the neck with his dagger, but the more usual way—no doubt, because the safest—of dispatching big game, and lions in particular, seems to have been by means of the bow and arrow which could be brought into play at a respectful distance. In Pl. [XIX] we see a number of lions thus transfixed; their various positions, some of which are sublimely natural, while others appear rather imaginative, all speak eloquently and in moving terms of that common tragedy to which all the animal world, whether human or bestial must some day become victims,—the tragedy of death. One lion is seen transfixed by four arrows, two of which are deeply lodged in the lion’s neck, a third in the centre of the head, and the last in the middle of the back. The lion is prostrate, his four legs dragging helplessly behind and underneath his massive body, while his face bespeaks the death-agony in which he lies convulsed. Above, on the left, another animal has been incapacitated, if not mortally wounded, by two arrow wounds, one in the neck and the other in the back, while a little lower down to the right, a lioness smitten through the lungs has rolled over helplessly on her back. At the bottom of this unique scene we have another lion transfixed by some five arrows, most of which are lodged in or about the animal’s head; like the lioness he has sunk over on his back, his limbs being contorted almost beyond recognition. To the left we have the full hind-quarters of a lion who is springing up in a frenzy of rage excited by an arrow-wound in the back. Last of all in the bottom left-hand corner another lion is seen in the act of expiring as the result of his wounds. But whatever end befell the unfortunate lion, he seems to have been attended with ceremonial rites at the last, his body was conveyed home by three or four male servants, and stretched upon the ground, after which the king himself pours a libation over the silent, motionless animal, whose grandeur in death is only surpassed by his energy in life (cf. Pl. [XX]).
The large majority of the visitors to the Assyrian Saloon in the British Museum, where these masterpieces of animal reproduction are arranged, have never witnessed a lion hunt in real life, but none can go away without having an ineffaceable impression left on his mind of the grimness of such a scene, of which the reality is here so graphically portrayed. Lion-hunting was doubtless the favourite sport of the Assyrian kings, but other game also engaged the royal patronage, notably deer, wild asses and bulls. Ashur-naṣir-pal has left us a sculpture in which he is represented hunting wild bulls from his chariot, and in Pl. [XX] we have a bas-relief from Ashur-bani-pal’s palace on which a wild-ass hunt is seen in full progress. In the upper part of the scene a wild-ass lies helpless on his back, pierced by three arrows, while a fourth arrow is on the wing, though swiftly nearing its appointed goal. To the right we see another ass rushing away in hot haste before the double onslaught of dogs and arrows. To the left two dogs resembling mastiffs are busily engaged in checking the headlong course of a wild ass whose flight has already been retarded by the arrow which has pierced his fore-quarters. Below, a hound of the type already alluded to is in mad pursuit of a young foal. The foal is preceded by a full-grown ass who is turning its head solicitously, possibly in anxiety for its own safety, possibly for that of the young foal behind. The manner in which this latter action has been portrayed by the artist is surprising in its fidelity to nature and its artistic merits. To enable the reader to form a fair and correct estimate of the genius of the Assyrians in the art of animal representation it would be necessary to give reproductions of the whole series of Ashur-bani-pal’s hunting scenes, but it is hoped that sufficient has here been shown to demonstrate their extraordinary ability in this direction.
PLATE XX
Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes: Hunting wild asses with dogs
Not only however are we indebted to Ashur-bani-pal for the animal masterpieces of Assyrian art, but also for one of the few scenes which give us a glimpse into the private and non-official life of the king (cf. Pl. [XXI]). The king is reclining on a magnificently carved couch, while his queen sits bolt upright on a chair immediately opposite; the chair is as elaborate in its way as the couch, as is also the stool upon which her feet repose. In spite of the tropical appearance of the garden in which the feast is spread, the king is covered with a rug, while the queen is clad in richly-woven robes which look anything but cool. A table is set by the side of the couch and in front of the queen’s chair, upon which are laid the royal dainties. Both their majesties are about to quaff the ambrosial nectar with which their low but capacious cups are without doubt filled, but the scene of their banquet is in itself an appetizer: the thick palm trees, the rich clusters of grapes, and the hovering birds all adding a stimulus to the royal digestive faculties. Behind the king stand two attendants with fly-flappers, and another richly carved table upon which the royal weapons are laid. The queen is similarly protected by fly-flappers, behind the bearers of which are other servants laden with oriental luxuries, while in the distance the musicians are playing their voluptuous eastern melodies. The instruments are stringed, as are most of the musical instruments portrayed on Babylonian and Assyrian bas-reliefs, though tambourines, double-pipes, cymbals, drums and trumpets were also apparently known.[96] In spite however of all these intoxicating influences, there remained one other item in the programme—an item which doubtless had the most stimulating effect of all upon the appetite of the great king, i.e. the head of Te-umman of Elam, which hangs from a tree in the king’s immediate line of vision, and no doubt was a most gratifying spectacle to his majesty.
With Ashur-bani-pal Assyrian art as well as her literature reached its climax; with him the limits of the empire were extended further than ever before; but after his reign no slow decadence, but a swift collapse set in which was alike tragic in its significance and momentous in its consequences. It is however not altogether unfitting, either in the case of empires, or in that of individuals, that when the climax is reached, and the highest possibilities are realized, life should not be prolonged for retrogressive purposes, and Assyria was in a large degree saved from this misfortune. The memory of her greatness and of her wide influence was in no way marred by a long period of decline, her time was up and her end came, but the reason was to be found rather in those indomitable circumstances of fate and external environment than in a radical and internal demoralization. We have no reliefs of the Neo-Babylonian period worth recording, with the exception of the coloured clay reliefs which we shall consider in the chapter on painting.
