SCULPTURE IN THE ROUND
For the study of early Sumerian sculpture in the round, we unfortunately have not much material at hand. As has been already stated, both the Babylonians and Assyrians excelled in bas-relief work rather than in full rounded sculpture, and what they excelled in, that they practised most; in spite of this fact however, both peoples were alive to the superiority of sculpture in the round, but the difficulties involved in producing work of this kind prevented such work being undertaken save for exceptional purposes, hence they never attained a very high degree of excellence in this department of art. Of the earlier Sumerian period we have hardly any complete
Fig. 32. (A. J. S. L., XXI, pp. 59, ff.) statues, and the paucity of such makes those that have survived the more valuable. One of the most interesting of these is that of Esar king of Adab (Bismâya), which was discovered during the course of the American excavations on that site,[97] and is now preserved in the Imperial Ottoman Museum, Constantinople (cf. Fig. [32]). It is made of marble and weighs two hundred pounds. In height it measures just under thirty-five inches, the circumference of the skirt being close upon thirty-two inches. The latter is heavily plaited and is a replica of the garment in which the Sumerians portrayed on the earliest monuments are always clad. The type of face in like manner attests its great antiquity; the bald head, the aquiline nose forming a straight line with the forehead, the triangular eye-sockets which were at one time inlaid with ivory, all being characteristic features of the most ancient Sumerian attempts at human portraiture. The king bears an inscription upon his right shoulder written in a very archaic and semi-pictorial script, from which we learn the name of the king, and also of the city over which he ruled. It was discovered at a great depth below the surface of the mound, among the ruins of a temple constructed of the small plano-convex bricks characteristic of the pre-Ur-Ninâ buildings. A particularly interesting
Fig. 33. (Déc. en Chald., Pl. I, ter. No. 3.) feature about this unique monument is that the arms are free from the body, whereas in nearly all Mesopotamian statues they are joined up to the sides. The hands are clasped in front as is the case in so many Sumerian statues and reliefs of all periods, while the feet are embedded in the pedestal to enable them to support the short, thick-set and heavy body, which was apparently a peculiarity of the Sumerian physique.
Unfortunately we have hardly any complete figures of early Sumerian women, the little stone statuette in Fig. [33] gives us however some idea of the appearance and dress of women in early Babylonia. Her features conform to the usual Sumerian type, while her long hair is tied with a fillet which surrounds her head and gathers up her flowing tresses at the back.
But the three archaic stone heads (cf. Pl. [XXII]) which were unearthed at Tellô enable us to form a somewhat more complete estimate of the artistic ability of the sculptors of that age in regard to the portrayal of the human face and head. The head on the right closely resembles the central one, both of which exhibit a more advanced style of art than that exhibited in the head on the left, which is, however, the most interesting of the three. It was discovered on the other side of the Shatt-el-Hai, the canal which connects the Tigris with the Euphrates; unlike the others, the aquiline nose is perfectly preserved, the eyes are as usual large and shaped like almonds, and were doubtless at one time inlaid with shell and coloured, while the lips betray a suppressed smile; the type of face is exactly the same as that seen on the Vulture Stele, though the details are of course more precise, as might be expected from a work in the round.
| PLATE XXIIb |
| Musée du Louvre: Déc. en Chald., Pl. 6, 1-3 |
| Archaic Limestone heads |
| Fig. 34.— | A. (Louvre, Cat., p. 217; Déc. en Chald., Pl. 6, Fig. 3.) |
| B. (Comptes Rendus, 1907, p. 398; Délég. en Perse Mém., X, Pl. 1.) | |
| C. (Louvre, Cat., p. 227; Déc. en Chald., Pl. 8 (bis), 4.) |
In Fig. [34], A, we have an alabaster head of an early Sumerian woman; the face belongs to the same type as that to which the male heads in Pl. [XXII] conform. The ears, so prominent in the case of the clean-shaven male heads, are here entirely concealed by the tresses of hair which hang in thick horizontally streaked lines about her forehead, head and neck. The hair is kept in its place by means of a fillet fastened at the back. The large eye-holes must have at one time been inlaid, probably with lapis lazuli in the case of a woman as here. The eyebrows are sculptures in relief, and not incised as is the case in other early Sumerian sculptures.
Other early specimens of Babylonian sculpture are to be found in the various statues of Manishtusu discovered during the course of the excavations carried on by the French Mission to Susa, one of which is reproduced in Fig. [34], B. Manishtusu was a Semitic king of Kish and probably reigned about 2700 B.C.; the statue here shown is consequently one of the earliest examples of Semitic sculpture in the round as yet known, and according to De Morgan[98] is the most ancient work of art as yet discovered on the old Persian sites. Even at this early date we see traces of that Semitic conventionalism so prevalent in the later Assyrian era. The square face, the large eyes, the coiffure and the long symmetrically arranged beard here seen, all being prominent features in Assyrian representations of kings and potentates. The pupils of the eyes were black and were fixed in their sockets by means of bitumen, as was frequently the case in these early sculptures. The statue is made of alabaster, and the inscription on the back is written in archaic line characters.
This age was followed by a period during which the sculptor’s art gradually made itself master of the means at its disposal. This transition period is well illustrated by an alabaster statuette of a seated woman reproduced in Fig. [34], C. The advance which the configuration of her face shows on the archaic head in Fig. [34], A, is at once obvious: the stereotyped eyes have become less exaggerated and more natural, the lips are more womanly, the nose less obtrusive. Her long hair hangs naturally and loosely down her back, while a thick fillet encircles her head. Her long robe covers the whole of her body from neck to ankle, and she holds in her hands a round-shaped vase which probably contains a libation for the gods. This little statuette is just over seven inches high.
But it was not till the middle of the third millennium B.C. i.e. the age of Gudea, patesi of Lagash, that sculpture in the round assumed a prominent part in the artistic life of the people, and it was not till then that the sculptor seems to have regularly aspired to reproducing human figures at quasi-life size, fashioning them at the same time out of the hardest volcanic rocks. In Pl. [XXIII], A, B we have reproductions of two of the decapitated statues found by De Sarzec at Tellô. Eight of these statues, some of which are in a standing posture, while others are seated, bear inscriptions of Gudea, patesi of Lagash; one of the remaining two being inscribed with the name of his predecessor, Ur-Bau. The majority of these statues are under life-size, but the dimensions of one of them at least considerably exceed those of an ordinary man. The statue here represented (Pl. [XXIII], A) is the most artistically conceived of the series; it possesses both grace and force, and shows very little trace of the conventionalism so noticeable in later Assyrian sculptures, the feet being the only inanimate and truly conventional part of the production. The arms are strong and sinewy, but the muscles are perfectly naturally executed, and contrast very favourably with the exaggerated muscles of the royal statues of Assyria. The hands are folded in token of submission to the goddess Nin-harsag, to whom this statue was seemingly dedicated. Among the epithets applied to this goddess here, are “Lady of the Mountains,” “protectress of the town and mother of its inhabitants,” and lastly, “mother of the gods.” This statue is made of green diorite and is just over four feet high.
In Pl. [XXIII], B we have another statue of Gudea, this time seated. The chief peculiarity about this and its companion statue, both of which are in the Louvre, lies in the flat tablet which each of them carries on their knees. On one of these tablets a regular plan of Gudea’s buildings has been engraved, showing various doors, crenelated towers, and so forth, together with the carpenter’s rule and stylus, which are similarly engraved on the knee-tablet of the statue reproduced here. The most striking feature in the sculpture itself is the boldness with which the nude limbs are carved, and the nervous vitality with which they abound. This is especially noticeable in the treatment of the right arm and shoulder, which the arrangement of the mantle leaves exposed. The cartouche on the shoulder contains the name and titles of Gudea. The lengthy inscription below records that this statue has been dedicated to the goddess Gatumdug, who is styled “the mother of Shirpurla” (= Lagash), it then treats of the various rites and ceremonies with which the building of the temple of this goddess was accompanied. This statue, like the standing one in Pl. [XXIII] A, is made of diorite. Several of the heads belonging to these statues have been brought to light, one of which is seen in Pl. [XXIII], C. The head which is decked with a variegated turban is again remarkable for its strength and the boldness with which it is executed; the eyes are large and wide open, a noticeable characteristic in all Mesopotamian art, whether early or late; the eyebrows are heavy, and the chin firm, while the jaws are thick-set and make the general contour of the face square. The absence of due proportion in all these early Babylonian sculptures is at once manifest: they one and all have a more or less squat appearance, the breadth being always too great proportionally for the height, while the head is too large for the body and the latter is too thin from back to front. But when all the failings incidental to the products of an inexperienced art are duly taken into consideration, there is a certain fidelity to nature, and consequently a degree of life observable in the crudest of these early Babylonian sculptures which at once raises them to a higher level than the Assyrian statues to which they unconsciously gave birth. The accentuation of the strong lines and curves of the earlier sculptures in the later products of Assyrian times, has merely led to exaggeration, and the effect is inevitably stereotyped and unnatural.
PLATE XXIII
Musée du Louvre
| A, B. | Diorite Statues of Gudea, Patesi of Lagash |
| C. | Diorite Head of Gudea |
| D. | Upper part of a Diorite statuette of a woman (Gudea Period) |
In Pl. [XXIII], D, however, we have the upper part of a diorite figure of a woman belonging to about the same period as Gudea, which has to a great extent lost the heavy and massive appearance so noticeable in the statues of the patesi, and possesses both grace and beauty. The dress will be considered in a subsequent chapter, and it will be sufficient to here call attention to the singularly natural manner in which the folds of the garment are represented. During the interval between the epoch associated with the name of Gudea and that rendered illustrious by Ashur-naṣir-pal and the Assyrian kings, the practice of sculpturing in the round appears to have fallen largely into desuetude, if we may judge from the extreme paucity of the material that has come down to us, and it is not till the time of the Assyrian Empire that we are able again to make a detailed study of the sculptor’s art in Mesopotamia.
One of the earliest examples of Assyrian sculpture in the round is reproduced in Pl. [XXIV], B. It is a torso of a female figure, who bears upon her back an inscription of Ashur-bel-kala, king of Assyria, whose reign may be assigned to the first half of the eleventh century B.C. It was discovered at Kouyunjik, and is now in the British Museum. The size is somewhat below that of life; but in spite of the fact that the proportions are bad, the body between the legs and arms being too short, this sculpture, when compared with the generality of Assyrian attempts to reproduce human beings, is at once striking for the natural manner in which the artist’s conception of feminine beauty is realized, and as such is entirely unique in the realm of Assyrian sculpture.
The remains of another very early Assyrian sculpture[99] in the round were discovered in the course of the German excavations at Ashur. Unfortunately the head, hands and feet of this statue are missing, but the small part of the head which is preserved, though having an abundance of hair shows no trace of the elaborate curls of later days, the beard being represented by a series of twelve or more corrugated strands, thereby recalling the Babylonian statues of the Khammurabi period. The clothing consists of a close-fitting garment made of a simple fine-textured material, and is decorated with a fringe.
Of Assyrian royal statues that of Ashur-naṣir-pal (cf. Pl. [XXIV], C) is the best preserved and the most successful. It is made of hard limestone, and measures three feet four inches in height; it was found in a broken condition along with the limestone pedestal upon which it once stood, and it now stands upon the same original pedestal in the Nimrûd Gallery of the British Museum. The total height of the statue with the pedestal is five feet eleven and a half inches. Fortunately none of the fragments of the figure were missing, and consequently it was possible to restore the statue so perfectly as to render it one of the finest Assyrian statues in existence. The king stands there, the very incarnation of impassive dignity and imperturbable majesty, and it is strange how impressive the motionless can at times be. It would perhaps be hardly true to employ such words as “life” or “animation” in attempting to describe this sculpture, but it possesses something even higher than external vigour and vitality, it has a force, an indescribable “reserve of strength,” which the absence of anything like aggressive activity only serves to enhance. The king is clad in long and elaborately made robes which reach down to his toes. The beard and hair, both of which are rich and profuse, are curled with much care and precision. The king holds in his right hand a sickle-shaped object, which is presumably meant to be a sceptre, while in his left he holds a mace with a tassel at the lower end. His left arm is concealed by the fold of his outer mantle, but the right is bare with the exception of a wrist-bracelet. The type of face bears all the acknowledged Assyrian characteristics; large, wide-open eyes, a curved nose, and the wealth of hair to which we have just referred. The proportions are fairly accurate, though the depth or thickness of the body from back to front is as usual, not sufficiently great. The king has an inscription carved upon his breast, the text of which, after having given the name and genealogy of Ashur-naṣir-pal, goes on to recount the triumphant achievements of the king in the extension of his dominion over the whole country between the river Tigris and Lebanon, and concludes by stating that he has made all the countries from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun to submit to his feet.
PLATE XXIV
| Statue of Nebo | Torso of a Woman | Statue of Ashur-naṣir-pal |
| (From Dieulafoy, “L’Art Antique de la Perse,” Vol. 3. Pl. 12) | ||
Fig. 35.—Shalmaneser II. (British Museum.)
Ashur-naṣir-pal’s son and successor, Shalmaneser II, has bequeathed to us one of the comparatively few examples of an Assyrian seated figure sculptured in the round (cf. Fig. [35]). The decapitated figure, which is a representation of Shalmaneser II himself, is made of black basalt, and it was discovered at Ḳalat Sherḳat (Ashur). The inscription on the throne, which is partially effaced, gives the name and titles of the king, enumerates his various conquests in Babylonia, and also contains an allusion to the statue itself. It is interesting to compare this figure with the seated and likewise decapitated figures of Gudea a millennium or so earlier (cf. Pl. [XXIII], B). Both are made of a hard volcanic stone, and the garment in which each of these Eastern rulers is clad reaches down to the ankles, though the end of Shalmaneser’s skirt is however decorated with a fringe, while Gudea’s is quite plain. Both figures are seated on a simple kind of throne such as is very frequently encountered on cylinder-seals, but there are certain striking points of difference between the two statues. The Sumerian Gudea has no beard, while the Semitic king of Assyria has a long square beard, and Gudea’s arms are moreover clasped in a reverential attitude across his breast, while Shalmaneser’s arms are apparently resting easily upon his lap. The feet which in each case rest upon a plinth, are well portrayed in both figures, though what advantage there is is clearly on the side of the earlier Babylonian sculpture.
Another good example of Mesopotamian sculpture in the round at about this time is afforded by the two statues of the god Nebo which were excavated by Rassam in the ruined temple of Adar at Nimrûd, one of which is reproduced in Plate [XXIV], A. They were made by a certain governor of the city of Calah (Nimrûd), and were dedicated to the god in the hope of thereby ensuring length of days to Adad-nirari III, king of Assyria from 812-783 B.C., the queen Sammuramat, and incidentally to himself also. The mention of Sammuramat is interesting as she is supposed to be the original of the Semiramis of later Greek and Roman writers. The god is apparelled in a simple robe confined at the waist, the arms being left uncovered and free. He wears both a moustache and a beard, the latter being curled and waved, as is also the long hair of his head. The horned cap of the gods furnishes his natural head-gear, and his wrists are encircled with the rosette-patterned bracelets in which both kings and gods seem to have delighted, while his hands are clasped upon his breast. The inscription chiselled all round the lower part of his robe, is chiefly concerned with a rehearsal of all the wonderful attributes and gracious deeds of Nebo, and ends with an exhortation to all future generations to put their trust in Nebo, and not in any other god.
But neither the Babylonian nor the Assyrian sculptors confined their attention to human beings, any more than did the bas-relief artists. They also attempted the reproduction of animals, mythical or real as the case may be, with varying degrees of success. The animal that seems to have more or less monopolized their artistic capacity in this direction was the lion. We have already seen the important part played by the lion in the heraldic arms of Lagash, in the coloured decoration of walls, and in the bas-reliefs which adorned the interiors of Assyrian palaces, as well as in the decoration of various objects such as mace-heads and stone bowls, and we are accordingly not surprised to find examples of the lion realized in hard stone and worked in the round. The early specimens are for the most part small, and as a rule only the heads are preserved. The dates of most of these heads are uncertain as there is generally no inscription, but fortunately there are some exceptions. Like the majority of the earlier specimens of Sumerian art, they nearly all come from Tellô and were excavated by M. De Sarzec. One of the best preserved is reproduced in Fig. [36], A. Only one side of the lion’s head has survived, but it is sufficient to demonstrate the success with which the Sumerian sculptor treated his subject. The arrogance and impassive majesty of the lion are here realized more impressively than is the case with the lions of many a European artist; this notwithstanding, the spirit of conventionalism has already crept in as a thief, though it has as yet only made its presence felt in the hem of the garment so to speak. The head itself is entirely unmarred by any deteriorating influence, but the treatment of the mane is in a measure the victim of the force of habit, which, in spite of the common saying that it is “second nature,” is as a matter of fact as unnatural as it can be in its effect upon art. It is formed somewhat after the pattern of the “kaunakes” material used in the manufacture of early Sumerian garments.
Fig. 36.—A (Déc. en Chald., Plate 24, I); B, C (after Heuzey).
The remains of another stone lion bearing an inscription of Gudea, from which we gather that the lion in question formed part of the decoration of the door through which access was gained to the sanctuary of the goddess Gatumdug were recovered from the same site. This lion[100] shows still further the subtle influence of conventionalism in the manner in which the hair on the lower part of the belly is portrayed, a series of triangles, such as is often seen in the figures of lions on the cylinder-seals, representing a fringe of long hair. Many of the lion-heads discovered at Tellô were provided with holes for the insertion of a peg, and probably served for lower supports of the back of thrones. One of these lion-heads is of especial interest as it bears the name of Ur-Ninâ, the founder of the first dynasty of Lagash,[101] while a second mentions Magan, the uncertain district whence the Babylonians procured their stone. Another early animal sculpture of some considerable interest was discovered by Captain Cros at Tellô in 1904 (cf. Fig. [36], B). It represents a recumbent dog—apparently of the mastiff breed, and identical in species with those figured on Ashur-bani-pal’s bas-reliefs: the length of the dog is only about four inches, its height just under three and a half inches, and it is two inches thick, but the interest attaching to it lies in the fact that it bears an inscription of one Sumu-ilu, a king of Ur who probably reigned towards the close of the third millennium B.C., but of whom little else is known, and whose name had not even been heard of before the discovery of this little black stone dog. The material used for this sculpture is steatite, and the dog’s back is pierced with a hole which served as a stand for a cylindrical steatite vase. The hole and the vase are apparently of later date than the dog itself.[102]
Another very interesting example of early Babylonian sculpture in the round is that of a small human-headed bull[103] (cf. Fig. [36], C) now preserved in the Louvre. It is, as it were, the archetype or prototype of those winged human-headed bulls and lions placed at the entrances of palaces to guard against maleficent demons. The pose of the bull is one that is entirely natural, and recalls the semi-recumbent calves on Entemena’s silver vase (cf. Figure [45]), but the body of the animal lacks the intense realism of the earlier animal representations. He wears a long vertically streaked beard, which is flanked on either side by plaits of hair, and his head is surmounted by a cap with four pairs of horns.
In the centre of his back there is a hole which doubtless once served as a socket for some votive object or figure as seems so frequently to have been the case; but the particular interest of this little sculpture lies in the shell inlay work on the back. The figure itself is made of black steatite, the inlay work consisting of yellow shell, and we have as a result a somewhat grotesquely marked bull. Sometimes animals were carved in wood, a good example of which is the little wooden lion in the Louvre, but the remains of Babylonian or Assyrian wood-carving are far too scanty to enable us to undertake a study of their work in this direction.
In later times sculpture in the round, which had never been popular with the artists of Mesopotamia owing to the obvious difficulty of procuring the necessary material in the first instance, and in the second to the nature of the work itself and the obstacles which had to be surmounted in the realization of that work, went almost entirely out of fashion. There remain, however, a few examples of sculptured animals to be considered, among the first and foremost of which are those colossal human-headed winged-bulls and lions which guarded the entrances of the palaces of Ashur-naṣir-pal and Sargon (cf. Pl. [XXV]). They are, it is true, neither bas-reliefs nor round sculptures, but a combination of the two, whereby the artist has endeavoured to create a perfectly natural and complete effect from every point of vision, and his efforts have met with the success which they deserved. The means he has employed to produce this satisfactory result is the provision of each of these extraordinary monsters with a fifth leg, though all these winged monsters were not so provided, the principal exceptions being the four-legged bulls in Sennacherib’s palace at Kouyunjik. The difficulty with which the artist found himself encountered, and which was obviated by the above-mentioned device, lay in the inability of four legs of natural proportions to support a stone body of the gigantic size demanded by the architectural requirements for which these creatures were destined to be used. In short, a pure round sculpture of a lion or bull of the portentous size desired was a literal impossibility, and relief accordingly had to come into play, it being merely a question of how far the relief should be low or high, and the higher it was the more it of course approximated to the round, and realized what was presumably the artist’s real intention. The creation of a satisfactory front view of these animals involved no difficulty, for the visibility of the two front legs was all that was necessary, and the drawback of the space between the legs being occupied with the solid mass of stone which supported the animal and out of which it was sculptured in high relief, was comparatively slight and negligible. But the satisfactory portrayal of the animal from the side aspect was fraught with much greater difficulty. Normally the two near legs of a quadruped viewed from the side, by no means exclude the two legs on the off-side from one’s vision. The artist was clearly conscious of the difficulty which here confronted him and he has devised an ingenious means, indeed the only means under the circumstances for surmounting this inherent difficulty. He has provided the lion or the bull, as the case may be, with a fifth leg with the satisfactory result that viewed from either standpoint the animal’s action or inaction is conceived in a perfectly natural fashion. From the front the winged monster is seen in a stationary attitude, his two fore legs firmly planted together on the ground, while from the side, on the other hand, the animal is walking along in an entirely normal and life-like manner. These winged monsters were placed on either side of the portals of the king’s palace and they helped to support the palace walls. But the object which they were supposed to serve, and the duties which they were expected to perform, were not of the purely architectural or even of the decorative order, their vocation, though embracing all these minor functions, involved the fulfilment of yet higher obligations, for they were destined to ward off the attacks of malicious spirits from the nether world. Esarhaddon, king of Assyria from 681-668 B.C. specifically states for what purpose these “shedi” or “lamassi”—the Assyrian names for these semi-mythical monsters—were created and made, for example, in one passage—to quote the translation given by Perrot and Chipiez (p. 266)—Esarhaddon says that “the shedi and lamassi are propitious, are the guardians of my royal promenade and the rejoicers of my heart, may they ever watch over the palace and never quit its walls,” and again in another passage he says, “I caused doors to be made in cypress, which has a good smell, and I had them adorned with gold and silver and fixed in the doorways. Right and left of these doorways I caused shedi and lamassi of stone to be set up, they are placed thereto repulse the wicked.” The front parts of these monsters always projected beyond the general line of the wall, the human head and the chest at all events being outside the arch which these animals supported.
Sometimes the winged human-headed monster is flanked by a mythical creature with wings, holding a basket in his left hand, and a cone in his right (cf. Pl. [XXV]), at other times he stands in isolated glory alone. The head is of the familiar type to which one-half of the Assyrian representations of men so rigidly conform, the type characterized by a beard, the other type being beardless: all the royalty and nobility seem to have worn beards, and, according to the Assyrian sculptors, to have had precisely the same features, the numerous beardless figures portrayed on the bas-reliefs representing the humbler classes, and no doubt in some instances eunuchs. The head of this winged colossus is surmounted by a lofty head-dress richly decorated with rosettes, and furnished with two pairs of horns, the ever-present mark of sacro-sanctity. The hair and beard are profuse in their luxuriance, and elaborate in their dressing, while the tail is treated with the like punctilious care. Two enormous wings cover the back, extending their overshadowing protection some way beyond it. The relief in which the body and specifically the legs are raised is very high, and they stand out almost in the round. Many of these gigantic stone animals have been found at Nimrûd, Khorsabad, the capital of Sargon, and Nineveh.
But although the Assyrians show a marked predilection for mythical monsters in their large sculptural achievements in the round or semi-round, they showed themselves capable of conceiving and admirably realizing animals of the normal order; one of the best examples of an Assyrian carved animal is the colossal lion of Ashur-naṣir-pal (cf. Pl. [XXVI]), which is now in the British Museum and once formed part of an entrance to a building. This lion is about eight feet high and thirteen feet long, and bears an inscription like many of the winged human-headed bulls and lions. The lion also has five legs like so many of the latter. The head is carved with great boldness and vigour, although it is a little conventional. The jaws are extended, the upper lip and nostrils being drawn up, and even an unimaginative person may well fancy he can hear a deep roar proceeding from that fierce, wide-opened mouth. His neck is covered with a thick mane and ruffles of stiff hair. To obtain the best view of the sculpture, the view, that is to say, in which the spectator will accord the full measure, or even an over-measure, of justice to the skill of the artist, one must make one’s point of observation on the side. The front aspect is disappointing, as the lion is too thin for its length and height, and is consequently deficient not only in artistic merit, but also in the dignified majesty of which he has ever been the symbolic incarnation. But in spite of these obvious drawbacks, the work as a whole compels admiration and inevitably arrests the attention, for it possesses the “one thing needful”—life. A comparison between the lion’s head, and that of any of the winged human-headed monsters, at once demonstrates the point to which allusion has so frequently been made, the genius which the Assyrians at all times and all periods show in the delineation of animals, and the contrasting laboriousness with which all their representations of human faces are invariably marked. But there is at least one general remark which may fairly be made of Assyrian sculpture, a remark applicable both to human as well as animal sculptures, and that is that whether the subject be natural or mythical, human or bestial, the artist’s product is never without force and never lacks impressiveness, a quality which in our own day is generally made conspicuous by its absence. Other interesting animal-sculptures have been found in Lower Mesopotamia, the most famous of which is the immense black basalt lion on the Ḳasr mound at Babylon (cf. Pl. [XXVII]). It consists of a lion towering over a nude human being lying on the ground, the whole piece being made of basalt. The remains of another stone lion of large proportions were discovered in the course of the recent German excavations at Babylon; thirty fragments of the dolerite of which it was composed have been recovered including a portion of one of the claws, which measures over three inches in length, and proves that the lion must have been of abnormal size, while its general form and appearance would seem to indicate a great age.
PLATE XXVII
The Kasr Lion
(From Dieulafoy, “L’Art Antique de la Perse,” Vol. 3. Pl. 13)
It is indeed well for us that the æsthetic genius of the Babylonians and Assyrians should have found expression in durable stone rather than in some other more perishable material; the difficulties involved in sculpture are admittedly sufficiently great, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the perseverance and determination of those ancient peoples, which led them to conquer and mould for the ultimatization of their ideas, a material which a less determined and a less persevering nation might well have shrunk from attacking.