The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, October 1883

by Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; Chautauqua Institution

In the later Egyptian it is remarkable that with more attempt to imitate nature in the modeling of the muscles, the forms of the trunk and limbs become unnaturally puffed. More is added in symbolic attributes; heads of the cat, the hawk, and the ape, are placed on the human body; the dress is more elaborate, that of the head especially, on which a disc for the sun was often placed, as on the god Osiris. From the fall of Thebes, about 1000 B. C., to the conquest of Egypt by the Persians, 523 B. C., sculpture became more and more degraded, and soon lost its original style of simplicity and grandeur of form.

After some two centuries of rule, the Persians were conquered by Alexander the Great, 332 B. C., but there are no statues of Greek style of this date found in Egypt; under the Ptolemies, his successors for 300 years, new temples of inferior but still Egyptian style were built, such as those at Phile, Edfou, and Denderah, and many statues were made, but nearly all have been destroyed, and there is not one of any king or queen of the Ptolemies.

After Egypt became a Roman province, in 38 B. C., Egyptian sculpture, in a debased form, was still continued upon the decoration of the temples, but the statues were then in the hands of Greek artists. Still later, there is the well-known statue of Antinous as an Egyptian, the work of a Greek sculptor of the time of the Emperor Hadrian (A. D. 117-138).

Assyrian sculpture is a discovery of recent times, first made in 1842-3 by Botta, the French consul at Mosul on the banks of the Tigris, and almost simultaneously by Mr. Layard, who though he had seen the ruins of Nineveh in 1840 did not get permission to examine and excavate till 1845. The sculptures differ widely from any in Egypt in being nearly all in bas-relief and high relief. There are very few statues, carved in the round, that stand either with a support practically or on the legs. There are no colossi nearly approaching in size the Egyptian and Greek colossal statues, none being higher than eighteen feet, while as we have seen sixty feet was a moderate height for an Egyptian or Greek colossal figure, and some were higher. The colossal human-headed bulls and lions with wings, at the portals of the king’s palace, are in high relief on huge slabs, one on each side, facing outwards, and one on each side on the wall, with the head turned to look to the front. It does not appear that any principal figure was set up in an interior, either of these compound animals, or of any deity or king. No colossal seated figures like the Egyptian statues have been found. The standing figures carved in relief differ entirely in the expression of the countenance and motive of the figure from the Egyptian. They have all some action; the king grasps a captured lion, or as chief priest he walks with his staff which he holds firmly, while the left hand rests on the hilt of his sword. It is true that the legs are on one plane, and the feet in a position that could not support the body; still the intention to show action and life is there. There is none of the desire to express majestic, calm, eternal repose and content which is so characteristic of Egyptian sculptured statues. Throughout the great number of slabs in the British Museum and in the Louvre there is a very vigorous descriptive power displayed in carving figures of men, horses, chariots, battles, sieges of cities, hunting scenes, processions, rivers with men swimming on inflated skins, with fish and boats; implements, weapons, chairs, baskets, trees, birds, buildings, with a close resemblance to the real objects that is very distinctive of the Assyrian style. The quadrupeds and birds are much better done than the human figures; the character of some of the mules is faithfully given, and there is much feeling for nature in some of the lions in the hunting-scenes. There is no doubt, also, that this naturalistic realism was carried further by painting the sculptures. In none of these painted reliefs, however, is there anything of the careful carving and delicate delineation of the Egyptian cavi relievi; they are all boldly done, and with a good deal of skill, but by hands that would seem to have been self-taught, and at liberty to represent as they pleased so that the conventional attributes and symbolic objects were duly made clear. There is scarcely any regulated use of typical forms; and in the proportions of the figures especially there is no rule. The principal figures are about 6½ heads high, and in others the heads are often larger, while the arms and legs are out of all proportion gigantic, the muscles being exaggerated into masses at the calf and knee, and the shin-bone absurdly prominent. All truth seems to have been sacrificed for the sake of conveying a violent look of immense strength. The battle scenes remind us of some of the puerile representations by mediæval workmen of a poor style, or the debased Roman work seen on sarcophaguses. The Assyrians, unlike the Egyptians, were “mighty hunters,” consequently horses were favorites with the Assyrian carvers, as they were with the Greek sculptors afterwards; they seldom have more than one fore-leg and one hind one, but their heads are carefully carved, and all the trappings show the same intention to obtain exact resemblance as is displayed in the dress and ornaments of the kings and other figures. It is important to observe that these sculptures are very equal in merit; there is no sign of improvement and little of falling off. As to the date of these sculptures, they are much later than all the Egyptian work of the finer style.

It may be concluded that the Assyrian palaces, with their sculptured walls, took a much shorter time to build than the Egyptian, as they were built of sun-baked bricks, with ornamental slabs below, and wooden beams and columns above, all which structures have perished leaving only the stone slabs. The soft nature of the stone, which is a kind of grey alabaster, extremely suited to carving in the manner employed, afforded the facility that influenced the style and enabled the carvers to indulge their inclination for realistic detail. They do not appear to have sought for fine colored hard stones as the Egyptians did, nor do they show the same desire to make their work monumental and enduring.

Assyrian sculpture was always archaic, though at the same time more vigorous in what might be called graphic sculpture, and truer in imitation of nature than Egyptian, which rarely attempted action in the figure or facial expression. There is, however, no alliance between the two styles, and there was never likely to be, as the Assyrians were not a people of poetic and abstract ideas, but of facts, circumstances, and action. They thought of the present glory, and did not trouble themselves about the future. The same characteristics will partly account for the absence of any kind of reference to a future state. The tree of life with the priest ministering before it and holding fruit is to be seen; but it is remarkable that no sepulchral monuments have been found; no tomb or mark of regard in any shape for the welfare of the dead hereafter has been discovered.

Bearing in mind that the Assyrians were never a statue-making people, and never attempted to follow the example of the Egyptians—do we find them influencing the sculptural art of any other people in work like that of the Assyrians? This question is answered at once by the remains found at Persepolis, where there are to be seen similar winged and human-headed lions and bulls, and sculptured slabs, but no statues either in the round or in alto-relievo.

The ruins of the palaces of Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes, the date of which is from 560 B. C. to the conquests of Alexander the Great (331 B. C.), show only sculptural remains left, after all the soft brick walls and the wooden beams and rafters have long perished. Persian sculptural art since those days never advanced to the dignity of statuary, but like its Assyrian predecessor stopped short where Greek art began to develop. The same is to be observed of that ramification of the Assyrian arts which is to be traced in the building of the temple of Jerusalem under Solomon, which, however, was some five centuries before the time of Cambyses, and about the same length of time after the settling of the Israelites in the Delta of the Nile (1550 B. C.). The law of Moses was sufficient to prevent any sculpture in the likeness of living things; but the cherubim, with their wings, seem to have been borrowed from the Assyrians. The temple was, no doubt, built of stone and cedar-wood after the manner of the Assyrians, and with a profusion of ornament in carving, of valuable marbles, wood, and embossed work in precious metals.

The colossal sculptures in the rock-cut temples of India, whether taken as derived from the Assyrian centre or not, may be classed with that style as semi-barbaric and naturalistic, with a superadded symbolism which only led to the most extravagant deformities of the human figure to express the power and attributes of a deity. Statuary proper never existed in any shape of beauty like the human form, throughout Persia, India, and China, and there is no sign of any disposition amongst the Asiatics to learn the art from their European conquerors; it is not in their nature.