Fig. 82.—Slaves carrying a lion and birds. Bas-relief from Khorsabad (after Place).
Next to the lion, the Assyrian artist takes the greatest pleasure in representing the horse. In one scene it is the wild horse, starting and bounding as he is caught by the lasso of the hunters; in another it is the war-horse, dashing at full gallop towards the enemy, and ridden by a warrior who draws his bow or brandishes his lance; or again it is the draught-horse, harnessed to the royal chariot, trampling corpses under his feet, or drawing the heavy waggons in which the booty from the enemy’s country is transported into Assyria. Such was the skill of the artist, that naturalists have been able to decide from the study of the bas-reliefs what breeds of horses were produced in Assyria. The dog, the goat and the sheep, the ibex and the wild boar, the bison and the wild ass, the deer and the gazelle, the camel and the dromedary, are also among the animals which frequently occur in the bas-reliefs designed to perpetuate the memory of particularly successful hunting expeditions, or of the capture of herds belonging to a vanquished people. The artist took pleasure in placing them in the most fanciful attitudes, sometimes with the happiest effect. It was also his delight to introduce in procession the figures of foreign animals, sent to the King of Assyria by tributary nations, such as the elephant, the ape, and the rhinoceros. But the rarity of such animals in Mesopotamia explains the peculiar clumsiness of the Assyrian sculptor in the reproduction of them. Here are apes treated with an almost grotesque naïveté; they look like men disguised in the skins of animals, and trying to walk on all fours (fig. 83).
Fig. 83.—Envoy bringing apes as tribute (Bas-relief from Nimroud, British Museum).
Among birds we find the eagle, the vulture and the gerfalcon hovering heavily and ungracefully over the battlefields, though the anatomical details of these birds are sometimes executed with skill.[38] The ostrich, a sacred bird, appears on cylinders and among the embroidered designs on official robes. Locusts, that plague of the whole East, figure in the character of offerings to the gods, and, no doubt, represent legions of evil spirits. In the rivers eels, crabs, and fish are placed. In the field, on the mountains, or on the river-banks we find palms and trees of every species, onions, ears of corn, lotus-flowers, vines, marsh-plants. But if the scrupulous imitation of nature sometimes leaves nothing to be desired in these sculptured forms, ignorance of the laws of perspective has forced the artist to employ devices of childish simplicity. Thus, to indicate that trees grow on each side of a stream, he has placed them upright on the further bank, and stem downwards on the nearer.
In the same way, when he wishes, for instance, to show us what passes within the enclosure of a fortress (see [fig. 57]), he is reduced to display it on the ground with the bastions and battlements in profile around it, turned outward like the points of a coronet; at the same time he arranges all his scenes within this enclosure in divisions one above the other, without regard for the laws of proportion, and without even taking the trouble to contain himself, as he has done with regard to the enclosure, within the spaces marked out by radii starting from the centre. By a further neglect of perspective, in the representation of an ox or other horned animal, he places the horn in profile projecting forwards from the head.
Besides the bas-reliefs which were displayed upon the walls of the palace-chambers, there were secondary pieces of sculpture in which the originality of the Assyrian genius comes to light. A notable example is found in the decoration of the thresholds of the palaces, which were carved in such a way that they looked like rich carpets. One of the most remarkable of these is a large slab of gypsum found at Kouyunjik, (fig. 84), in which the lotus or tulip-flower is combined with rosettes, open daisies and geometrical designs most harmonious in effect; nothing more elegant in decorative sculpture has ever been conceived.
To sum up, Assyrian sculpture triumphs in the bas-relief, and in the patient and minute labour of ornamental design. If the work of the Ninevite chisel is compared to that of the Greeks in the archaic period, down to the appearance of the Æginetan school, a surprising affinity will be observed between them. The stela of Aristion, that primitive Athenian bas-relief, known under the incorrect name of the Warrior of Marathon, looks, at first sight, as if it had been taken from the walls of Sargon’s or Sennacherib’s palace. At Khorsabad a cippus, acquired by Victor Place, is adorned with parallel flutings terminating in a hemisphere of elegant palmettes; it presents the appearance of a Greek stela.[39]