Fig. 68.—Head of a cow, bronze. British Museum. Width across the cheeks 3¾ inches.
A cow’s head in bronze, which was brought from Bagdad by Mr. Rassam, is broad in treatment and of great truth (Fig. 68); the same good qualities are to be found in a terra-cotta tablet found by Sir Henry Rawlinson in the course of his excavations in the Birs-Nimroud (Fig. 69). It represents a man, semi-nude and beardless and with a stout stick in his hand, leading a large and powerfully made dog by a plaited strap. It is a sort of mastiff that might be used for hunting the wild beasts in the desert and marshes, the wild boar, hyena, and panther, if not the lion. The characteristics of the species are so well marked that naturalists have believed themselves able to recognise it as that of a dog which is still extant, not in Mesopotamia indeed, but in Central Asia.[167] We may seek in it for the portrait of one of those Indian hounds kept, in the time of Herodotus, by the Satrap of Babylon. His pack was so numerous that it took the revenues of four large villages to support it.[168]
Similar subjects were represented upon other tablets of the same origin. One of them shows a lion about to devour a bull and disturbed by a man brandishing a mace. Nothing could be more faithful than the action of the animal; without letting go his prey he raises a paw, its claws opened and extended and ready to be buried in the side of the rash person who interrupts his meal.[169]
Fig. 69.—Terra-cotta tablet. British Museum. Height 3⅗ inches.
We may also mention a cylinder which, from its style, M. Ménant does not hesitate to ascribe to the first Chaldæan monarchy. It represents two oxen in a field of wheat. The latter, by a convention that also found favour with the Greeks, is indicated by two of those huge ears that so greatly astonished Herodotus.[170] Was it on a similar principle that the Chaldæan engraver gave his oxen but one horn apiece? In spite of this singularity and the peculiar difficulties offered by work in intaglio on a very hard material, the forms are well understood, and the artist has not been content to give them merely in outline. At the croup and under the belly an effort has been made to model the figure and to mark its thickness.
Judging from their style and inscriptions, several more of these engraved stones may be ascribed to the oldest Chaldæan schools of art, but we are satisfied with again reminding our readers that it was in Lower Mesopotamia that everything had its beginning. We shall take our remaining examples from the richer deposits of Assyria.
Fig. 70.—Cylinder of black marble. National Library, Paris.
Among all those animals that attracted the attention of man either by their size or strength, either by the services they rendered or the terror they caused, there were none that the chisel of the Assyrian sculptor did not treat and treat with taste and skill. With their passion for the chase the kings and nobles of Assyria were sure to love dogs and to train them with scrupulous care.[171] They did more. They employed sculptors in making portraits of them. In the palace of Assurbanipal terra-cotta statuettes of his best dogs have been found (Fig. 71). They belong to the same race as the Chaldæan mastiff above mentioned, but their strength, their fire, I might almost say their ferocity, is better shown in those pictures where they are no longer in a state of repose, but in movement and action. Look at the series of slabs representing the departure for the chase. The hounds are held in the leash by attendants who carry bags on their shoulders for the smaller game (see Fig. 72). Mark the tightened cord, the straining bodies, the tension of every muscle in their desire to get at their quarry! We can almost fancy we hear the deep, confused bayings with which they prelude the regular music of the hunt itself when the game is afoot. These animals are represented with no less truth and vivacity when a kill has taken, or is about to take, place. As an example of this we may point out a relief from the same palace in which two of these bloodhounds launch themselves upon a wild ass whose flight has been arrested by an arrow. The ass still manages to stagger along, but he will not go far; the hounds are already upon him and have buried their teeth in his flanks and croup.[172]