That such works did once exist we are told by the Greek historians. Herodotus, after having described the temple of Bel and the sanctuary on its summit in which no image of the deity was set up, goes on, “In this temple at Babylon there is another sanctuary lower down, where a great seated statue of Zeus may be seen.[231] Near this statue there is a large table of gold, the throne and its steps are of the same material. The whole, according to the Chaldæans, is worth eight hundred talents of gold ... at one time the sacred inclosure also contained a statue of massive gold twelve cubits high. I did not see it. I content myself with repeating what the Chaldæans told me about it. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, formed a project to carry it off, but he did not dare to execute it. Xerxes, the son of Darius, caused the priest to be put to death by whom the enterprise was opposed, and took possession of the statue.” We here have the evidence of an eye-witness. The seated statue of Bel, without being of the colossal size ascribed by the Chaldæans to the image destroyed by Darius, must yet, if we may judge from the expression of Herodotus, have been larger than nature. We may gather some notion as to its pose and general appearance from certain figures carved upon the cylinders (Fig. 40), just as, in Greece, the more famous and venerable of her religious statues were reproduced upon coins and gems. As to this Babylonian statue, the one doubt we have relates to the value put upon it by the Chaldæans. Had the statue and its surroundings really been of massive gold, would the Persians have spared it when the other was overthrown and broken up? It is possible that in spite of the historian’s assertion the work he describes was only gilded bronze.
And as for the image twelve cubits high, we may express the same doubts. Ctesias seems to have received better information as to how these figures were made than Herodotus, and, through Diodorus, he tells us that they consisted of metal plates beaten into shape with the hammer.[232] Whether Ctesias or his informants did or did not exaggerate their true dimensions (Diodorus speaks of a Bel forty feet high), or whether these figures were of gold or gilded brass, is of comparatively slight importance; we are interested chiefly in the information he gives as to the method of fabrication. Ever since the discovery of the Balawat gates proved to what a height the student art of Assyria carried the manipulation of metal by the repoussé process, we have had no difficulty in believing that the sculptors of Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar could build up images of colossal size and fine decorative effect by means of plaques united with rivets. If we may believe the rest of Diodorus’s description, the Chaldæan artists combined the glory of gold and silver with the purity of ivory and the bright and varied colours of precious stones. And all this we see good reason to admit when we have examined at the British Museum those ivories in which lapis lazuli and other substances of the same kind even now fill up the hollows of the design, while the field still glitters here and there with some last fragments of the gold with which it was once incrusted. The skilful workmen who discovered the secret of this kind of mosaic, may very well have learnt to combine these beautiful materials so well that the statues upon which they were used would even have rivalled the chryselephantine masterpieces of Phidias; in richness and harmony of tones, at least, if not in nobility and purity of form.
§ 6. Assyrian Sculpture.
Assyrian sculpture is far from leading us into the remote centuries from which some of the Chaldæan works must date. It had no period of infancy or childish effort. The Semites of the north were the pupils of their southern brothers, from whom they obtained an art already mature. The oldest known Assyrian monument dates from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I., or about the end of the twelfth century B.C.; it is a bas-relief chiselled upon a rock near the sources of the Tigris, about fifty miles north of Diarbekir and near the village of Korkhar. It represents the king standing upright, his right hand extended and his left holding a sceptre; at present, however, we only know it by the very poor sketch given by Professor Rawlinson.[233] It is almost the only monument extant from the time when the capital of the monarchy was on the site now known as Kaleh-Shergat. One other may be named, the female torso in the British Museum, to which we have already referred;[234] on it the name of Assurbilkala, who succeeded Tiglath-Pileser I., may be read.
The monumental history of Assyria really begins two centuries later, with the great buildings erected by Assurnazirpal at Calah (Nimroud), his favourite residence. Assyrian art then reached a level that, speaking generally, it never surpassed. In the following centuries it innovated, it became more complex and certainly more refined, but it produced nothing essentially nobler than certain Nimroud bas-reliefs, in which the king is seated among his great officers or before his gods, and always in the attitude of prayer and sacrifice. We have already given several examples of these reliefs (Vol. I. Fig. 4, and above, Figs. 15 and 64); we may here add one more (Fig. 113). Leaning on his bow with his left hand, the king, richly dressed, lifts in his right the patera whose contents he is about to pour as a libation to the deity. Facing him stands a gigantic eunuch, who waves over his master’s head one of those fly-flappers that, with the parasol, have always been among the insignia of Oriental royalty (see Plate X.).
These figures are rather short in their proportions, and the muscular development of their arms, which alone are bare, is violently exaggerated, but yet as a whole the work has a certain grandeur and nobility. The lines are well balanced. Both the king and his attendant seem fully impressed with the gravity of the rite over which they are busy. There is dignity in their attitudes, but no stiffness; their gestures are easy and expressive without being too much accented. In our engraving we have only been able to include the two isolated figures, in the original there are several more all occupied over the same rite. Even the British Museum has only a few fragments from these vast compositions. For those who saw them in their original completeness, well lighted and distributed in their right order along the walls of spacious saloons, they must have seemed majestic enough.
In his palace decorations the Assyrian artist set himself to free his figures from all unnecessary surroundings and to simplify his theme as much as he could. But we must make a distinction between those reliefs that may be called historical, such as the pictures of battles and sieges, and those in which the king is shown in the accomplishment of some duty belonging to his position, and part of his daily or periodical routine. It is to the latter class that the most carefully-executed works belong. In these no particular locality is specified; like that of the Panathenaic procession, it is left undetermined, and the mind of the spectator is silently invited to fill it in for himself. Those who frequented the palace were accustomed to see the king upon his throne, or traversing the wide quadrangle, or pouring libations on the altar that stood in front of the temple; so that they had no difficulty in imagining all that the sculptor had left unsaid. In the hunting pictures the same method was followed with but little modification. A flat surface suggesting the unbroken expanse of the desert, was the only indication of a locus in quo.
Fig. 113.—Assurnazirpal offering a libation. Height 7 feet 8 inches. British Museum.
Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.