This is proved by the dated contracts to which we have already so often had to refer; but supposing no such contracts to have been in existence we could have arrived at the same conclusion by another path. Cones in calcareous stone, in marble, or even in pietra dura are either wanting altogether, or very few and far between; they are almost all in precious stones, most of them in carnelian and chalcedony. Sapphirine chalcedony, with its fine bluish tint, seems to have been most in favour.
In Egypt we found intaglios upon metal as well as upon lapidary substances.[338] This use of metal was a result of mounting seals in circles of gold or silver. Precious stones were rare and difficult to cut; what could be more natural than to substitute metal for them and to make the bezel of a ring of the same material as its hoop. For its engraving neither lathe nor diamond dust was wanted; the burin alone was necessary, and the figures cut by it gave a result no less satisfactory than those obtained by the slower process and in the more stubborn material. The temptation was great for the Egyptian artist, and we are not surprised that he succumbed to it, but it did not exist for the Chaldæan engraver. The latter had only to deliver a stone which his client could wear fastened to his wrist, or hung round his neck by a cord. He had no direct and intimate relations with the worker in metal; he was not compelled to call in the latter to mount his creation. Sometimes, under the influence perhaps of foreign models, he may have attempted to substitute metal for stone, but isolated attempts did not make a school. We can point to only one example of such work. The British Museum possesses a silver cylinder, but the only interesting thing about it is its material.[339] The composition of the type is naive and its execution rough. All this allows us to believe that metal seals were very rare and never came into general use.
Oriental artists, at least during the period of which we are now speaking, hardly ever practised any kind of gem-cutting but intaglio, but there are two stones in existence in which first attempts at a process that must have led in time to the production of cameos, may be traced. “In one of these gems, an onyx, the upper layer is cut away from the one below it and an inscription left. In the other the eyes and neck of a serpent are rendered with the aid of three different tints in the stone.”[340]
§ 9. The General Characteristics of Chaldæo-Assyrian Sculpture.
We have now reached the end of our inquiry into the history of Mesopotamian sculpture—an inquiry that we have endeavoured to make as complete as the existing remains would allow. So far as Chaldæa is concerned, these are very few in number. On the other hand, the three centuries over which the Assyrian power extended are pictured in such a vast number of reliefs that we are embarrassed by their number as much as by their want of variety. Our difficulty in the case of Assyria has been to make a selection from a vast quantity of objects that tell us the same thing again and again, while, in the case of Chaldæa, it has been to insure that none of the scanty salvage from so great a wreck should be lost. We have more than once had to make induction and conjecture take the place of examination and assertion before we could complete even a rough sketch of the development of Chaldæan art.
There is one question that must have been asked by many of our readers before these pages came in their way, but is now, we venture to hope, fully answered, and that is, whether the Semites of Chaldæa drew their first inspiration from a foreign source, or whether it was an original result from the natural aptitudes of the race. Ancient as civilization may have been in the Euphrates valley, it was still more ancient, to all appearance, in the valley of the Nile. And yet all who have examined the figures we have placed before them must acknowledge the originality and independence of Chaldæan art. No; the sculptors of Memphis and Thebes were not the masters of those of Babylon and Nineveh; they preceded them indeed, but they left them no teaching and no models to copy.
This is proved in the first place by the difference, we might say the opposition, between the two styles. The Egyptian sculptor simplifies, abridges, and summarizes form; the Assyrian amplifies it and accents its details. The former seems to see the human body through a veil of gauze, which hides the accidents of the surface and the secondary forms, allowing nothing to be clearly grasped but the contour and the great leading lines. One would say that the second studied nature through a magnifying-glass; he insists upon what the first slurs over.
This is not the only difference between the two methods and the two interpretations. The Egyptian artist can seize the character of a movement with much justice and vivacity, but he endeavours to ennoble it by giving it a general and typical value. This he does, for example, in the gesture of the king who brandishes his mace or sword over the head of his conquered enemy while he holds him by the hair with his other hand.[341]
He thinks more about elegance in arranging the posture of his figures; look, for instance, at the men and women carrying offerings, at the dancers and musicians who abound in the reliefs and pictures. His favourite attitude, however, is one expressive of force in repose. We cannot deny that in his figures in the round the Mesopotamian sculptor showed the same predilection, but his choice was suggested, or rather imposed, by the resistance of the materials he employed and the necessity of avoiding certain executive difficulties over which he could not triumph. We can hardly see how he could have given his figures more animation or have better expressed the freedom of their limbs and the swing of their bodies; the stones he used were either too hard or too soft, and he was without the needful skill in the management of his tools.
It is in the reliefs, where he is more at his ease, that he allows us to see whither his natural inclinations would lead him. They contain hardly any seated figures. Man is there always on his feet and in action. Movement, to interest the Mesopotamian artist, need not be the expression of an idea, or the cause of graceful lines. It pleases him for its own sake by its freedom and unexpectedness, I am almost tempted to say, by its violence.