In the inventory we are compiling of the various methods used by the Semites of Mesopotamia to address the intellect through the eyes, we shall consecrate a chapter to painting for form’s sake. The kind of representation we call by that name was no more known to the Assyrians and Chaldæans than it was to the Egyptians.[347] They loved brilliant colours, but they only made use of them for what was, in fact, illumination; they coloured figures and ornaments, but they never painted, as the word is understood in all modern languages.
In our endeavours to explain how the Mesopotamian architect disguised, under a robe of gay tints, the poverty of the materials with which he was forced to work, we showed that he employed colour in two different ways, according to the place occupied in the building by the wall he had to cover.[348] In the interiors of rooms he was, in most cases, satisfied with spreading upon the plaster a coat of some pigment that could be easily renewed when it began to fade; but in those parts of the building that were exposed to the weather, and even in some rooms that were the objects of particular care, he had recourse to the solidity of enamel. We have pointed out the favourite motives both in the distemper paintings and in the kind of mosaic given by the glazed or enamelled bricks; we have yet to say what tints the enameller used and how he used them. Our coloured plates will give a better idea of this decoration than we can give in words (Plates XIII., XIV., and XV.).[349]
In the carpets still woven in Asia Minor, Kurdistan, Khorassan and Persia there are colours at once brilliant and soft that are a constant delight to the eye of the connoisseur. We may point, for instance, to certain reds and greens at which the manufacturers of Europe gaze in despair, in spite of the resources of modern chemistry. This freshness and solidity of tint is explained by the almost exclusive use of vegetable dyes. These the Kurd or Turkoman extracts from mountain plants, sometimes from the stem or the root, sometimes from the blossom or the seed.[350] These inventions and recipes have been handed down from generation to generation through many ages; the secret of many dyes must have been discovered long before the fall of Nineveh or the beginning of the Babylonian decadence. Down to the very last days of antiquity the dyers of Mesopotamia were famous for their processes and the harmonious splendour of their colours. Since the days of Nebuchadnezzar the people of that region have forgotten much, while they have learnt nothing, perhaps, but how to hasten the depopulation of their country by the use of gunpowder. All the professional skill and creative activity of which they still can boast they owe to the survival of this ancient industry, whose traditions and practical methods are preserved in the hut of the mountaineer, under the tent of the nomad, and in those bazaars where so many agile weavers repeat, with marvellous rapidity of hand and sureness of eye, the designs and motives of thirty or forty centuries ago.
Among the colouring materials still in use in the woollen fabrics of the Levant there can be very few with which the ancients were not acquainted, and perhaps they used some of them in their distemper paintings; but the latter were no more than feeble shadows when discovered, and they soon vanished when exposed to the air. It was different with those that had been subjected to the action of fire. They could be removed and analyzed. But the enameller confined himself almost exclusively to mineral colours, of which alone we can now describe the composition.
The two colours most frequently used were blue and yellow. Backgrounds were nearly always blue (Plates XIII. and XV.), and most of the figures yellow. Certain details were reinforced by touches of black and white. In the brick representing the king followed by his servants (Plate XIV., Fig. 1), the royal tiara is white, the hair, beards, bows, and sandals are black. Red only appears in a few ornamental details (Ibid., Fig. 2). Green is still more rare. It has been found at Khorsabad. In a fragment of painting upon stucco it affords the ground against which the figures are relieved;[351] and in the enamelled brick decoration on the harem wall (Vol. I., Fig. 101), it is used for the foliage of a tree that looks at first sight like an orange tree; its leaves however are rather those of an apple (see Plate XV., Fig. 3).
According to Sir H. Layard, the blue which was spread in such great quantities on the enamelled bricks was given by an oxide of copper mixed with a little lead, the latter metal being introduced in order to render the mixture more fusible.[352] This analysis applies only to the bricks of Nimroud. In the Sargonid period another process, borrowed, perhaps, from Egypt, seems to have been employed. Place tells us that in the course of his excavations he found two blocks of colour in one of the offices at Khorsabad. One of these blocks, weighing some two pounds and a little over, was blue. An artist was at the time engaged in copying in water-colours the decoration of one of the walls covered with enamelled bricks. In order to get as near as possible to the tint of the original the notion occurred to him to make use of the Assyrian blue. But the latter was stubborn and would not mix; it left a vitreous deposit at the bottom of the cup. At first it was supposed that its long sojourn in the earth had deprived it of some of its qualities, but later analysis explained the difficulty in a more satisfactory manner. Its unfitness for use as water-colour was not the result of any alteration. Being intended for use as a glaze or enamel upon pottery, it was composed of lapis-lazuli reduced to powder.[353]
PLATE XIII
From Layard Sulpis sc.
ENAMELLED BRICK FROM NIMROUD