Fig. 215.—Bronze platter. Diameter 8 inches. British Museum. Drawn by Wallet.
We gather the same impression from a platter only cleaned quite lately and consequently not to be found in Sir H. Layard’s works; it is now reproduced for the first time (Fig. 215). The whole decoration is finely carried out in line with the burin. The middle is occupied by a seven pointed star or rosette, nine times repeated. Around this elegant and complex motive there are concentric circles, the third of which, counting from the centre, is filled up with small figures hardly to be distinguished by the naked eye. We divine rather than see lions, birds, seated men, and certain groups of symbols, such as three lines broken and placed one above the other, which are continually recurring in the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt. The fifth zone has conventional papyrus stems alternating with rosettes. The sixth, much larger, is filled with ovals surmounted by two plumes and the uræus, that is by the royal cartouch of Egypt in its usual form. The interior of each oval contains very small groups of figures separated from one another by four horizontal lines.
Fig. 216.—Part of a bronze cup or platter. Diameter about 9 inches. British Museum.
We may quote a cup figured by Layard as a last example of this exotic style of decoration. In the centre there are four full-face heads with Egyptian wigs (Fig. 216). Around them a mountainous country is figured in relief, and sprinkled with trees and stags engraved with the point. The wide border, which is unfortunately very much mutilated, is covered with groups of figures apparently copied from some Egyptian monument, if we may judge from the attitudes and costume. One figure, whose torso has entirely disappeared, wears the pschent and brandishes a mace over his head; the movement is almost identical with that of the victorious Pharaoh with whom we are so familiar. A goddess, who might be Isis, stands opposite to him. In another part of the border there is a misshapen monster crowned with feathers and resembling the Egyptian Bes.[415]
Fig. 217.—Bronze cup. Diameter 11 inches; from Layard.
Side by side with these platters we find others on which nothing occurs to suggest foreign influence. Take, for instance, the example reproduced in Fig. 208. In the centre there is a small silver boss, while the rest of the flat surface is occupied by the fine diaper pattern made up of six-petalled flowers that we have already met with on the carved thresholds (Vol. I. Fig. 96). The hollow border is ornamented with four lines of palmettes united by an undulating line, a motive which is no less Assyrian than the first (Vol. I., Figs. 128, 138, 139, etc.). In Fig. 217 we reproduce a cup on which its original mounting, or ring by which it was suspended, is still in place. The whole of the decoration is pure Assyrian. The rosette is exactly similar to many of those found on the enamelled bricks (see Vol. I., Figs. 122, 123). In the first of the three zones, gazelles march in file; in the second, a bull, a gazelle, an ibex, and a winged griffin, followed by the same animals attacked by lions and making fourteen figures in all; in the third zone fourteen heavy-crested bulls follow one another round the dish. All these animals are among those most constantly treated by the Assyrian sculptor; their shapes and motions are as well understood and as well rendered as in the bas-reliefs. The bulls especially are grandly designed. Moreover, the idea of employing all these animals for the adornment of such a surface is entirely in the spirit of Assyrian decoration. We shall meet with it again in the shields from Van; we figure the best preserved of the latter on page 347.
It would be easy to give more examples, either from Layard or from our own catalogue of these objects, of the purely Assyrian style on the one hand, or of that in which the influence of Egyptian models is so clearly shown, on the other. It is enough, however, that we have proved that these little monuments may be divided into two clearly marked classes. Did the two groups thus constituted share the same origin? Did they both come from the same birth-place? Further discoveries may enable us to answer this question with certainty, and even now we may try to pave the way to its solution.
There would be no difficulty if these bronze vessels bore cuneiform inscriptions, especially if the latter formed a part of the decorative composition, as in the palace reliefs, and were cut by the same hand. But this, so far as we know at present, was never the case. In some fragments of pottery we have found cuneiform characters (Fig. 185), and the name of Sargon has even been read on a glass phial (Fig. 190), but—and we cannot help feeling some surprise at the fact—none of these objects of a material far more precious bear a trace of the Mesopotamian form of writing. I do not know that a single wedge has been discovered upon them. A certain number of them are inscribed, but inscribed without exception with those letters which Phœnicia is supposed to have evolved out of the cursive writing of Egypt.[416] They were not introduced with any idea of enriching the design, as they always occur on the blank side of the vessel. They are close to the edge, and their lines are very slender, suggesting that they were meant to attract as little attention as possible. They consist of but a single name, that of the maker, or, more probably, the proprietor of the cup.[417]