The Kasr Lion
(From Dieulafoy, “L’Art Antique de la Perse,” Vol. 3. Pl. 13)
It is indeed well for us that the æsthetic genius of the Babylonians and Assyrians should have found expression in durable stone rather than in some other more perishable material; the difficulties involved in sculpture are admittedly sufficiently great, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the perseverance and determination of those ancient peoples, which led them to conquer and mould for the ultimatization of their ideas, a material which a less determined and a less persevering nation might well have shrunk from attacking.
CHAPTER VII—METALLURGY
IN the art of working metals the Babylonians showed no small degree of proficiency: evidence has already been given of the way in which metal was made to contribute her share to the perfected work of the architect, as also of its employment as a material whereon the scribe might engrave his comparatively imperishable memorials, but the part which it played in the history of the country’s art, as well as in the growth of her civilization, remains to be considered. The metals which appear to have been most in use among the dwellers in Mesopotamia are copper and bronze. As in every other country, before metal became known and utilized in the Euphrates valley, stone was employed as the material for making knives, axes, and implements of every kind. Various flints were found by Taylor at Abû Shahrein (Eridu).[104] At Fâra (Shuruppak) also, numerous flint knives and saws, together with some hatchets and tools made of the same material, were discovered by the German excavators, and tools made of bone were further found on the same site. But the copper age commenced at a very early period in the history of Babylonian civilization, at a time previous to the appearance of cuneiform, and while even the earlier picture-signs were still untrammelled by the stereotyped formalism of later days, copper had already been adapted to the needs and requirements of humanity.[105]
Fig. 37.—A (Cat., p. 367; Déc. en Chald., Pl. 5 tert. Musée du Louvre.)
B (Heuzey, Une Villa Royale, Fig. 19.)
At Ur (Muḳeyyer) Taylor discovered a large copper spear-head and two arrow-heads made of the same metal, while in the early strata at Tellô, M. De Sarzec discovered a copper blade some thirty-one and a half inches in length, and belonging to a votive-lance; unfortunately the name of the king by whom it was dedicated is lost owing to the oxydization of the metal, but the title “King of Kish” is still clearly legible, Kish being one of the most ancient sites of Euphratean civilization (cf. Fig. [37], A). The tang of the blade is pierced with four holes, and one of the flat surfaces of the blade itself is engraved with the figure of a lion, crude indeed, but spirited. This unique object was found at a great depth, and only six inches above the stratum in which the architectural remains of Ur-Ninâ were buried. Not far distant, De Sarzec discovered an immense hollow pipe of beaten copper (cf. Fig. [37], B) over ten feet long and having a diameter of four inches; a number of copper nails by means of which this long tube was fastened to a wooden pole being also found. The pipe itself tapers upwards and the top of it is crowned with a hollow ball of hardened bitumen, a little below which there is a large semicircular handle, or what purports to be a handle, consisting in a hollow tube and likewise made of copper. The use to which this strange implement was put is unknown, but it is exactly reproduced on some of the early cylinder-seals as well as on the well-known vase of Gudea. Various suggestions have been made as to the purpose which it served; one theory is that it is a chariot pole, another that it is a part of a standard, but the former is ruled out of court by the position which it occupies on the seals and on the aforementioned vase. The latter, however, may be near the truth.