Fig. 47.—A (after Andrae); B (after Layard).
In Fig. [47], A, we have a black and white reproduction of one of the clay relief bulls which adorned the gate of Ishtar at Babylon. The bull is in the act of walking, and exhibits both grace and dignity in his movements, the slightness of his frame only serving to intensify the agility with which he seems to advance. The proportions are excellent and contrast very favourably with the Assyrian bull from Nimrûd (cf. Fig. [47], B). The latter is hard and conventional, while the posture—in itself a sufficiently natural one—is here rendered in a most wooden and inanimate fashion. The body of the animal is white, but the painter has attempted to make his subject stand out upon its pale yellow background, by edging it with an artificial outline of black. When the bull was coloured blue and thrown on to a white background this device was of course unnecessary (cf. Layard. Ser. I, Pl. 87.) The blue bull here alluded to belongs to the same species as the white one reproduced in Fig. [47], B, and is in the same kneeling position, but he is furnished with the wings of an eagle. It will be observed that in the Babylonian bull, as also in both the Assyrian bulls, the artist has evaded the difficulty of drawing the two horns in perspective by portraying only one, the other being theoretically concealed from view by the horn near the spectator.
But the palace of Nebuchadnezzar itself contained a large number of these coloured reliefs, many pieces of the glazed tiles of which they were composed having been found by Koldewey. The fragments recovered, number literally thousands, and Koldewey says that apparently when the bricks were stolen by later builders, the glazed portions were knocked off in order to make them more useful for the common purposes for which they were destined, and we to-day are the beneficiaries of that lack of appreciation. Amongst the animals portrayed on the palace and temple walls may be mentioned the bull, a mythical monster compounded of “parts of a bird of prey,” scorpions, serpents, panthers and steers, as well as the ubiquitous lion, while some of the fragments recovered show parts of the human body, and birds are also sometimes encountered. The lions form the most interesting study: there are two main types, (1) lions walking to the left, with white skins and yellow manes; and (2) lions walking to the right (a) with white skins and yellow manes, and (b) yellow skins and green manes; while there is a third type characterized by lions running to right or left. Sometimes the tail is portrayed standing out straight behind, sometimes it assumes a curved and less rigid form. Great difficulty has been experienced in fitting the various fragments together, but the assiduous efforts of the Germans have not been without success.
The process by which these coloured clay reliefs are supposed to have been made is as follows: a layer or slab of plastic clay of a fair size was taken, and on this surface the complete picture was modelled in relief, the process thus far being the same as that employed in the ordinary stone bas-reliefs, except that a chisel was in requisition there while here the hands would suffice, though it seems probable that moulds were at all events made for some of the lions, many of which are apparently entirely uniform. However that may be, the slab of clay now bearing in relief the figure determined, is supposed to have been cut up into rectangular blocks of the same size as the ordinary bricks, each rectangle being marked, with a view to simplifying the task of fitting each into its right place in the picture; after this, each piece was painted with a coat of coloured varnish, and then thoroughly baked in the oven—the thoroughness of the baking is attested by the hardness of the enamel—after which the various parts were fitted together. In the same way at Nimrûd, Layard found a large number of enamelled bricks, bearing the figures of animals and flowers as well as cuneiform characters, lying promiscuously upon the floor of the entrance passages to the palace, upon the unpainted backs of which rude designs, chiefly consisting of men and animals, were drawn in black ink or paint, “and marks having the appearance of numbers.” The marks alluded to must have presumably served the purpose of guiding the builder in his attempt to reconstruct the picture on the wall.
Coloured clay reliefs were not however the only species of pictorial representation adopted in the embellishment of the city of Babylon, or the palace of Babylon’s most illustrious king. On the southern side of the Ḳasr, a large number of beautifully glazed tiles stamped with Nebuchadnezzar’s inscription and adorned with flowers, twigs, and in one case part of a human figure—some fourteen inches high—were discovered, together with many sculptured stones bearing similar designs, the workmanship of which however was more perfect than that of the tiles. The latter have a flat surface, but they resemble the relief tiles in general technique. Many other glazed bricks were found on the eastern side of the Ḳasr, painted with various designs and displaying great delicacy—on one of them a human figure is portrayed, clad in a rich garment and holding what appears to be a spear in his left hand—these however Koldewey assigns to the Persian period.
PLATE XXX.
Decorated Arch at Khorsabad
(cf. Place, “Ninive,” Plates, 14, 15)
But colour was further employed, as the handmaid of humbler forms of architectural decoration in Babylonia as well as in the northern country. Thus at Nippur, the walls of many of the rooms were stuccoed with a plaster consisting of mud and straw, and were coloured, the colours used being apparently always solid. The ruins of Nin-makh’s temple at Babylon, excavated by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, similarly showed the remains of white decorations on its walls; while colour played no insignificant part in the decoration of the famous cone-wall at the Wuswas mound of Erech, the cones of which were coloured red or black and then arranged in a variety of geometrical patterns upon a wall consisting of mud and straw.