As time went on they learnt to use their tools with more freedom and more varied skill. We shall not attempt to follow M. Soldi in tracing the art through all its successive stages.[305] As an example of the skill to which the Mesopotamian artist had attained towards the seventh century B.C. we may quote a splendid cornelian cylinder belonging to the British Museum (Fig. 141).[306] The subject is extremely simple. In its general lines it continually recurs on the bas-reliefs and gems of the Sargonid period. A winged personage, with his arms extended, stands between two fantastic winged quadrupeds and grasps each by a fore-paw. The chief actor in the scene is very like the winged genius whom we encounter so often on the walls of the palaces (see above, Fig. 36), while both in the exaggerated modelling of the legs and in the care with which the smallest details of the costume are carried out, the special features that distinguished the sculpture of the time may be recognized. The execution is firm and significant, though a little dry and hard. It is made up of short cuts, close together; the engraver did not understand how to give his work that high polish and finish that enabled the Greeks to express the subtlest contours of the living form.

From this period onwards the artists of Mesopotamia and, in later years, those who worked for the Medes and Persians, put into use all the precious stones that were afterwards engraved by the Greeks and Romans. Their tools and processes cannot have greatly differed from those handed down by antiquity to the gem-cutters of the middle ages and the Italian renaissance. If their results were inferior to those obtained by Pyrgoteles and Dioscorides,[307] it was because oriental art never had the knowledge of the nude or the passion for beauty of form which made Greek art so original. Intaglio is only a bas-relief reversed and greatly diminished in size; the style and spirit of contemporary sculpture are reflected in it as the objects of nature are reflected in the mirror of the human eye. For want of proper tools it may lag behind sculpture, but it will never outstrip it.

The close connection between the two arts is nowhere more strongly marked than in some of the cylinders belonging to the first monarchy. Although the artist was content in most cases with mere outlines, he now and then lavished more time and trouble on his work, and gave to his modelling something of the breadth and truth that we find in the statues from Tello. These merits are seen at their best in a fine cylinder belonging to the New York Museum (Fig. 142). It represents Izdubar and his companion Hea-bani, the Hercules and Theseus of Chaldæan mythology, engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a wild bull and a lion, a scene which may be taken as personifying the struggle between the divine protectors of mankind on the one hand, and the blind forces of nature assisted by all the supernatural powers of evil on the other.[308] We have already had occasion to speak of Izdubar, who is always represented nude and very muscular. As for his companion, he combines the head and bust of a man with the hind quarters of a bull.[309] There is a certain conventionality in the attitude of the lion and in the way his claws are represented, and the movement of Hea-bani’s left arm is ungraceful; but the antelope under the inscription and the bull overpowered by Izdubar are rendered with a truth of judgment and touch that all connoisseurs will appreciate. We may say the same of the two heroes; their muscular development is given with frankness but without exaggeration; the treatment generally is free and broad.

Between this cylinder and the one quoted on the last page as among the masterpieces of Ninevite art, there is the same difference as between the statues of Tello and the bas-reliefs of Nimroud and Khorsabad. The engraver, who some fifteen centuries before our era, cut upon marble this episode from one of the favourite myths of Chaldæa, may not have been able to manipulate precious stones with such ease and dexterity as the artist of Sargon or Sennacherib who made the cylinder in the British Museum, but he had the true feeling for life and form in a far higher degree.

So far we have studied the cylinders from the standpoint of their use and the material of which they are composed; we have described the processes employed in cutting them and the changes undergone in the course of centuries in the style of art they display. We have yet to speak of the principal types and scenes to be found upon them. We cannot pretend, however, to give the details in any complete fashion. For that a whole book would be necessary, such as the one promised by M. Ménant.

This is not because the themes treated show any great variety; they have, in fact, far less originality than might at first be thought. Compare the impressions from different cabinets and attempt to classify them in order of subject; you will find the same types and scenes repeated, with but slight changes, on a great number of specimens, and you will soon discover that hundreds of cylinders may be divided into a very small number of groups. In each group, too, many individual specimens will only be distinguishable from each other by their inscriptions. All this is to be easily accounted for.

The finest cylinders, whether in design or material, must have been commissioned by kings, nobles, and priests, while the common people bought theirs ready-made. When any one of the latter wished to buy a seal he went to the merchant and chose it from his stock, which was composed of the patron gods and religious scenes which happened to be most in fashion at the time. As soon as the purchaser had made his selection he caused his own name to be engraved in the space left for the purpose, and it was this inscription, rather than the scene beside it, that gave its personal character to the seal. The production of these objects was a real industry, carried on all over the country and for many centuries, and continually reproducing the same traditional and consecrated types.

M. Ménant believes himself able to determine where most if not all the cylinders of the early monarchy were produced. He talks of the schools of Ur, of Erech, of Arade, and in many cases the signs on which he relies appear to have a serious value. But we shall not attempt even to give a résumé of the arguments he uses to justify the classification he was the first to sketch out; we could not do so without multiplying our illustrations and extending our letterpress to an extravagant degree. Judging from the examples quoted by M. Ménant himself in support of his own theory, the workshops of different towns in the course of a single period were distinguished rather by their predilection for particular themes than by anything peculiar in their styles of execution; the same processes and the same way of looking at living forms may be recognised in all. We may, then, treat all these early works of the Chaldæan gem-engravers as the productions of a single school; and in this history we only propose to note and discuss the general direction of the great art currents. We cannot follow all the arms and side streams into which the main river is subdivided.

One of the favourite subjects at this time was the scene of worship we have already encountered on the Sippara tablet (Vol. I., Fig. 71.); in the cylinders as well as on the larger tablet the worshipper is led by a priest into the presence of an enthroned divinity. The temple, indicated in the tablet, is suppressed in the seals, where the space is so much less, but otherwise the composition is the same. It would be difficult to imagine anything better fitted for objects of a talismanic character, which were also to be used for the special purpose of these cylinders. Whenever the Chaldæan put his seal upon clay he renewed the act of prayer and faith which the engraver had figured upon it; he took all men to witness his faith in the protection of Anou, of Samas, or of some other god. We need therefore feel no surprise at encountering this subject upon the cylinders of Ourkam, (Vol. I., Fig. 3), and his son Dungi,[310] princes in whom the oldest Chaldæan royalty was embodied. Both of these seals seem to have been engraved in Ur, the home of that dynasty. We have given several other variants of the same theme (Vol. I., Figs. 17–20, and above, Figs. 40 and 124);[311] here are two more found by M. de Sarzec at Tello (Figs. 143, 144). In the first of these two streams seem to flow from the shoulders of the seated deity; they may have some connection with that worship of the two great rivers whose traces appear elsewhere.[312] In the second example, which is not a little rough and summary in its execution, the figures are believed to be those of women, on account of the way in which the hair is arranged. It is clubbed with ribbons at the back of the neck. The artist seems also to have tried to suggest the amplitude of the female bosom. On the whole we may believe the scene to represent a goddess—Istar perhaps—surrounded by worshippers of her own sex. In the Louvre there is a cylinder with a scene of the same kind, but more complex and, for us, more obscure (Fig. 145). A seated figure, apparently female from the long hair flowing over the shoulders, sits upon a low stool and holds a child upon her knees. In front of the group thus formed stands a man who seems to be offering some beverage in a horn-shaped cup. Behind him there are three not inelegant vases upon a bracket, and a man kneeling beside a large jar upon a tripod. The latter holds in his hand the spoon with which he has filled the goblet presented by his companion. We may, perhaps, take the whole scene as a preparation for a feast offered to one of those goddesses of maternity whom we find on the terra-cottas (see above Fig. 107). We shall not here go into the question whether we may see in all this an episode in the legend of the ancient Sargon, the royal infant whom his mother exposed upon the water after his clandestine birth; after commencing like Moses, the hero of this adventure was found and brought up by a boatman, and became the founder of an empire when he grew to manhood, like Cyrus and Romulus.[313]

If we may believe M. Ménant some of the cylinders belonging to this period represent human sacrifices. Such he supposes to be the theme of the example reproduced in Fig. 146. The figure with arm uplifted would be the priest brandishing his mace over the kneeling victim, who turns and begs in vain for mercy. The issue of the unequal struggle is hinted at by the dissevered head introduced in the lower left-hand corner. To make our description complete we must notice the subordinate passage, a rampant leopard, winged, preparing to devour a gazelle.[314] The conjecture is specious, but until confirmatory texts are discovered, it will remain a conjecture. Those texts that have been quoted in support of it are vague in the first place, and, in the second, they appear to refer less to the sacrifice of human victims than to holocausts of infants, who must have been thrown into the flames as they were in Phœnicia. Why should we not look upon it as an emblem of the royal victories, an emblem similar in kind to the group that recurs so persistently in Egyptian sculpture, from the time of the ancient Empire to that of the Ptolemies?[315] The gesture in each case is almost exactly the same; the weapon raised over the vanquished both in the Theban relief and the Chaldæan cylinder is well fitted to suggest the power of the conqueror and his cruel revenges. We have reproduced this example less for its subject than for the character of its execution. The figures are modelled in a very rough-and-ready fashion; we might almost call it a sketch upon stone. The movement, however, of the two chief figures is well understood and expressive.

Another and perhaps still richer series is composed of stones on which the war waged by Izdubar and his faithful Hea-bani against the monsters is figured.[316] We have already shown Izdubar carrying off a lion he has killed (see above, Fig. 35). Another task of the Mesopotamian Hercules is shown in Fig. 147, where he is engaged in a struggle with the celestial human-headed bull, who has been roused to attack the hero by Istar, whose love the hero has refused.[317]

In this cylinder it will be noticed that Izdubar is repeated twice, once in profile and once full face. Close to him Hea-bani is wrestling with a lion, the bull’s companion and assistant. In another example we find Izdubar alone (Fig. 148) and maintaining a vigorous struggle against a bull with long straight horns, and at the same time turning his head so as to follow a combat between a lion and ibex that is going on behind him.[318] The action of both these latter animals is rendered with great freedom and truth. We have already had to draw attention to the merit that distinguishes not a few of the animals in these cylinders.[319] This merit is to be found in almost every composition in which the artist has been content to make use of natural types. It is only when he compiles impossible monsters that the forms become awkward and confused. An instance of this may be found in a cylinder found by M. de Sarzec at Tello, on which winged quadrupeds seizing and devouring gazelles are portrayed (Fig. 149). Too many figures are brought together in the narrow space and the result is confusion. We are not, however, disposed to accept this cylinder as belonging to the first years of Chaldæan art. It is of veined agate, a material that was not among the earliest employed; but there are many more on which similar scenes are engraved, and which, by their execution, may be safely placed among the most ancient products of art.[320]

One of the earliest types invented by the imaginations of these people was that of the strange and chaotic beings who, according to the traditions collected by Berosus, lived upon the earth before the creation of man, creatures in which the forms and limbs afterwards separated and distinguished by nature, were mixed up as if by accident. The text in question is of the very greatest interest and value. It proves that the composite figures of which Chaldæan art was so fond were not a simple caprice of the artists who made them, but were suggested by a cosmic theory of which they formed, as it were, a plastic embodiment and illustration.

“There was a time,” says Berosus, “when all was water and darkness, in which monstrous animals were spontaneously engendered: men with two wings, and some with four; with two faces, and two heads, the one male and the other female, and with the other features of both sexes united in their single bodies; men with the legs and horns of a goat and the feet of a horse; others with the hind quarters of a horse and the upper part of a man, like the hippocentaurs. There were also bulls with human heads, dogs with four bodies and fishes’ tails, and other quadrupeds in which various animal forms were blended, fishes, reptiles, serpents, and all kinds of monsters with the greatest variety in their forms, monsters whose images we see in the paintings of the temple of Bel at Babylon.”[321] Of all these fantastic creatures there are hardly any but may be found on some cylinder, and if there be one or two still missing, it is very probable that future discoveries will fill up the gap.

Before quitting these remains from the earliest school of gem engraving, we must draw attention for a moment to the way in which it treats costume. In most cases the folds of the stuff are imitated by very fine parallel strokes. Sometimes, as, for instance, in the figure on the right of Ourkam’s seal (Vol. I., Fig. 3), these close and slightly sinuous lines extend without interruption from the top to the bottom of the dress, but in most cases they are crossed by several transverse bands, probably coloured, either woven into the material or sewn upon it (see Vol. I., Figs. 3, 17, and 20, and above, Figs. 39 and 41). We have already encountered this method of treating drapery in certain statuettes from the same place and time (Figs. 99 and 100), but we never find it in Assyria or in Chaldæa after the fall of Nineveh, either in statues or on engraved stones.

There is another characteristic detail that should not be forgotten, namely, the caps turned up at the side in the shape of horns (Vol. I., Fig. 17 and above, Fig. 143). By this head-dress and the plaited robes a Chaldæan cylinder may be at once recognised as dating from these remote ages. Fashions and methods of execution changed as soon as the preponderance of Assyrian royalty was assured. Artists of merit must then have migrated northwards and opened workshops in the cities of the Tigris; but production was never so great as in the south. Every traveller in those regions notices that there are far more cylinders to be purchased in the bazaars of Bagdad and Bassorah than in those of Mossoul.[322] The glyptic art of Assyria was an exotic, like her sculpture and her architecture.

In attempting to define the characteristics of the Assyrian cylinders, and to distinguish them from those of Chaldæa, we may take as points of departure and as types of the new class, a few seals bearing legends that enable us to give them a positive date. Thus we may learn from a signet that once belonged to the governor of Calah what the execution of the artists employed by the princes of Elassar and Nimroud was like (Fig. 150). We need not hesitate to assign this cylinder to the first Assyrian monarchy. The workmanship, at once careful and awkward, belongs to a time when all the difficulties of gem engraving had not yet been overcome. In the wings of the genius and the legs of the personage who follows him the management of the instrument used is that of an art still in its infancy. In this seal then we have a valuable example of what we may call The Archaic Assyrian Cylinder. We have already figured several in which the same characteristics appear (Figs. 124, 139, and 140). In the same class we may put a number of cylinders on which scenes of worship are represented with slight variations (Figs. 151 and 152).[323] The figure of the king standing before the altar with his right hand upon his bow resembles the Assurnazirpal in several of the Nimroud reliefs (see above, Fig. 140). The Balawat gates and other remains from the same time have already made us acquainted with the accessories of the act of worship figured in the last of these two cylinders, especially with the short column surmounted by a cone (Plate XII).

We now come to the epoch of the Sargonids with its still more refined and skilful art, of which an exquisite cylinder in the British Museum may be taken as an example (Fig. 153). The name of a personage called Musesinip has been read upon it, and it is believed to be a reduction from a contemporary bas-relief. In the centre appears the holy tree with the supreme deity floating over it in the winged disk. On each side of the tree is the figure of a king with a winged eagle-headed genius behind him. These last-named creatures have their right hands raised, while in their left they hold the bronze buckets we have already encountered at Nimroud (Vol. I., Fig. 8). There is one detail which is not to be found, so far as I know, in the bas-reliefs, namely, the double cord that descends from the winged disk into the hands of the king. The artist, no doubt, meant to symbolize by this the communication established by prayer between the prince and his divine protector.

Among the dated and authenticated examples from this epoch the cylinder inscribed with the name of Ursana, king of Musasir and adversary of Sargon, may be quoted.[324] We do not reproduce it because it differs so little from the example of Assyrian gem engraving given in our Fig. 141. The same genius appears in the middle, but instead of two winged monsters he holds two ostriches by the neck. We have already encountered this fight between a man and an ostrich on a stone dating from the same century (Fig. 75). We may name as a last example the stone found by Layard at Kouyundjik, which may be the very signet of Sennacherib himself (Vol. I., Fig. 70).

If we place all these impressions side by side we shall find they have a certain number of common characteristics which will enable us to recognize those of Assyrian parentage even when they bear no lettering, or when their inscriptions tell us nothing as to their origin. In the first place they are mostly of fine materials, such as chalcedony or onyx. Secondly, they contain sacred emblems and types that are not to be found in the primitive arts of Chaldæa, such as the mystic tree, the winged globe, the eagle-headed genius, &c. Thirdly, the fantastic animals of Assyria are different in general appearance from those of the southern kingdom; and, finally, the costume of the two countries is not the same. In the cylinders from Calah and Nineveh we find neither the flounced robes nor the cap with turned-up borders. As in the palace reliefs, the mantle-fringes cross the figure slanting-wise—an obliquity which affords a ready means of distinguishing between a native of Assyria and one of Chaldæa.

The use of the cylinder persisted after the fall of Nineveh and throughout the second Chaldæan monarchy, but the types from this late epoch display very little invention or variety. The most common of all shows a personage standing bare-headed before two altars, one bearing the disk of the sun, the other that of the moon (Fig. 154).[325] This individual is sometimes bearded, sometimes shaven. His costume is neither that of early Chaldæa nor the twisted robe of Assyria. Sometimes one of the altars or the field is occupied by a monster with a goat’s head and a fish’s body and tail, as in the impression left by a cylinder on a contract dated “the twelfth year of Darius, king of Babylon, king of the nations” (Fig. 155).[326] The use of these types lasted in the valley of the Euphrates all through the Achæmenid supremacy. No inscriptions were used. Names and dates were engraved by hand on the clay after the seal had been placed upon it. We can see clearly from the monotony of the images, which are repeated almost unchanged on hundreds of tablets, that the art of gem-engraving was in full decadence. The people were enslaved, they lived upon the memory of their past, creating neither new forms nor new ideas. They no longer attempted to make their seals works of art; they looked upon them as mere utensils.

Cylinders are sometimes found in this region inscribed with Aramaic characters, like the weights from Nimroud. Such, for instance, is one representing a dismounted hunter meeting the charge of a lion,[327] while his horse stands behind him and awaits the issue of the struggle (Fig. 156). The costume of the hunter is neither Assyrian nor Chaldæan. He has been supposed to represent a Scythian. The Scythian figured at Bisitun has the same pointed bonnet or cowl. Cylinders of this kind will long be a difficulty for the classifier.[328]

The cylindrical form was not the only one used by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia for their seals. Small objects in pietra dura of a different shape are now often found in the country, and are beginning to hold their own in our museums; these are pyramids, spheroids, and especially cones. Every cone, except one or two which may never, perhaps, have been finished, is pierced near its summit with a hole for suspension. There has never been any doubt from the first that they were signets. Their bases, which are generally flat, but sometimes convex or concave, are always engraved in intaglio. The impression was thus obtained at one stroke, at one pressure of the hand, and it was in all probability the greater ease with which that operation could be carried out that in time led to the supercession of the cylinder by the cone. The use of the latter became almost universal in the time of the Seleucidæ and Parthians.

It is when they grow old that both nations and individuals turn their attention to ease and comfort. The Chaldees were long contented with the cylinder, although, as a seal, it was a very imperfect contrivance. The ancient monarchy never seems to have made use of flat signets. The impression of one has been sought for in vain on those contracts of the time of Hammourabi, where so many cylinders have left their mark. The oldest document on which the trace of a circular seal has been recognized belongs to the northern kingdom, and dates from the reign of Bin-Nirari, who occupied the throne of Assyria towards the end of the ninth century B.C. From this moment the use of the cone becomes rapidly common. Under the Sargonids, and still more during the second Chaldee monarchy and under the Achæmenids, it superseded the cylinder. The dates inscribed on the tablets prove their age; the space on the cones themselves was too narrow, as a rule, for a legend. On a few specimens we find one or two characters engraved, generally a divine monogram or the traditional emblems of the sidereal powers. A few cones have inscriptions in Aramaic characters (see Fig. 157); on the example figured we again encounter the strange composite beast we have already seen upon a stone tablet and a cylinder (Figs. 87 and 141). In spite of the alphabet employed, this cone must have been engraved either in Nineveh or its neighbourhood.

The narrowness of the field explains the want of variety in the subjects. In a small circle like this there was no room for more than a single figure with a few accessories, or, at most, for two figures. We cannot expect to find scenes as varied and complicated as those upon the cylinders. A very small number of the simplest themes formed the stock-in-trade of the engraver.

There are about four hundred specimens in the British Museum, and as many more in Paris, in the Louvre and the Cabinet des Antiques. In the presence of them all we can only confess to a feeling of embarrassment. They are never arranged in chronological order; Assyrian intaglios are mixed up with those from Chaldæa, from Phœnicia and Persia. Certain types were reproduced and copied in this region even as late as the Arsacids and Sassanids. We shall choose a few, however, which we may with some certainty attribute to Assyria. There is in the first place one on which two winged figures seem to be adorning the sacred tree (Fig. 158). We find the impression of an almost exactly similar cone on a contract dated 650 B.C. The only differences lie in the more careful execution of the latter seal and in the substitution of the radiant disk of the sun for the crescent moon.[331] In another impression we find the radiant disk changed into the winged globe.[332] The shape and fringe of the Assyrian robe may be recognized in the intaglio in which a man with long hair and beard does homage to a winged genius (Fig. 159). The worshipper is standing, but behind him appears a kneeling figure. This posture is rare, but it is met with in a few instances on monuments from this period, and is always used to suggest the profound respect with which a man does obeisance either to his god or his king.[333]

We need not hesitate to ascribe to the second Chaldæan monarchy a cone with a bearded individual standing before an altar on which lies a fantastic animal (Fig. 160); above his head appear the sun, the moon, and a star. We have already mentioned two examples of this theme, which begins to appear in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and remains in fashion until the Macedonian conquest.[334]

Among the themes in most frequent use under the Sargonids we might have quoted the single combat of the king with a lion, the god standing upon a lion’s back, the king over whose head a servant holds an umbrella, the heads and bodies of different animals, and others.[337] We cannot pretend, however, to enumerate them all. It is sufficient to show, as we have done, that after the ninth century at latest both cylinders and cones were produced in the same workshops, and that the differences in their figuration are to be explained by the dimensions and form of the new surface. Those who have supposed that the use of flat seals only commenced under the Achæmenids are mistaken. All that we can say with truth is that intaglios cut upon sections of cones, spheres and pyramids are less ancient than the cylinders of Ur, Erech, Accad and Sippara.

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.

This feeling is visible chiefly in the battle pictures and hunting scenes. In these, no doubt, the drawing of limbs, &c., often leaves much to be desired. The hand has been unable to render all that the eye has seen. The unveiled human body has not been displayed often enough to the sculptor for him to know thoroughly the construction of its framework and the mode of attachment of its limbs. On the other hand, when animals have to be treated, with what singular power and complete success the same artist has often represented the tension of the contracting muscles, the speed of the horse as he stretches himself in the gallop, the spring of the lion as he throws himself upon the spear (see Fig. 161), and, finally, the trembling of the flesh in the last struggle against suffering and death! It is in the Assyrian monuments that these things are treated with the greatest success. A people of soldiers and hunters, whose truculent energy gave them the empire of all western Asia, they had neither the mild humour nor the fine taste of the Egyptians, they were less easily moved, and we find ourselves wondering that they never hit upon the fights of gladiators as a national pastime. They were touched and interested by force passing from repose into action, by force putting forth all its energies in contempt of danger and in spite of the most determined resistance.