[224] Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 30.
[225] Ibid. p. 35.
[226] Layard found this type near Bagdad (Discoveries, p. 477), and Loftus encountered a great number of examples in his explorations at Susa (Travels, &c., p. 379). Those brought by him to London are quite similar to the statuette in the Louvre that we have chosen for reproduction (Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 32).
[227] In the case of the Caillou Michaux, this has been clearly established by M. Oppert (Expédition scientifique, vol. i. pp. 253, 254). He remarks that the betrothed of the person who had caused the stone to be cut, is spoken of as a “native of the town of Sargon;” so that the stone must be later than the end of the eighth century, B.C. And all the monuments belonging to this class bear such a strong mutual resemblance, that their dates cannot be very widely separated. They are reproduced on a large scale, both texts and figures, in the Cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. iii. plates 41–45, and vol. iv. plates 41–43. We have reproduced two, in vol. i. fig. 10, and above, fig. 43.
[228] According to Millin, who was the first to draw attention to this monument, its material is a black marble; it would be a mistake to call it basalt (Monuments antique inedits, vol. i. p. 60, note 6). The inscription on the Caillou Michaux has been translated by Oppert (Chronologie des Assyriens et des Babylonians, p. 40), and by Fox Talbot in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xviii. pp. 53–75. [There is a cast of this Caillou in the Assyrian Side Room at the British Museum.—Ed.]
[229] The weight of these objects was in itself sufficient to prevent them being easily removed. The Caillou Michaux weighs rather more than 70 lbs.
[230] Heuzey, Catalogue, p. 32.
[231] Ἔστι δὲ τοῦ ἐν Βαβυλῶνι ἱροῦ καὶ ἄλλος κάτω νηός, ἔνθα ἄγαλμα μέγα τοῦ Διὸς ἔνι κατήμενον χρύσεον (i. 183).
[232] Ἐπ’ ἄκρας τῆς ἀναβάσεως τρία κατέσκευασεν ἀγάλματα χρυσὰ σφυρήλατα, Διός, Ἥρας, Ῥέας. Diodorus, ii. ix. 5–8.
[233] The Five Great Monarchies, &c., vol. ii. p. 79.
[234] See ante.
[235] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 5.
[236] For the reasons which led him to take this step, see the Introduction to the first series of plates published in the Monuments.
[237] The original arrangement of these things is shown in the second series of Layard’s Monuments, plate 4.
[238] We have round-headed steles of Assurnazirpal, of Shalmaneser II., of Samas-vul II., and of Sargon. Those of other princes are figured in the reliefs. In the Balawat gates we find Shalmaneser erecting them wherever his conquests led him (plate 12).
[239] We have not copied the uniform dark green tint forced upon the English publication by the necessity for printing in one colour. We have borrowed from the fragments in the possession of M. Schlumberger the broken hues of the patina deposited upon the bronze by age, a patina which has, perhaps, been too much removed by the cleaning to which the pieces in London have been subjected.
[240] In page 3 of his Introduction, Mr. Pinches speaks of a “crocodile and a young hippopotamus.” I do not think that either of those animals can ever have lived in the cold waters of Lake Van, which receives, in the spring, such a large quantity of melted snow.
On the other hand, the argument applied by M. Perrot to architectural forms (see vol. i. pp. 139 (note 2) and 395), may here be invoked by Mr. Pinches. It is more likely that the artist introduced such animals as were to be found in the rivers and meres of Mesopotamia, than that he ascertained how Lake Van was peopled before he began his work.—Ed.
[241] In order that we might give two interesting subjects on a single page, we have here brought together two divisions that do not belong to the same band in the original.
[242] Herodotus, i. 184.
[243] In repeating this hypothesis we have followed Professor Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. ii. pp. 119–121); to us it appears worthy of extreme respect.
[244] See above, page 40.
[245] See also Layard, Monuments, first series, plates 57–67.
[246] Among the reliefs in which the transport of the materials for Sargon’s palace is represented, there is one which shows timber being dragged down to the Phœnician coast. Here the sea is no longer indicated merely by sinuous lines and a few fishes as in most of the earlier reliefs; there are all kinds of animals, shells, turtles, crabs, frogs, and even sea-serpents (Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 34). In one place we find a wooded hill, with trees still of indeterminate form (plate 78). In another we may recognize pines in the forest traversed by the Assyrian cavalry (plates 108–113); birds fly among the branches and several among them fall pierced with the arrows of the hunters. Other trees bear fruit (plate 114). Partridges run upon the slopes of the hill. See also in the basalt reliefs from the building we have called a temple, a coniferous tree of some kind, probably a cypress, the general form of which is very well rendered (Place, Ninive, plate 48).
[247] This stele now belongs to the Berlin Museum. It has recently been the subject of an important work by a learned German Assyriologist, Herr Schrader (Die Sargonstele des Berliner Museums, in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy for 1881). He gives a translation of the inscription, with a commentary, showing the date of the stele to be 707, or the fifteenth year of Sargon’s reign.
[248] These lions are figured by Layard, Monuments, first series, vol. i. p. 128. Their inscriptions are brought together in a single plate in the Discoveries, p. 601. The Aramaic texts will be published in the Corpus inscriptionum Semiticorum, in the first instalment of the part devoted to Aramaic inscriptions.
These lions of Khorsabad and Nimroud may be compared, both for type and use, to the bronze lion found at Abydos, on the Hellespont, in 1860. M. de Vogué has made us acquainted with the latter in the pages of the Revue archéologique for January, 1862. His article, which contains a reproduction both of the monument as a whole and of its inscription, and an explanation of the latter, has been reprinted in the Mélanges d’archéologie orientale (8vo. 1868, pp. 179–196). Mr. Norris has published a special study of the weights in the British Museum (On the Assyrian and Babylonian Weights, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xvi. p. 215).
[249] Botanists are of opinion that the conventional representations of the marsh vegetation suggests the horse-grass, or shave-grass (prêle), rather than the arundo-donax, in which the leaves are longer and thinner.
[250] See Layard, Monuments, second series, plates 12 and 13.
[251] Layard, Monuments, second series, plates 14, 15.
[252] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 17.
[253] Sennacherib caused his sculptors to celebrate the campaign in which he subdued the peoples of Lower Chaldæa. Like the Arab of to-day, they took refuge when pursued among the marshes in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf (Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 25). The light, flat-bottomed boats, with their sharp prows, are shown pushing through the reeds, and bending them down into the water to clear a passage.
[254] The slabs taken from this corridor are now in the Kouyundjik Gallery of the British Museum, and numbered from 37 to 43. See also Layard’s Monuments, second series, plates 7–9.
[255] See Layard, Monuments, second series, plates 47–49. &c.
[256] These sculptures were discovered and described for the first time by M. Rouet, the immediate successor of M. Botta, at Mossoul (Journal Asiatique, 1846, pp. 280–290). More detailed descriptions will be found in Layard, Discoveries, pp. 207–216, and in Place, Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 161–164. The latest and most complete translation of the Bavian inscriptions, or rather of the one inscription that is repeated in three different places, has been given by M. Pognon, under the following title: L’Inscription de Bavian, texte, Traduction et Commentaire philologique avec trois Appendices et un Glossaire, 1 vol. 8vo. in two parts, 1879 and 1880 (in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes-Études).
[257] Layard, Discoveries, p. 216.
[258] Layard tells us that near the entrance to the gorge, and under the alluvial earth carried down by the stream, he found the remains of carefully-built stone walls, but he is silent as to the character of the building to which they may have belonged. (Discoveries, p. 215.)
[259] See the vignette on page 214 of Layard’s Discoveries.
[260] Perrot and Guillaume, Exploration archéologique de la Galatie, vol. i. pp. 367–373, and vol. ii. plates 72–80.
[261] Layard, Discoveries, p. 210.
[262] Layard, Discoveries, p. 211.
[263] Mr. Layard intended to give accurate and complete drawings of all the bas-reliefs at Bavian. For that purpose he despatched to the valley a young artist named Bell, who had been sent out to him by the authorities of the British Museum. Unhappily, this young man was drowned while bathing in the torrent, in July, 1851. Before his death he seems only to have copied the great relief; hence, in Layard’s great work Bavian is represented only by the plate we have copied. In the Discoveries a few additional sketches are given.
[264] Page 203.
[265] In the valley of the Nahr-el-Kelb, there are five or six Assyrian reliefs mingled with those of Egyptian origin. They may at once be distinguished from the works of the Rameses by their arched tops. The only one of which the inscriptions are still legible, is that of Esarhaddon (see Monuments inédits de l’Institut de Correspondance archéologique, 1858, plate 51, fig. F, and especially Lepsius, Ægyptische Denkmæler, part iii. plate 197, fig. D). Judging from their style and the historical information we possess, these steles may be attributed to Tiglath-Pilezer, Assurnazirpal, Shalmaneser II., and Sennacherib. The remaining figures must be referred to other princes. Quite lately Mr. Boscawen has published an interesting article (The Monuments and Inscriptions on the Rocks at Nahr-el-Kelb) in the seventh volume of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology (pp. 331–352). It is accompanied by a general view of the site, and a very careful plan of that part of the valley in which the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions are to be found. Professor Lortet has also paid a recent visit to the valley. We are indebted to one of his photographs for our fig. 122 (Tour du Monde, 1882, p. 415). We should have expected to find traces of these Assyrian rock-sculptures on the shores of Lake Van, where the princes of Nineveh so often appeared as conquerors: so far, however, nothing beyond cuneiform inscriptions has been found. There are no royal effigies (Schulze, Mémoire sur le Lac de Van, in the Journal Asiatique for April-June, 1840, and Layard, Discoveries, chapter xviii.).
[266] Layard, Discoveries, p. 369.
[267] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 154.
[268] See vol. i. page 75, and fig. 13.
[269] The bas-reliefs of Malthaï have been described by Layard (Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 230, 231), and, with greater minuteness, by Place (Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 153–160). The latter alone gives a reproduction of them, made from photographs. Between the two accounts there is one considerable discrepancy: Layard speaks of four groups of nine figures each, Place of three only.
[270] Other cylinders belonging to the same group will be found reproduced in Layard Recherches sur le Culte de Vénus, notably in plate iv. figs. 9–12.
[271] French National Library, No. 710.
[272] Florence Museum.
[273] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. pp. 120–122.
[274] Flandin published in the Revue des deux Mondes (15 June, and 1 July, 1845), two papers under the general title of Voyage archéologique à Ninive, and headed severally L’Architecture assyrienne, and La Sculpture assyrienne. The assertion to which we have alluded will be found in the second of the two articles, at page 106.
[275] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 178.
[276] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 82, 83.
[277] Ibid. vol. iii. plate 46, No. 4.
[278] Botta (Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 178.) Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 310.
[279] Upon this question of polychromy in the reliefs, a very precise note of Layard’s may be consulted with profit (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 312). The discussion has also been very judiciously summed up by Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 357–365). One of the plates from which we may gather the best idea of how this sculpture must have looked when its colouring was intact, is that in which Layard gives a reproduction of one of the winged bulls as it appeared when first uncovered (Monuments, first series, plate 92).
[280] Botta, Monument de Ninive, plates 12 and 14.
[281] Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 58.
[282] Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 113.
[283] Ibid. plates 43 and 53.
[284] Botta, Monument, &c. plate 62.
[285] Ibid. plates 61 and 76, and vol. v. p. 124.
[286] See especially at the south end of the Nimroud Gallery, the upper part of a male figure, numbered 17 a. The black of the hair and beard has preserved much of its strength.
[287] “At Kouyunjik there were no traces whatever of colour.” Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 310.
[288] Heuzey, Catalogue des Figurines en terre cuite du Musée du Louvre, p. 18.
[289] Heuzey, Catalogue, &c. p. 19.
[290] Ibid. p. 20. Layard also found many of these blue statuettes at Khorsabad (Discoveries, p. 357).
[291] These fragments were found by Layard in one of the small temples at Nimroud (Discoveries, pp. 357, 358).
[292] M. Sully Prudhomme has lately embodied this idea in his verses addressed to the Venus of the Louvre (Devant la Vénus de Milo in the Revue politique for 6 January, 1883):—
[293] Herodotus, i. 195. Strabo says the same thing, but in a passage (xvi. i. 20), in which he borrows from Herodotus without acknowledgment.
[294] There are fine series of these seals, or cylinders, both in the Louvre and in the Cabinet des Antiques of the French National Library. But the collection of the British Museum is the richest of all. It possesses about 660 examples, against the 500 of the Cabinet des Antiquités, and the 300 of the Louvre. The cabinet at the Hague has 150. A single French collector, M. de Clercq, possesses more than 400, most of them in very fine condition and of great interest. He is preparing to publish a descriptive catalogue of his treasures, accompanied by photogravure facsimiles of every cylinder. According to M. Ménant, the total number of these cylinders now in European galleries can fall very little short of three thousand.
[295] M. Fr. Lenormant explains this talismanic value of the cylinders very clearly in his Étude sur la Signification des Sujets de quelques Cylindres babyloniens et assyriens (Gazette archéologique, 1879, p. 249).
[296] We have derived most of the information contained in this chapter from the works of M. Ménant, who, for many years past has given more study to these cylinders than any other savant. We have found his Essai sur les Pierres gravées de l’Asie occidentale of special value, but we have also made use of the various reports he has published in the Archives des Missions, relating to the foreign collections visited by him, and of his papers read before the Académie des Inscriptions. We have, moreover, consulted the following works, not, we hope, without profit: De Gobineau, Catalogue d’une Collection d’Intailles asiatiques (Revue archéologique, new series, vol. xxvii.); E. Soldi, Les Cylindres babyloniens, leur Usage et leur Classification (ibid. vol. xxviii.); and Les Arts méconnus, by the same author (1 vol. 8vo. Leroux, 1881), chapter i., Les Camées et les Pierres gravées.
[297] The thickest cylinders are found among those that appear the most ancient. I measured one, in the Cabinet des Antiquités, that was barely less than an inch in diameter. On the other hand, there are some very small ones in existence.
[298] Ménant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées de l’Asie occidentale, Introduction, p. 19. In the British Museum M. Ménant made a careful examination of a tablet on which these successive impressions from a cylinder allowed the whole of the scene with which it was engraved to be studied (Rapport sur les Cylindres Assyro-Chaldéens du Musée britannique, p. 95, in the Archives des Missions scientifiques, 1879). Even as late as 1854, a fine connoisseur like De Longperier could think that the cylinders were purely amulets and were never used as seals (Notice des Antiquités assyriennes exposées dans les Galeries du Louvre, 3rd edition, p. 87). No such assertion could be made now. Hundreds of impressions are to be found on the terra-cotta tablets from Mesopotamia, and moreover, we find this formula in the inscription borne by many of the cylinders: “Seal (kunuku) of so-and-so, son of so-and-so.” In Assyrian the word kunuku meant, as the word seal with us, both the instrument used and the impression it gave (Ménant, Essai, Introduction, p. 17). Some of these impressions are figured in Layard, Discoveries, chapters vi and xxv. See also his Monuments, second series, plate 69.
[299] The Louvre possesses a cylinder mounted in this fashion. It was found by Place in the foundations of the Khorsabad palace. See De Longperier, Notice, p. 98, (No. 469 in the Catalogue).
[300] Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer, p. 270 (in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xv.).
[301] Layard, Discoveries, p. 563.
[302] A few cylinders of fine stone dating apparently from the early monarchy, are exceptions to this rule. M. Ménant quotes a cylinder of sapphirine chalcedony, which he ascribes to the reign of Dungi, the son of Ourkam (Essai sur les Pierres gravées, pp. 141–143); elsewhere he mentions an onyx cylinder in the Cabinet des Antiques (No. 870), which bears an inscription proving it to have been the seal of the scribe or secretary who served the son of Karigalzu, whom he places at the end of the fifteenth century B.C. We also find jasper cylinders that appear, so far as their execution and the costume of the figures engraved on them may show, to have come from the same workshops (ibid. p. 123) as those of the softer materials. This, we acknowledge, is a difficulty. But in the first place they may have now and then succeeded, even in the early years of the art, in fashioning materials harder than those with which they were familiar, by redoubling the patience and time spent upon the work; and, secondly, several kings separated from each other by centuries must have borne the same name, and it is perhaps a little bold to determine the age of a monument from the fact that it is engraved with this or that royal name. Who can say that none of these little monuments were reworked in the time of Nebuchadnezzar? Archaism was then in fashion. The writing of the early monarchy was imitated in official documents. Is it not probable enough that, while they were in the vein, they copied the seals of the old and almost legendary kings? They would reproduce them in their entirety, both images and texts, but in obedience to the taste of the day, they would execute the copies in those harder and more precious materials which his increased skill permitted the workman to attack. In spite of a few doubtful instances, we may repeat the general rule we have laid down: That the great majority of those cylinders that bear incontestable marks of a high antiquity, are cut from materials inferior in hardness to the precious stones, or even to the quartzes.
[303] E. Soldi, Les Cylindres babyloniens (Revue archéologique, vol. xxviii. p. 147).
[304] Ibid. p. 149.
[305] The three pages in which M. Soldi sums up the result of his inquiries, may be studied with advantage (Les Arts méconnus, pp. 62–64).
[306] See J. Ménant, Observations sur trois Cylindres orientaux (Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December, 1879).
[307] Or, more correctly, Dioscurides (Διοσκουρίδης), according to the texts.—Ed.
[308] As to the connection of the Greek Heracles with Izdubar, see a passage quoted from Sayce by Mansell (Gazette archéologique, 1879, pp. 116, 117?). The New York cylinder is only 1.52 inches high. It has been slightly enlarged in our woodcut, so that its workmanship might be better shown.
[309] Upon the exploits of these two individuals, and the place they occupy upon the cylinders, see Ménant, Essai, &c., pp. 66, et seq.
[310] Ménant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées, Fig. 86.
[311] Ibid. p. 138.
[312] De Longpérier, Œuvres, vol. i. p. 335. Compare our Fig. 17, Vol. i., and M. Ménant’s observations upon the double-faced individual in whom the original androgynous type of the human race has been recognised by some (Essai, &c., pp. 111–120). We are inclined to agree with him in supposing the double profile to be no more than a convention, whose strangeness is diminished when we remember that it occurred upon the convex sides of a cylinder, where the eye of the spectator did not grasp it all at once, as upon the flat impression. In choosing such an arrangement, the artist seems to have desired to connect the figure both with the seated god and the figures on the other side; it is an expedient of the same nature as the five legs of the Ninevite bulls.
[313] Ménant, Essai, &c., p. 166. M. Ménant mentions some other myths, with which this scene may be connected. The true explanation cannot be decided, however, until the Chaldee mythology is better known than at present.
[314] Ibid. p. 153.
[315] Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. i. Fig. 85.
[316] Ménant, Essai, &c., pp. 61–96.
[317] Ménant, Essai, p. 94. Izdubar contends not only with monsters; he pursues, for his own pleasure, all the beasts of the desert and mountain; like the Nimrod of Genesis, he is a “mighty hunter before the Lord.” See the cylinders figured and explained by S. Haffner (La Chasse de l’Hercule assyrien, in the Gazette archéologique, 1879, p. 178–184).
[318] Ménant, Essai, p. 91.
[319] See above, page 144, and Fig. 70.
[320] Ménant, Essai, pp. 55–62.
[321] Berosus, fragment 1, § 4, in vol. ii. of the Fragmenta historicorum Græcorum of Ch. Müller.
[322] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 2. Layard, Discoveries, p. 605.
[323] These two cylinders are respectively numbered 937 and 942 in the Cabinet des Antiques.
[324] Ménant, Catalogue des Cylindres orientaux du Cabinet royal des Médailles de La Haye (The Hague, 4to.), No. 135.
[325] Upon these types see Ménant, Archives des Missions, 1879, pp. 128–9. The signet figured above belonged to a member of the tribe called Egibi, a group of merchants and bankers who seem to have held the highest rank upon the market of Babylon, both under the last national kings, and under the Achæmenidæ.
[326] Archives des Missions, 1879, p. 115.
[327] The charging animal seems rather to be a wild boar. The shape of its head and body, the ridge of hair along the spine, the shape of the legs and feet, and its action in charging, all suggest a boar, a suggestion confirmed by the action of the hunter, who receives the rush of the animal on a kind of scarf or cloak, while he buries his boar-spear in its back.—Ed.