The causes which impeded the development of pottery in primitive ChaldÆa had the same unhappy influence on Assyrian pottery and on ChaldÆan pottery in the age of Nebuchadnezzar. Though a few terra-cottas are fashioned with a certain elegance and present graceful features, their walls are always extremely thick, on account of the friable nature of the clay, and the types created by the modeller are totally wanting in variety. Botta found under the pavement of the courtyards at Khorsabad little cavities containing, besides cylinders and other amulets, terra-cotta statuettes of talismanic character, intended to conjure and drive away the infernal powers. “These statuettes,” says M. Heuzey, “are designed with a remarkably sure hand, in grey clay, which is almost crude, and pitted with small holes, as if it had been mixed with chopped straw or hay, according to the process followed in the manufacture of bricks.”[43] The example which we reproduce represents the hero Izdubar, so often drawn upon the bas-reliefs and cylinders as he is here, that is to say, with curled beard and long hair in ringlets. His countenance is expressive, and shows signs of careful work. The same praise must be given to the head of a fantastic animal, also found at Khorsabad (fig. 91); this head, in whitish clay, is covered with a glaze of a fine bluish green, resembling, and perhaps imitated from, Egyptian pottery; a similar figure of a monster roaring at winged genii appears among the bronze monuments; in both cases the art is realistic, and has rendered ugliness and ferocity with all the force of ideal expression.

The terra-cotta vases discovered during the excavations in Assyria no doubt denote a real progress when compared with ChaldÆan ceramics; but they are still nothing but heavy amphorÆ, with or without handles, with a more or less elongated neck and a more or less broadened body, and they could never be compared to any but the most archaic productions of Greece. They are sometimes decorated with brown or yellowish paintings, or with designs in relief, representing floral scrolls, geometrical lines or diapers, but never with anything that reflects the beauty of the Ninevite sculptures. Among them all there are no vases which formed part of the luxuries of a refined civilisation, as the Greek vases did; neither in Assyria nor in ChaldÆa have any clay vessels been discovered except vulgar jars and pots. This is, perhaps, the place to notice fragments of two small circular vases of steatite or soapstone discovered at Nimroud and Sherif Khan, near Kouyunjik. They are probably of the age of the Sargonids, and are dedicated to certain deities. The thin walls give these vessels almost the appearance of porcelain, of which Layard supposed them to be, and the figures carved upon them in relief, give them an artistic character which the Assyrians could never impart to their pottery. One of the fragments is engraved by Layard.[44]

At Babylon, whither the seat of government was transferred after the fall of Nineveh, the modellers seem to have made a great artistic effort. Mr. Rassam obtained from the ruins of the southern capital a small terra-cotta tablet, 1¾ in. by 2¾ in., on which the figure of a boar, such as lived among the reeds and marshes of Mesopotamia, is modelled in relief. The forms of the animal are here reproduced with all the excellence of the later Assyrian artists, by Azaru, of the tribe Esaggilai (doubtless connected with the great ChaldÆan Temple), whose name inscribed on the back adds to the interest of the little work. Solid figurines have

been found in ChaldÆa, like those in Assyria, moulded on one side only in greenish clay, forming remarkable examples of Babylonian art. The chronological position of these figurines is, however, difficult to determine, but they seem to us to be, perhaps, contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar. They represent priests or gods, standing upright in their long robes, with their hands clasped in the attitude of respect; women dressed in fringed garments, carrying a vase upon their breast; nude goddesses, standing upright, and suckling the divine child. One of these last (fig. 93) is, says M. Heuzey, “A purely Asiatic type, the rather full forms of which are modelled with charming truth and rare delicacy; I do not fear to describe it as a little wonder of its kind.”[45] Another and commoner example is the goddess Istar, nude and holding her hands against her breasts, adorned with bracelets and necklaces, with her hair elaborately dressed: this naturalism and immodest freedom in the representation of Istar form a contrast with the ordinary habit of ChaldÆo-Assyrian art. This series of figurines is chronologically terminated by the statuettes of the AchÆmenid or Parthian epoch, modelled of the same clay, but showing all the characteristics of decadence. The forms are less carefully studied; sometimes Istar, the goddess of Erech, is represented in these figurines of terra-cotta or alabaster, half-reclining on a banqueting couch, like that described by Herodotus in the temple of Bel-Marduk at Babylon; her head is often crowned with the crescent, her proper symbol, in the centre of which a garnet or other sparkling stone is set. In short, these coarse images of the voluptuous goddess condemn at once the art and the manners of the people who produced them.

§ II. Metals.

The art of working in metals, which was already so highly developed among the primitive ChaldÆans, reached its apogee under the Sargonids. We find statuettes, bas-reliefs in repoussÉ, vases and utensils of every sort, weapons and ornaments, so that there is no use of the precious metals, or of iron and bronze, to which they were not put by the industry of Ninevite craftsmen. Among the ruins of Sargon’s palace, objects of iron and bronze, such as hooks, rings, chains, pickaxes, hammers, plough-shares, weapons, fragments of chariots, and tools of all sorts, were picked up. From the strictly artistic point of view, we have already described the wooden pillars plated with overlapping scales of bronze, so as to imitate the bark of the palm tree.

The most important of the Assyrian monuments in bronze hitherto discovered is the famous decoration of the gates of the palace of Shalmaneser III. (857-822), at Balawat. It consists of metal bands, 9 in. broad, decorated in repoussÉ with reliefs representing the campaigns of Shalmaneser. They were fixed horizontally, at intervals, on wooden gates, which may have been quite 7 or 8 yards high; the scenes are reproduced upon them with the same ease and the same details as on the limestone slabs: battles, landscapes, trees, rivers and mountains are to be seen; the figures, however, are treated more roughly, and the muscles are marked with less precision and delicacy. Each band (fig. 96) is divided into two compartments by a row of rosettes, imitating the heads of nails. “Taking them all in all,” says M. Perrot, “these bronze reliefs are among the works which do most honour to Assyrian art.”[46]

The perfection of the work in certain Assyrian bronze vessels makes these monuments real masterpieces. PaterÆ found at Nineveh, sometimes incrusted with gold and silver, present on their inner surface, in an exquisite style, concentric zones of rosettes and symmetrical festoons of figures engraved in outline or standing out in relief (fig. 97). Symbols are encountered

which have evidently been borrowed from Egypt, such as the winged scarabÆus and the figures of Hathor and Bes. Similar in form, in the metal of which they are composed, in the gold and silver incrustations, and even in the choice of subjects, to the Phoenician vessels from Cyprus (figs. 233 and 234), the paterÆ of Nineveh are not, for the most part, of Assyrian manufacture; they were brought thither by Phoenician commerce, and were probably fashioned in the workshops of Tyre or Sidon, where the artistic traditions of Egypt and Assyria were united. The glass found among the Assyrian ruins was also probably of Phoenician manufacture, as it will be seen in the chapter on Phoenician art. Much more exclusively Assyrian are the bronze seals which the bas-reliefs show us in the hands of priests or genii. We find among them lions’ heads, flowers and elegant rosettes on the bottom, on the border, or at the point at which the handles are attached.

The equipment of an Assyrian soldier consists of a bow and arrows, a lance or javelin, a club, a sword, a dagger, a helmet, a coat of mail, and a buckler; the battering-rams which sap the walls had a metal carapace and head. Might it not be imagined that these Assyrian soldiers, wearing the conical helmet, and entirely covered, with the exception

of their arms, nose and eyes, with a long coat of iron mail, were mediÆval knights? The shape of the Assyrian helmet varies according to the time, and perhaps also according to military rank. There is the helmet formed of a conical basin, without ornament, the helmet provided with cheek-pieces, as among the Greeks, the helmet decorated with an elegant crest bearing an aigrette of feathers or of horsehair. But the essential form is always that of a hemispherical basin, covering the head, but leaving the face bare. A votive shield, preserved at the British Museum, has, like those represented in the bas-reliefs, the form of a large round disk, convex in its central part; this metal disk, 34 in. in diameter, is decorated like the paterÆ with a central rosette and several concentric zones containing lions and bulls in relief.

The preceding examples prove the existence of a manufacture of metals which had reached a high degree of perfection, and was in possession of all the technical methods. Accordingly, we believe that the scanty number of statues or statuettes in bronze of human beings or of Assyrian deities must be attributed to an unfortunate chance. They must have been produced in large numbers, as in ancient ChaldÆa, and a good proof of this is the large cow’s head disinterred near Bagdad and preserved at the British Museum[47]; another example is the statuette of a lion found at Khorsabad (fig. 100); this has, doubtless, serious defects, such as a singular disproportion between the head and the body, between the fore legs and the hind legs; but what truth of expression in the muzzle with its gaping mouth, and in those powerful claws!

A statuette in M. de VogÜÉ’s collection, found at Van, represents a sort of siren which seems to have acted as an ornament attached to a vessel or a piece of furniture (figs. 101 and 102). The oriental appearance of the head, the hair in ringlets, the large eyes, the bracelets upon the outstretched arms behind the wings, and the artistically marked feathers, make of this little monument one of the most precious relics of the art of working in bronze among the Assyrians. A similar figure is preserved in the British Museum, and in this instance the loose ring by which the vessel was held is still in place.

The Louvre possesses the figure of a monster with four wings which represents the demon of the south-west wind, as the cuneiform inscription upon it teaches us (fig. 103). Nothing can be imagined more hideous and more expressive than the head with its glaring eyes, roaring throat, horned brows, crooked fingers and fleshless body with lion’s claws. It leads us naturally to cite a bronze plaque from the collection of M. de Clercq, in which M. Clermont-Ganneau has recognised a representation of the Assyrian hell. One

side (fig. 104) is occupied by a monster with four wings and eagle’s claws, looking over the top of the plaque; on the other side (fig. 105) the monster’s head is seen, and under it scenes arranged in four rows: first the symbolical figures of the stars, then a procession of seven creatures dressed in long robes and having the heads of various animals: these are the heavenly genii called Igigis. Below this we witness a funeral scene: two creatures with human bodies combined with the head and body of a fish, like the god Oannes, stand by a bed on which a corpse is laid out, swathed in its mummy-clothes; near them stand two monsters like the demons which appear in a battle scene belonging to the campaigns of Assur-nasir-pal, and, of larger size, on the walls of Assurbanipal’s palace; they face one another in the same attitude here as there, and seem to be disputing or quarrelling. The lowest row shows a stream of water in which are fish. In a boat is a kneeling horse; on his back is a monster holding serpents in his hands; lion-cubs are springing forwards towards him; another monster stands on the brink of the water; in the background are trees and fragments of different kinds, looking like the remains of a banquet. There is some artistic merit in several portions of this curious scene. The monster on the other side is boldly designed, and his form is vigorous and supple.

In the chiselling of a royal standard (fig. 106), the artist really attained to the highest technical skill: the bulls’ heads and the lions’ heads arranged along the pole are masterpieces of taste, and might be proposed as models at the present day. In the palaces fragments of thrones have been found formed of bronze plating. One of the most remarkable pieces, found at Van, belongs to M. de VogÜÉ (fig. 107); the deep sculpture in the claws of the crouching lion reminds the spectator of a bronze statuette from Tello (fig. 26).

§ III. Wood and Ivory.

No people of antiquity carried as far as the ChaldÆo-Assyrians their taste for elegant furniture, which is as delicately sculptured among them as the most precious bronze utensils. We shall never know, doubtless, except through the testimony of literature, what that carved wood-work was, and what those ceilings of cedar were, to which the prophets of Israel allude with such jealous enthusiasm, and which the kings boast of having had executed, speaking to us in their inscriptions of palaces in which “the gates are of ebony, with fittings of silver plating and polished iron, the pillars of cypress-wood, the posts of cedar carved by skilful craftsmen, and coated with plates of wrought metal.” But the bas-reliefs place before our eyes wooden furniture in which the superiority of the Assyrian genius is conspicuous, and which reveal to us a people gorged with wealth, among whom luxury in furniture holds an important place. The animal and vegetable kingdoms are turned to profit by the craftsmen with astonishing skill in the decoration of the tables, stools, beds, tripods, umbrellas and fly-flaps. At every opportunity lions’ heads and claws, goats, panthers and bulls occur, fancifully arranged, but always in perfect harmony and excellent taste; flowers, festoons, undulating and interlacing lines, rosettes and geometrical figures are all found in endless variety and in perfect equilibrium; nowhere has such work been better done, neither in Egypt nor in Greece.

The bas-relief (fig. 77), which represents Assurbanipal drinking with one of his wives, shows us some of the furniture of a royal palace. The prince reclines upon a divan, the queen sitting upon a chair, with a stool under her feet; before them is a table. Are not the sculptured couch, the table with its feet carved in the form of lions’ claws, and the chair, lavishly decorated with sculpture and ivory ornaments, as rich and as skilful in workmanship as any such objects to be found in European drawing-rooms? Another bas-relief (fig. 108) shows a tent erected in the open plain during a military expedition; it is simply the stables, as it seems. Notice the elegance of the wooden pillars, the shafts of which are decorated with geometrical designs, and terminate in floral ornaments on which slender kids, ready to spring, are poised. Wood formed the framework of these chairs, coffers, and shrines, but disappeared more or less completely under the bronze or gold plating, the incrustations of ivory, coloured glass, lapis lazuli, and brilliant stones, or, lastly, the embroidered rugs and the carpets. In the camp before Lachish, Sennacherib sits upon a throne, the sides of which are composed of three rows of figures, raising their arms to sustain the bars of the chair.

Wood was the essential part of the structure of the chariots, the wheels of which have spokes turned in the lathe, and the body of which is of woven wicker-work, while the pole, describing a graceful curve, ends in an elegant horse’s head or in the head of a deer, a bull, a lion or a swan. The very weapons, lances, daggers and bows have shafts, hilts, and handles carved into figures of animals, crouching, sleeping, springing or folded in two, similar to the figures drawn and carved by the mediÆval decorators.

These objects, however, are not always of wood; oftenest, perhaps, they are of bone or ivory, as it is proved by the ivory tablets and the toilette articles, such as combs and pins, which the excavations have brought to light.[48]

But side by side with these knick-knacks in the Ninevite style, there are others which, though found in Mesopotamia, seem to be of foreign origin. Witness to this is borne by an ivory plaque found at Nimroud, which was certainly part of the incrustation of a piece of furniture (fig. 111). The relief is clear, the work highly finished; the figure, which holds in its hand a large lotus-stalk, has woolly hair like an Ethiopian, and bears the Egyptian UrÆus on its brow. Another tablet from Nimroud represents the head of a woman, whose hair is arranged in Egyptian fashion. She is enclosed in a frame which resembles a window with a balustrade, the capitals of which, original in style, seem to have been coloured. An ivory statuette of the goddess Istar, found at Nimroud, has the same heavy coiffure in successive rolls, and resting upon the shoulders; here we have again the Egyptian style with an exaggerated naturalism proper only to the Phoenicians. We may conclude that these ivories were fashioned, like the bronze dishes, in the workshops of Phoenicia. Thence caravans transported all these small objects as far as Nineveh; we know that the merchants of Tyre and Sidon had numerous stores in the very heart of Mesopotamia. Phoenician commerce was the great vehicle by which Egyptian and Assyrian art was carried abroad.

§ IV. Leather and Stuffs.

The art of embroidery and tapestry, which we have seen so highly developed in primitive ChaldÆa, and a most remarkable example of which was furnished us in the costume of Marduk-nadin-akhi, did not cease to flourish during the whole existence of the Ninevite empire, and was more prosperous than ever at Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Can robes of greater richness be imagined than these worn by Assur-nasir-pal, Sargon, Sennacherib, or Assurbanipal? Are there, even at the present day, any embroideries or tapestries of more wonderful delicacy or in more exquisite taste? Assyrian stuffs are celebrated throughout the ancient

world for the beauty of their varied tints, and above all for the marvellous embroideries which the chisel of the Assyrian sculptor has so delicately reproduced? All this decoration, in which we find figures in adoration before the sacred tree or the symbol of the supreme deity, genii struggling with lions, fights between animals, the mystical pinecone, flowers, and a hundred other varied designs elegantly and symmetrically arranged, reveals extraordinary manual skill. History, mythology, botany, and real or fanciful zoology are turned to profit with inimitable perfection, and we are forced to take everything literally that has been related by ancient authors about the tapestries which adorned the palace-chambers. In the banqueting-hall of Ahasuerus, king of Persia, there were, according to the

Book of Esther, white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble. In the description of a picture portraying the adventures of Themistocles, Philostratus the Elder also speaks of the various subjects embroidered by the Babylonians upon their stuffs, and of the golden threads skilfully mingled with the tissue; we have seen that the Babylonian stuff called kaunakes, and characterised by rows of long fringes, was still celebrated among the Persians and the Greeks. Pliny, the natural historian, claims for the tapestry-weavers of Babylon the honour of having been superior to all their rivals in other countries in the art of harmonising colours and representing figures. “In fact,” says M. E. MÜntz, “the words, Babylonian tapestries,—Babylonica peristromata, recur constantly in the Latin poets, who are never satisfied with praising them. Roman connoisseurs bought such hangings for their weight in gold. Metellus Scipio spent 800,000 sesterces in triclinaria Babylonica. Nero paid, for the same stuffs, an even higher price: 4,000,000 sesterces.”[50]

Thus the East, which remains to our days the classical land of embroidery and tapestry, has only perpetuated the traditions bequeathed to her by Nineveh and Babylon when they ceased to exist.

The industries of saddle-making and working in leather, which are still so flourishing among the Turks, Persians, and Arabs, can be traced back, according to tradition, to the Assyrians who raised them to the dignity of an art. Notice the harness of the king’s chariot horses. The leather straps, embroidered with red and yellow threads, form variegated trimmings. Sometimes a leather band, crossing the chest and fastened on the withers, is decorated with a double row of tassels, and finished off by bells. Another embroidered band descends from the top of the head, and sustains under the jaw a tassel formed of three tufts, one above the other, also adorned with bells. Above the head rises a superb plume with a triple crest. The head-piece is adorned with rosettes, and above the horse’s eyes there is a band formed of overlapping scales, joined to the head-stall by a double tassel. Everything, including even the strap which holds the bit, and that passed under the nostrils, is relieved by rosettes and brilliant trimmings, and probably also by metal disks, perhaps of gold and silver.

§ V. Ornaments and Cylindrical Seals.

The excavations in ChaldÆa and Assyria have, down to this day, scarcely furnished us with any ornaments of gold or silver. However, we know from the inscriptions that these metals occupied the first rank, and were abundantly employed in the ornaments of the Ninevites and Babylonians. The tombs of primitive ChaldÆa contained bronze bracelets and ear-rings of the simplest form. These are circular rings, sometimes thinner at the two ends, which are both pointed. At Khorsabad Botta found necklaces formed of precious stones pierced with holes, which were spheroidal in form or elongated like olives; these balls of marble, jasper, chalcedony, amethyst, lapis lazuli, were sometimes mixed with cylinders or other seals of conical shape. At Kouyunjik a necklace was discovered, formed of little golden balls alternating with little cylinders of the same metal. A bronze bracelet at the Louvre has lions’ heads at the two extremities.

But we learn more from the bas-reliefs about the taste for ornament among the Assyrians, and about the goldsmiths’ work at Nineveh and Babylon. Kings and genii wear necklaces, ear-rings, diadems, and bracelets. Their forms are always elegant and present great variety. The diadems are circles, perhaps of gold, broader in the middle, and generally decorated with a rosette, in the centre of which a glittering gem was doubtless conspicuous. Deities carried in procession wear high tiaras also surmounted by a rosette, the essential element of which is a precious stone. Bracelets are worn above the elbow and on the fore-arm; these are circular disks, sometimes closed and decorated with rosettes, at other times ending in two lions’, deers’, rams’, or serpents’ heads; some are twisted two or three times round the arm. Among the ornaments which hang from the necklace, the cross, of that form which we call the Maltese cross, must be cited; the same symbol, which reminds us of the Egyptian crux ansata, is also found in the ear-rings (fig. 63).

As for seal-engraving, its abundant examples do not surpass in artistic merit the ChaldÆan work which we have already described. Assyrian cylinders, that is to say, those which were especially manufactured at Nineveh, are distinguished from those of Babylon and ChaldÆa by a drier and more commercial style of work.[51] Inscriptions are rarer, and engraved in Ninevite characters: the myths represented by the engravers are the same as at Babylon, but the figures have a more modern appearance: for instance, the winged bulls with human heads, and the genii with eagle’s beaks and four wings, are copied from the bas-reliefs in the palaces of Khorsabad, Nimroud and Kouyunjik. The Assyrian cylinders of the archaic epoch present the technical characteristics that we have already indicated in ChaldÆa: the joints of the limbs are rendered by means of a drill producing small hemispherical holes, and the rest of the body is executed with another instrument which hollowed out parallel lines. These peculiarities are clearly distinguished on a fine cylinder which we give after M. Menant (fig. 115): it represents three figures who seem to sacrifice upon a tripod to the sun, the moon, and the seven planets.

The cylinders of the Sargonid epoch prove a progress parallel to that of ChaldÆan glyptics; the traces left by the action of the saw and the drill have disappeared to make room for the modelling of the figures, which sometimes reach a degree of suppleness true to nature. We will cite as examples a cylinder of the De Clercq collection, representing two genii in adoration before the sacred tree (fig. 116), and a cylinder in the British Museum (fig. 117) on which the god Rammanu is seen, armed with a bow and arrows, standing upon a crouching lion and receiving the homage of a pontiff. The two cylinders are very fine: on the first, extreme exactness is to be noticed in the details of the costume, and great delicacy in the features of the two genii. On the second, on the contrary, the forms have a freer and easier pose, and the scene has more life; the palm is remarkable for truth; the ibexes, above all, are absolutely pure in design; the modelling of their thighs and flanks reminds us of the lions on the ChaldÆan cylinder which we admired before (see fig. 35); it also reminds us of the famous lioness among the sculptures of Assurbanipal’s palace (fig. 81), which is probably contemporary with it. Assyrian glyptics has produced nothing more highly finished; like sculpture on a larger scale, it excels in the rendering of animal forms.

Fig. 118.—Assyrian cylinder. De Clercq collection (after Menant).