disjointing a calf;138 but all this, is done before the tent of the king:
it is the royal stable and the royal kitchen which we see before us,—in
fact, “ eourhlife below stairs.” The rich Asiatic costume of the
Assyrians, wide and flowing, decorated with embroidery, fringes and
tassels, contrasts most strikingly with the prevalent nakedness of
Egyptian and Greek art. We are always reminded of the pomp, splendor
and etiquette of eastern courts. The proportions of the human
body are somewhat short and heavy, less animated in their action, but
more correctly modelled than in Egyptian reliefs. Nothing but an
occasional want of correctness about the shoulders and the eyes,
which, in the bas-reliefs, are drawn in the front-view, reminds us of the
infancy of art or of a traditionary hieratic style. The anatomical
knowledge, however, with which the muscles are sculptured, even
where the execution is rather coarse, surpasses the art of Egypt in
the time of the XVlith dynasty. The composition is generally
clear, the space conveniently and symmetrically filled with figures,
and the relief, to a certain degree, has ceased to be a mere architectural
decoration: on the palace of E ssarh a d dq n , it has even become
a real tableau. For all this, we cannot appreciate the merit of the
sculptures, if we pass our judgment upon them independently of the
place for which they were originally destined. Accordingly, the
peculiarly Assyrian exaggeration in representing the muscles of the
body has often been criticized;139 since it escaped the attention of our
modern art-critics, that this fault is only apparent, not real, being
produced exclusively by the different way in which the bas-reliefs
were lit in antiquity and modern times. In the hot climate and
under the glaring sun of Mesopotamia, the palaces were built principally
with the view to afford coolness and shade-; and therefore all
the royal halls were long, high and narrow, in order to exclude the
rays of the sun. They could, in consequence, but very imperfectly
have been lighted from above, through apertures in the colonnade
supporting the beams of the roof. A cool chiaroscuro reigned in all
the apartments; and unless the reliefs on the wall were intended
altogether to be lost to beholders, it was indispensable to have the
principal lines deeply cut into the alabaster, in order to produce a
sufficiently-intense shadow for making the composition and its details
apparent. The Assyrian sculptors, with true artistical feeling, calculated
upon the effect their works were to make in the king’s
palaces; but could not dream that their compositions were to be
138 B onomi, Nineveh and its Palacesy p. 2 2 8 -2 9 ; an octavo which admirably popularizes the
co stly fo lio s o f Botta and F landin’s Ninive.
188 Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, p. 316.
exposed, 28 centuries later, to the close inspection of the critics of our
day in well-lighted museums.
When we claim a peculiar national type for Assyrian art, altogether
independent of Egyptian, we do not mean to deny accidental'
Egyptian influence, which, however, could not transform Assyrian
sculpture into a branch of Nilotic art. The beautiful embossed
bronze bowls, ivory bas-reliefs and statuettes found at Nineveh, are
certainly imitations of Egyptian models; but we encounter similar
artistical fashions at Rome in the time of Hadrian. They remained
altogether on the surface, and did not affect the national style. Still,
we do find some artistic “motives,” even on the best reliefs of Nim-
rood and Khorsabad, which show on the one hand, that the Assyrian
sculptors were acquainted with some Egyptian monuments of art;
and on the other, that this acquaintance ever continued to be superficial.
Thus, for instance, we often meet on Pharaonic battle-scenes,
with the vulture, holding a sword in its claws, soaring above the king,
as a symbol of victory. The Ninevite artists copied this representation,
but, unacquainted with its hieratic symbolical meaning, sculptured
the vulture simply as the hideous bird of prey, feeding upon the
corpses on the battle-field, and carrying the limbs into its eyrie. In
a similar way, the winged solar disc, the symbol of the heavenly sun,
was transformed in Assyria into the guardian-angel of the king himself,
and transferred at a later age to Persia as the Feruer.
The following representation of
an Assyrian [24] gives us a fair
idea of the Arian type of the Ninevite
aristocracy. - It' is the head
of a statue of the God N ebo, in the
British Museum, bearing across its
breast an inscription, stating that
the statue was. executed by a sculptor
of Calah, and dedicated by him
to his lord P haltjkha, (Belochus,
Pul,) king of Assyria, and to his
lady S am m u r am it (Semiramis) queen
of the palace (about 7 5 0 b. c.).
The same general cast of features
is clearly discernible in an inedited
portrait of E s s a r e a d b o n [ 2 5 ] (about
66 0 b . c .) taken from the great triumphal
tableau at Kouyundjik,
now in the British Museum. The
Ninevite artists.—who, about the time of this king, introduced a
10
Fig. 24.
N ebo.