DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0111
BRONZES FROM TOMBS. 79
which were two bronze statuettes safely packed away,—one a man kneeling,
and the other a woman standing. At the feet of each, and fastened into the
bitumen lining the cavity, were two tablets, — one of white, and the other of
black, stone, — having a cuneiform inscription, which was repeated in the
bronze figures. That these in some way concerned the dead appeared when,
in the same neighborhood, M. de Sarzec found a tomb in which the skeleton
was still lying, and near its head a statuette with a similar tablet and inscrip-
tion, and bearing on its head a basket. What the exact date of these very
interesting bronze figures may be cannot be determined until their inscriptions
have been read, although the cuneiform characters speak for an early date.
The very great antiquity of the bronze figures of Gudea, which have long been
in the British Museum, show, moreover, that casting in bronze was understood
as early as his day in that ancient land.""
In these varied monuments in Chaldrca we have, then, in all probability,
that parent-stock which should be followed in time by the far more pompous
and conventional art of Assyria, the daughter land, and which should influence
the early people of Asia Minor and the Phoenicians, as their monuments seem
to prove.
which were two bronze statuettes safely packed away,—one a man kneeling,
and the other a woman standing. At the feet of each, and fastened into the
bitumen lining the cavity, were two tablets, — one of white, and the other of
black, stone, — having a cuneiform inscription, which was repeated in the
bronze figures. That these in some way concerned the dead appeared when,
in the same neighborhood, M. de Sarzec found a tomb in which the skeleton
was still lying, and near its head a statuette with a similar tablet and inscrip-
tion, and bearing on its head a basket. What the exact date of these very
interesting bronze figures may be cannot be determined until their inscriptions
have been read, although the cuneiform characters speak for an early date.
The very great antiquity of the bronze figures of Gudea, which have long been
in the British Museum, show, moreover, that casting in bronze was understood
as early as his day in that ancient land.""
In these varied monuments in Chaldrca we have, then, in all probability,
that parent-stock which should be followed in time by the far more pompous
and conventional art of Assyria, the daughter land, and which should influence
the early people of Asia Minor and the Phoenicians, as their monuments seem
to prove.