DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0126
94 SCULPTURE IN WESTERN ASIA.
statues eight were discovered, heavy in composition and execution, but were all
lost in the Tigris. Arms holding a vase were attached to the body, the feet
were completely covered by the cumbrous garment around them, and hair fell
from the mitred head in so shapeless a mass as to blot out the lines of neck
and shoulder.'3° It is possible that the fragile alabaster may be somewhat
responsible for the lack of the statuesque in these figures; and yet the
same failings are apparent in a seated figure of much harder stone from
Kalah-Shergat, to be seen in the British Museum : a great contrast to the
severely sculptural character of Egyptian statuary is here to be noticed.
One curious feature of portal decoration in the harem was a colossal imita-
tion of a palm-tree, consisting of wood incrusted with bronze. A piece of
cedar-wood nine meters long, and as large around as a man's body, was found
sheathed in bits of bronze, which overlapped like the sheaths of a palm-tree;
and a fragment of gold discovered near by, which is now in the Louvre, indi-
cates a costly gilding. Here we have another witness, like the Balawat gates,
to the use of metal incrustation in Assyria.
In the interior of the Seraglio continuous reliefs, as at Nimroud, adorned
the walls, which, if placed in a line, would have extended for two kilometers;
but their inscriptions, unlike those of the earlier sculptures, were banished to
the back of the slabs. Numerous terra-cottas, resembling an arm and a closed
hand, were discovered, a few of them still remaining in the wall. These M.
Place conjectured to have been arranged along the top of the slabs, so as to
give the effect of hands holding them in place, as we may imagine hands hold-
ing carpets. George Smith, however, believed these hands to be simply talis-
mans against evil. It is possible that both ideas may have been united by this
people, so prone to turn the forms of their religious art into decoration. It has
with much reason been conjectured, that these sculptured slabs themselves
were a development out of those embroidered and woven hangings which
served as protection and decoration of the walls in ancient Babylon; and
hence these alabaster reliefs have been graphically called " petrified hang-
ings." '3'
The whole idea of the reliefs of the palace, to use Place's fine figure, is that
of an epic celebrating the glories of the monarch builder. As in written poems
the epic opens with an invocation to superior beings; so here sacred effigies
occupy the threshold, after which the narrative proceeds with true Oriental
garrulousness, flattering to the prince and people.
The scenes on first entering were devoted to royal pomp. In the larger
courts, one of which was lined with one hundred and twenty meters of relief,
the colossal king and attendants, towering up nine feet to the top of the slabs,
walk in single file. Like the portal figures, these reliefs, when compared with
the smaller, more delicately finished work at Nimroud, show a growing taste
for immensity and imposing size. The terrible Sargon in elaborate robes
statues eight were discovered, heavy in composition and execution, but were all
lost in the Tigris. Arms holding a vase were attached to the body, the feet
were completely covered by the cumbrous garment around them, and hair fell
from the mitred head in so shapeless a mass as to blot out the lines of neck
and shoulder.'3° It is possible that the fragile alabaster may be somewhat
responsible for the lack of the statuesque in these figures; and yet the
same failings are apparent in a seated figure of much harder stone from
Kalah-Shergat, to be seen in the British Museum : a great contrast to the
severely sculptural character of Egyptian statuary is here to be noticed.
One curious feature of portal decoration in the harem was a colossal imita-
tion of a palm-tree, consisting of wood incrusted with bronze. A piece of
cedar-wood nine meters long, and as large around as a man's body, was found
sheathed in bits of bronze, which overlapped like the sheaths of a palm-tree;
and a fragment of gold discovered near by, which is now in the Louvre, indi-
cates a costly gilding. Here we have another witness, like the Balawat gates,
to the use of metal incrustation in Assyria.
In the interior of the Seraglio continuous reliefs, as at Nimroud, adorned
the walls, which, if placed in a line, would have extended for two kilometers;
but their inscriptions, unlike those of the earlier sculptures, were banished to
the back of the slabs. Numerous terra-cottas, resembling an arm and a closed
hand, were discovered, a few of them still remaining in the wall. These M.
Place conjectured to have been arranged along the top of the slabs, so as to
give the effect of hands holding them in place, as we may imagine hands hold-
ing carpets. George Smith, however, believed these hands to be simply talis-
mans against evil. It is possible that both ideas may have been united by this
people, so prone to turn the forms of their religious art into decoration. It has
with much reason been conjectured, that these sculptured slabs themselves
were a development out of those embroidered and woven hangings which
served as protection and decoration of the walls in ancient Babylon; and
hence these alabaster reliefs have been graphically called " petrified hang-
ings." '3'
The whole idea of the reliefs of the palace, to use Place's fine figure, is that
of an epic celebrating the glories of the monarch builder. As in written poems
the epic opens with an invocation to superior beings; so here sacred effigies
occupy the threshold, after which the narrative proceeds with true Oriental
garrulousness, flattering to the prince and people.
The scenes on first entering were devoted to royal pomp. In the larger
courts, one of which was lined with one hundred and twenty meters of relief,
the colossal king and attendants, towering up nine feet to the top of the slabs,
walk in single file. Like the portal figures, these reliefs, when compared with
the smaller, more delicately finished work at Nimroud, show a growing taste
for immensity and imposing size. The terrible Sargon in elaborate robes