DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0127
RELIEFS AT KHORSARAD.
95
continually re-appears, calmly receiving the homage of his subjects, who follow
one another with the stolid dignity of royal receptions in the Orient of to-day.
One attendant holds over the monarch a fan : another bears his weapons. The
figures in front stand with folded hands ; and vase-bearers hold their vessels on
the tips of thumb and fingers, with the affected dignity of modern Orientals.
When the king is performing sacred rites, his assistants are winged figures
with horned caps ; but the religious element in Khorsabad is far less pronounced
than at Nimroud.
Quite different scenes cover the walls of the smaller chambers. We see
depicted battle and hunting scenes in double, treble, and sometimes fourfold,
rows of reliefs, in which large numbers of small figures of various nationalities
are represented in much the same style as in those at Nimroud (Fig. 48). In
these scenes the history is clearly a one-sided national glorification. So anxious
is the sculptor to impress us with the invincible prowess of the Assyrians, that
he never allows us the fascination of uncertainty in watching a deadly conflict,
Fig. 47. Palace Gateway. Khorsabad.
or gives us a gleam of hope for the enemy. Prisoners are being carried off,
and booty is being appropriated. Spreading out before us inhuman tortures,
now the victor impales the victims before our eyes ; now holds up their ghastly
heads, or gives their bodies as carrion to vultures. On one slab we see Sargon
holding two prisoners by cords hooked into their lips, calling to mind the
threat made to Pharaoh (Ezek. xxix. 4), "I will put hooks into thy jaws." And
yet all this is done in carvings which show such guileless ignorance of per-
spective, and such gross faults in drawing and composition, that what was
intended to be horrible becomes rather amusing.
It is refreshing to turn from these battle-scenes to those more attractive
ones in which Sargon, "a mighty hunter," like Nimrod of old, frees the land
from dangerous beasts. How great the passion of the Assyrian monarchs for
the hunt appears from an inscription in which Tiglath Pileser tells us, that one
hundred and twenty lions were slain by him on foot, and that eight hundred
more fell before his weapons, as he and his men rode in their chariots. These
95
continually re-appears, calmly receiving the homage of his subjects, who follow
one another with the stolid dignity of royal receptions in the Orient of to-day.
One attendant holds over the monarch a fan : another bears his weapons. The
figures in front stand with folded hands ; and vase-bearers hold their vessels on
the tips of thumb and fingers, with the affected dignity of modern Orientals.
When the king is performing sacred rites, his assistants are winged figures
with horned caps ; but the religious element in Khorsabad is far less pronounced
than at Nimroud.
Quite different scenes cover the walls of the smaller chambers. We see
depicted battle and hunting scenes in double, treble, and sometimes fourfold,
rows of reliefs, in which large numbers of small figures of various nationalities
are represented in much the same style as in those at Nimroud (Fig. 48). In
these scenes the history is clearly a one-sided national glorification. So anxious
is the sculptor to impress us with the invincible prowess of the Assyrians, that
he never allows us the fascination of uncertainty in watching a deadly conflict,
Fig. 47. Palace Gateway. Khorsabad.
or gives us a gleam of hope for the enemy. Prisoners are being carried off,
and booty is being appropriated. Spreading out before us inhuman tortures,
now the victor impales the victims before our eyes ; now holds up their ghastly
heads, or gives their bodies as carrion to vultures. On one slab we see Sargon
holding two prisoners by cords hooked into their lips, calling to mind the
threat made to Pharaoh (Ezek. xxix. 4), "I will put hooks into thy jaws." And
yet all this is done in carvings which show such guileless ignorance of per-
spective, and such gross faults in drawing and composition, that what was
intended to be horrible becomes rather amusing.
It is refreshing to turn from these battle-scenes to those more attractive
ones in which Sargon, "a mighty hunter," like Nimrod of old, frees the land
from dangerous beasts. How great the passion of the Assyrian monarchs for
the hunt appears from an inscription in which Tiglath Pileser tells us, that one
hundred and twenty lions were slain by him on foot, and that eight hundred
more fell before his weapons, as he and his men rode in their chariots. These