George Rawlinson

“ But no sooner does any untoward event occur, as a disastrous expedition, a foreign attack, a domestic conspiracy, or even an untimely and unexpected death of the reigning prince, than the inherent weakness of this sort of government at once displays itself—the whole fabric of the empire falls asunder—each kingdom re-asserts its independence—tribute ceases to be paid—and the mistress of a hundred states suddenly finds herself thrust back into her primitive condition, stripped of the dominion which has been her strength, and thrown entirely upon her own resources. ”

“ Architecture, the only one of the fine arts which is essentially useful, forms their chief glory; sculpture, and still more painting, are subsidiary to it. Again, it is the most useful edifice—the palace or house—whereon attention is concentrated—the temple and the tomb, the interest attaching to which is ideal and spiritual, are secondary, and appear (so far as they appear at all) simply as appendages of the palace. In the sculpture it is the actual the historically true—which the artist strives to represent. ”

“ The guests are all clothed in the long tasselled gown, over which they wear the deeply fringed belt and cross-belt. They have sandals on their feet, and on their arias armlets and bracelets. They sit on high stools, from which their legs dangle; but in no case have they footstools, which would apparently have been a great convenience. Most of the guests are bearded men, but intermixed with them we see a few eunuchs. Every guest holds in his right hand a wine-cup of a most elegant shape, the lower part modelled into the form of a lion’s head, from which the cup itself rises in a graceful curve. ”

“ The result is, that while the other sovereigns who bore sway in Assyria are generally either wholly unknown, or float before the mind’s eye as dim and shadowy forms, Sennacherib stands out to our apprehension as a living and breathing man, the impersonation of all that pride and greatness which we assign to the Ninevite kings, the living embodiment of Assyrian haughtiness, Assyrian violence, and Assyrian power. ”

“ The size and magnificence of Asshur-izir-pal’s buildings, the artistic excellence of their ornamentation, the pomp and splendor which they set before us as familiar to the king who raised them, the skill in various useful arts which they display or imply, have excited the admiration of Europe, which has seen with astonishment that many of its inventions were anticipated, and that its luxury was almost equalled, by an Asiatic people nine centuries before the Christian era. ”

“ The boldness of the composition, which represents the first lion actually in mid-air, is remarkable; the drawing of the brute’s fore-paws, expanded to seize his intended prey, is lifelike and very spirited, while the head is massive and full of vigor. There is something noble in the calmness of the monarch contrasted with the comparative eagerness of the attendant, who stretches forward with shield and spear to protect has master from destruction, if the arrow fails. ”

“ It is observable that in the sculptures the winged circle is seldom found except in immediate connection with the monarch. The great King wears it embroidered upon his robes, carries it engraved upon his cylinder, represents it above his head in the rock-tablets on which he carves his image a stands or kneels in adoration before it, fights under its shadow, under its protection returns victorious, places it conspicuously in the scenes where he himself is represented on his obelisks. ”

“ If it be borne in mind, in addition to all this, that the buildings of the Assyrians show them to have been well acquainted with the principle of the arch, that they constructed tunnels, aqueducts, and drains, that they knew the use of the pulley, the lever, and the roller, that they understood the arts of inlaying, enamelling, and overlaying with metals, and that they cut gems with the greatest skill and finish, it will be apparent that their civilization equalled that of almost any ancient country, and that it did not fall immeasurably behind the boasted achievements of the moderns. ”

“ Few things are more remarkable than the striking difference between the appearance of the same tract in Assyria at different seasons of the year. What at one time is a garden, glowing with brilliant hues and heavy with luxuriant pasture, on which the most numerous flocks can scarcely make any sensible impression, at another is an absolute waste, frightful and oppressive from its sterilityr. ”

“ The latter days of this great Assyrian prince were thus, unhappily, clouded by disaster. Neither he, nor his descendants, nor any Assyrian monarch for four centuries succeeded in recovering the lost idols, and replacing them in the shrines from which they were taken. A hostile and jealous spirit appears henceforth in the relations between Assyria and Babylon; we find no more intermarriages of the one royal house with the other; wars are frequent—almost constant—nearly every Assyrian monarch, whose history is known to us in any detail, conducting at least one expedition into Babylonia. ”

“ Such, in its broad and general outlines, was the empire of the Assyrians. It embodied the earliest, simplest, and most crude conception which the human mind forms of a widely extended dominion. It was a “kingdom-empire,” like the empires of Solomon, of Nebuchadnezzar, of Chedor-laomer, and probably of Cyaxares, and it the best specimen of its class, being the largest, the longest in duration, and the best known of all such governments that has existed. ”

“ Such a silence is so contrary to the ordinary practice of Assyrian monarchs, who glory in their descent and parade it on every possible occasion, that, where it occurs, we are justified in concluding the monarch to have been an usurper, deriving his title to the crown, not from his ancestry or from any law of succession, but from a successful revolution, in which he played the principal part. It matters little that such a monarch, when he is settled upon the throne, claims, in a vague and general way, connection with the kings of former times. ”

“ Art, so far as we know, had existed previously only in the stiff and lifeless conventionalism of the Egyptians. It belonged to Assyria to confine the conventional to religion, and to apply art to the vivid representation of the highest scenes of human life. War in all its forms—the-march, the battle, the pursuit, the siege of towns, the passage of rivers and marshes, the submission and treatment of captives, and the “mimic war” of hunting the chase of the lion, the stag, the antelope, the wild bull, and the wild ass, are the chief subjects treated by the Assyrian sculptors ”

“ The careful finish, the minute detail, the elaboration of every hair in a beard, and every stitch in the embroidery of a dress, reminds us of the Dutch school of painting, and illustrates strongly the spirit of faithfulness and honesty which pervades the sculptures, and gives them so great a portion of their value. In conception, in grace, in freedom and correctness of outline, they fall undoubtedly far behind the inimitable productions of the Greeks ”

“ The Babylonian wife of Vul-lush III., who gave him his title to the regions of the south, and reigned conjointly with him both in Babylonia and Assyria, became first a queen of Babylon, ruling independently and alone, and then an Assyrian empress, the conqueror of Egypt and Ethiopia, the invader of the distant India, the builder of Babylon, and the constructor of all the great works which were anywhere to be found in Western Asia. The grand figure thus produced imposed upon the uncritical ancients, and was accepted even by the moderns for many centuries. ”

“ When at the present day we take a general survey of the world’s past history, we see that, by a species of fatality—by a law, that is, whose workings we cannot trace—there issue from time to time out of the frozen bosons of the North vast hordes of uncouth savages—brave, hungry, countless—who swarm into the fairer southern regions determinedly, irresistibly; like locusts winging their flight into a green land. How such multitudes come to be propagated in countries where life is with difficulty sustained, we do not know ”

“ The faults which still remain in this best period of Assyrian art are heaviness and stiffness of outline in the human forms; a want of expression in the faces, and of variety and animation in the attitudes; and an almost complete disregard of perspective. If the worst of these faults are anywhere overcome, it would seem to be in the land lion-hunt, from which the noble head represented below is taken; and in the river-hunt of the same, beast, found on a slab too much injured to be re-moved, of which a representation is given. ”

“ While the Oriental Jew has a spare form and a weak muscular development, the Assyrian, like the modern Chaldaean, is robust, broad-shouldered, and large-limbed. Nowhere have we a race represented to us monumentally of a stronger or more muscular type than the ancient Assyrian. The great brawny limbs are too large for beauty; but they indicate a physical power which we may well believe to have belonged to this nation—the Romans of Asia—the resolute and sturdy people which succeeded in imposing its yoke upon all its neighbors. ”

“ Perhaps population had increased beyond all former precedent; perhaps a spirit of enterprise had arisen; possibly some slight accident—the exploration of a hunter hard pressed for food, the chattering tongue of a merchant, the invitation of a traitor—may have dispelled the ignorance of earlier times, and brought to the knowledge of the hardy North the fact that beyond the mountains and the seas, which they had always regarded as the extreme limit of the world, there lay a rich prey inviting the coming of the spoiler. ”

“ The dead lion in front of the chariot balances the living one behind it, and, with its crouching attitude, and drooping head and tail, contrasts admirably with the upreared form of its fellow. Two attendants, armed with sword and shield, following behind the living lion, serve to balance the horses drawing the chariot, without rendering the composition too symmetrical. The horses themselves are the weakest part of the picture; the forelegs are stiff and too slight, and the heads possess little spirit. ”

“ The only difference here is, that in Assyria ampler evidence exists of what was material in the religious system, more abundant representations of the objects and modes of worship; so that it will be possible to give, by means of illustrations, a more graphic portraiture of the externals of the religion of the Assyrians than the scantiness of the remains permitted in the case of the primitive Chaldaeans.
At the head of the Assyrian Pantheon stood the “great god.” Asshur. His usual titles are “the great Lord,” “the King of all the Gods,” “he who rules supreme over the Gods.” ”

“ The scene of the entertainment is the palace garden; for trees grow on either side of the main figures, while over their heads, a vine hangs its festoons and its rich clusters. By the side of the royal couch, and in front of the queen, is a table covered with a table-cloth, on which are a small box or casket, a species of shallow bowl which may have held incense or perfume of some kind, and a third article frequently seen in close proximity to the king, but of whose use it is impossible to form a conjecture. ”

“ The shipwrights of Tyre and Sidon were carried across Mesopotamia to the Tigris, where they constructed for the Assyrian monarch a fleet of ships like their own galleys, which descended the river to its mouth, and astonished the populations bordering on the Persian Gulf with spectacle never before seen in those waters. Though the Chaldaeans had for centuries navigated this inland sea, and may have occasionally ventured beyond its limits, yet neither as sailors nor as ship-builders was their skill to compare with that of the Phoenicians. ”

“ Nature is evidently more and more studied; and the artist takes a delight in adorning the scenes of violence, which he is forced to depict, with quiet touches of a gentle character—rustics fishing or irrigating their grounds, fish disporting themselves, birds flying from tree to tree, or watching the callow young which look up to them from the nest for protection. ”

“ No single scene of the time can compare for grandeur with the lion-hunt above described. The battles and siege are spirited, but want unity; the hunting scenes are comparatively tame; the representations of the transport of colossal bulls possess more interest than artistic merit. On the other hand, the manipulation is decidedly superior; the relief is higher, the outline is more flowing, the finish of the features more delicate. What is lost in grandeur of composition is, on the whole, more than made up by variety, naturalness, improved handling, and higher finish. ”

“ Westward, we might confine Assyria to the country watered by the affluents of the Tigris, or extend it so as to in elude the Khabour and its tributaries, or finally venture to carry it across the whole of Mesopotamia, and make it be bounded by the Euphrates. On the whole it is thought that in both the doubted cases the wider limits are historically the truer ones. Assyrian remains cover the entire country between the Tigris and the Khabour, and are frequent on both banks of the latter stream, giving unmistakable indications of a long occupation of that region by the great Mesopotamian people. ”