Percy S. P. Handcock

“ The god is apparelled in a simple robe confined at the waist, the arms being left uncovered and free. He wears both a moustache and a beard, the latter being curled and waved, as is also the long hair of his head. The horned cap of the gods furnishes his natural head-gear, and his wrists are encircled with the rosette-patterned bracelets in which both kings and gods seem to have delighted, while his hands are clasped upon his breast. ”

“ But the three great triumphs of the excavator whose long career came to its natural end in 1910, were the identification of Sippar’s long-forgotten site, the discovery of the bronze gates at Balâwât, and last but far from least, the unearthing of Ashur-bani-pal’s northern palace at Nineveh, and the disclosure of the priceless relics of art and literature which it was found to contain.
Meanwhile other nations besides the French and the English were preparing themselves for the work so remarkably commenced, and so full of promise for the future. ”

“ But in spite of these obvious drawbacks, the work as a whole compels admiration and inevitably arrests the attention, for it possesses the “one thing needful”—life. A comparison between the lion’s head, and that of any of the winged human-headed monsters, at once demonstrates the point to which allusion has so frequently been made, the genius which the Assyrians at all times and all periods show in the delineation of animals, and the contrasting laboriousness with which all their representations of human faces are invariably marked. ”

“ This little clay relief was discovered by Sir Henry Rawlinson at Birs-Nimrûd. A clean-shaven and semi-nude attendant is in charge of a large hound which he is leading by means of a strap. The attendant, who is armed with a stick, is more life-like than the attendants on the bas-reliefs of Ashur-bani-pal, but the dog, though spirited, cannot compare with those sculptured in hard stone on the palace walls of that same king. ”

“ The dragon has the wings and hind part of an eagle, while his fore-legs and head are those of a lion; between the wings upon his back stands a nude goddess brandishing lightning in either hand. The dragon is harnessed to a four-wheeled chariot, the front part of which is higher than the back, while a god of disproportionate size is driving the chariot and flourishing a whip in his left hand. The lion-headed dragon is apparently vomiting, and his action recalls that of one of the expiring lions on the bas-reliefs of Ashur-bani-pal. ”

“ But Assyrian art does not reach its climax here, as we shall see when we come to consider the lions on Ashur-bani-pal’s bas-reliefs; the latter show a certain delicacy in the handling, and an intuition into all those infinite subtleties and varying nuances which are the hall-mark of life, animal or human as the case may be, and which apparently are not felt or at all events not successfully realized in the earlier works. The portrayal of the lion here is strong and life-like, but the spectator can never get away from the consciousness of the fact that it is a pictorial representation ”

“ It is indeed well for us that the æsthetic genius of the Babylonians and Assyrians should have found expression in durable stone rather than in some other more perishable material; the difficulties involved in sculpture are admittedly sufficiently great, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the perseverance and determination of those ancient peoples, which led them to conquer and mould for the ultimatization of their ideas, a material which a less determined and a less persevering nation might well have shrunk from attacking. ”

“ In short, a pure round sculpture of a lion or bull of the portentous size desired was a literal impossibility, and relief accordingly had to come into play, it being merely a question of how far the relief should be low or high, and the higher it was the more it of course approximated to the round, and realized what was presumably the artist’s real intention. ”

“ To obtain the best view of the sculpture, the view, that is to say, in which the spectator will accord the full measure, or even an over-measure, of justice to the skill of the artist, one must make one’s point of observation on the side. The front aspect is disappointing, as the lion is too thin for its length and height, and is consequently deficient not only in artistic merit, but also in the dignified majesty of which he has ever been the symbolic incarnation. ”

“ It is impossible to say the exact time when a military standard came to be regarded as the natural and fitting symbol of the patron god of the country, but the nature of the symbol itself makes it quite clear that Ashur was regarded as a god of war. Indeed the patron deity of a people as warlike as the Assyrians, could not but reflect the military spirit of his people. The Assyrian warriors were the “troops of Ashur,” their enemies being his enemies and their friends his friends. ”

“ It is a matter of dispute as to whether these superimposed corpses represent the fallen warriors of Eannatum’s army, or the smitten foes of Lagash; but the fact that the bodies are naked, and the further fact that in none of the Babylonian or Assyrian battle-scenes is there a single example of a warrior of the victor’s army being represented as killed, and lastly the improbability of the artist having accentuated the losses of Eannatum in such a conspicuous manner, and especially upon a stele of victory, all militate against the former and for the latter view. ”

“ Thus on one occasion the king is seen thrusting his long-shafted spear into the lion’s back, himself securely mounted in his chariot; at another time he is on foot, and is almost playfully stabbing the lion in the neck with his dagger, but the more usual way—no doubt, because the safest—of dispatching big game, and lions in particular, seems to have been by means of the bow and arrow which could be brought into play at a respectful distance. ”

“ The head of this winged colossus is surmounted by a lofty head-dress richly decorated with rosettes, and furnished with two pairs of horns, the ever-present mark of sacro-sanctity. The hair and beard are profuse in their luxuriance, and elaborate in their dressing, while the tail is treated with the like punctilious care. Two enormous wings cover the back, extending their overshadowing protection some way beyond it. The relief in which the body and specifically the legs are raised is very high, and they stand out almost in the round. ”

“ Hence it is that the works of the greatest scholars and experts have no finality, they are but stepping-stones towards the goal of perfect knowledge. Since the publications of Layard, Rawlinson, Botta and Place much new material has been made accessible for the reconstruction of the historic past of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and we are consequently able to fill in many gaps in the picture so admirably, and as far as it went, so faithfully drawn by the pioneers in the field of excavation and research. ”

“ The lion is prostrate, his four legs dragging helplessly behind and underneath his massive body, while his face bespeaks the death-agony in which he lies convulsed. Above, on the left, another animal has been incapacitated, if not mortally wounded, by two arrow wounds, one in the neck and the other in the back, while a little lower down to the right, a lioness smitten through the lungs has rolled over helplessly on her back. ”

“ The total height of the statue with the pedestal is five feet eleven and a half inches. Fortunately none of the fragments of the figure were missing, and consequently it was possible to restore the statue so perfectly as to render it one of the finest Assyrian statues in existence. The king stands there, the very incarnation of impassive dignity and imperturbable majesty, and it is strange how impressive the motionless can at times be. ”

“ The large majority of the visitors to the Assyrian Saloon in the British Museum, where these masterpieces of animal reproduction are arranged, have never witnessed a lion hunt in real life, but none can go away without having an ineffaceable impression left on his mind of the grimness of such a scene, of which the reality is here so graphically portrayed. ”

“ In Babylonia, the demand for colours in architectural decoration was naturally more pressing than in Assyria, for in the latter country, where alabaster and limestone were easily procurable, the adornment of the interiors of buildings fell to the sculptor, but in the southern country the dearth of stone at once precluded the possibility of covering the walls even of the palaces with the sculptured bas-reliefs so dear to the heart of apparently all Assyrian monarchs. ”

“ But the influence of the powers unseen upon the minds and lives of the people is reflected in the authority of the priests. The priest, minister or servant is not in truth “greater than his lord,” but his authority and his power are entirely proportional to those enjoyed by his heaven-born master. The temptation on the part of earthly emissaries to abuse the power which their position gives them is generally found to be irresistible, and the priests of Lagash were, as we have seen, no exceptions to the all but universal rule. ”

“ But when all the failings incidental to the products of an inexperienced art are duly taken into consideration, there is a certain fidelity to nature, and consequently a degree of life observable in the crudest of these early Babylonian sculptures which at once raises them to a higher level than the Assyrian statues to which they unconsciously gave birth. The accentuation of the strong lines and curves of the earlier sculptures in the later products of Assyrian times, has merely led to exaggeration, and the effect is inevitably stereotyped and unnatural. ”

“ One of the best preserved is reproduced in Fig. 36, A. Only one side of the lion’s head has survived, but it is sufficient to demonstrate the success with which the Sumerian sculptor treated his subject. The arrogance and impassive majesty of the lion are here realized more impressively than is the case with the lions of many a European artist; this notwithstanding, the spirit of conventionalism has already crept in as a thief, though it has as yet only made its presence felt in the hem of the garment so to speak. ”

“ IN the art of working metals the Babylonians showed no small degree of proficiency: evidence has already been given of the way in which metal was made to contribute her share to the perfected work of the architect, as also of its employment as a material whereon the scribe might engrave his comparatively imperishable memorials, but the part which it played in the history of the country’s art, as well as in the growth of her civilization, remains to be considered. The metals which appear to have been most in use among the dwellers in Mesopotamia are copper and bronze. ”

“ Wall bas-reliefs, human-headed winged lions and bulls (cf. Pl. XXV) , obelisks, bronze bowls, iron reaping-hooks and spear-heads, carved ivory panels and mirrors, a “silver-plated” sceptre-head, and a variety of bells are a few among the many valuable finds at Nimrûd, each of which makes its contribution, be it small or be it great, to the restoration of a page of human history and cultural evolution.
But undoubtedly the most impressive monuments yielded by Assyrian excavations are the gigantic winged bulls and lions which were stationed at the royal palace gates. ”

“ The empire of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin was however destined to entirely eclipse that of their forerunners, for it not only embraced Mesopotamia north and south, but also Syria and Palestine, and was in fact the first Babylonian empire worthy of the name. ”

“ Pg 399
(E) BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY
Man’s ideas and thoughts are very largely determined by his environment, so too his beliefs regarding the next world have as their material basis and setting the world in which he now lives; the unknown but vaguely guessed at, can only be defined, or rather depicted in terms of the known, the unseen in terms of the seen, heaven in the terms of earth, God in the terms of Man—in short, the doctrine of the Incarnation underlies all religion and all religious systems. ”

“ The prevailing note was thus one of pessimism, a pessimism from which “the dwellers in Mesopotamia” have never succeeded in entirely emancipating themselves, a pessimism which is moreover discernible in the sacred writings of the Hebrews long after their emigration from Babylonia to the land of Canaan. To Job the lot of a tree is preferable to that of humanity, for “it hath hope, if it be cut down, it will sprout again; but man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep” ”

“ On the right side of the impression, the god is engaged on foot with an enemy who appears to be armed with a weapon shaped like a boomerang, such as that with which the Fig. 63. god Nin-girsu is armed on the Vulture Stele. The god holds in his right hand a weapon of uncertain character, while between the two and facing the god is a diminutive worshipper whose hand is raised—doubtless in token of submission—towards his divine lord. On the left the god is stabbing a human-headed bull with a dagger, while from the god’s back, rays, or what appear to be rays, are emitted. ”

“ With regard to Assyrian pottery we are in a still greater state of ignorance, in spite of the wealth of material at hand. Large quantities of pottery were brought to light by Botta, Layard and other early excavators, but unfortunately their archæological importance seemed as nothing compared with colossal bulls, sculptured bas-reliefs, or even prosaic clay tablets, and the result of this fortunately bygone apathy is that the site from which they came is sometimes not ascertainable, while on hardly any occasion is it possible to discover the building or immediate locality where they were found. ”

“ During the interval between the epoch associated with the name of Gudea and that rendered illustrious by Ashur-naṣir-pal and the Assyrian kings, the practice of sculpturing in the round appears to have fallen largely into desuetude, if we may judge from the extreme paucity of the material that has come down to us, and it is not till the time of the Assyrian Empire that we are able again to make a detailed study of the sculptor’s art in Mesopotamia. ”

“ XIX we see a number of lions thus transfixed; their various positions, some of which are sublimely natural, while others appear rather imaginative, all speak eloquently and in moving terms of that common tragedy to which all the animal world, whether human or bestial must some day become victims,—the tragedy of death. One lion is seen transfixed by four arrows, two of which are deeply lodged in the lion’s neck, a third in the centre of the head, and the last in the middle of the back. ”