Chapter IV: The Industrial Arts (1)

§ 1.--_Ceramics._

Of all the materials put in use by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, clay was the first and by far the most important. Clay furnished the sun-dried bricks of which the great buildings were constructed, the burnt bricks with which the artificial mounds on which those buildings stood were cased, and the enamelled bricks that enabled certain parts to be covered with a rich polychromatic decoration. The figures of the gods and demons they worshipped and the tombs into which they were thrust after death were both made of this same material. It was upon clay that they learnt to write; it was to slabs of terra-cotta that their kings confided the memory of their victories and acts of devotion, and the private population their engagements and the contracts into which they entered. For thousands of years tablets of clay thus received not only long texts, but those impressions from seals, each one of which represents a signature. While wet and soft, clay readily accepted any symbol that man chose to place upon it; once it was burnt, those symbols became practically indestructible.

Accustomed to employ the unrivalled docility of kneaded earth in so many ways, the Chaldæans must, at a very early date, have used it for domestic purposes, for cooking, for holding grain, fruits, and liquids. Like every one else they must have begun by shaping such utensils with their fingers and drying them in the sun. Few remains of these early attempts have been preserved. The invention of the potter’s wheel and firing-oven must have taken place at a very remote period both in Egypt and Chaldæa. The oldest vases found in the country, those taken from tombs at Warka and Mugheir, have been burnt in the oven. Some, however, do not seem to have been ‘thrown’ on the wheel. The thickness of their walls and their irregular shape suggest that the potter fashioned them with the back and palm of his hand (Figs. 163–165). The paste is coarse; it is mixed with chopped straw, which shows here and there on the surface; there is neither ornament nor glaze, and the curves are without grace.[361]

Some other vases found in the same cemeteries are ascribed to a later epoch. They give evidence of a real progress in art. We have already figured two examples in our first volume (Figs. 159 and 160); three more are given in Figs. 166–168. The body is finer, and sometimes covered with a slight glaze; there is still no decoration, but the forms are obviously meant, and not without distinction. These objects have been thrown on the wheel, and the dexterity of their maker is further shown by the skill with which their handles are attached.

We have no means of assigning even an approximate date to the vases found in other parts of Chaldæa. A curious vase from Hillah may be ascribed to a much later period, however, on the evidence of its shape alone (Fig. 169). It has the general form of a bucket. The body is decorated with indented triangles cut in its thickness and detached from the background. In all this there is a striving after effect that suggests the decadence. Nothing like it has been found in Assyria dating from the ninth, eighth, or seventh centuries. Sir H. Layard brought from Nimroud a certain number of vases showing a real progress even when compared with the remains from the second period of Chaldæan ceramics. Among these were some quaintly shaped pieces, such as the hexagonal vase with slightly concave sides reproduced in Fig. 170. To the same class belongs the very common form, with a pointed base, that could be thrust into the sand (Fig. 171), and the large bottles shown in Figs. 172 and 173. By the side of these not very graceful pieces we find some with shapes at once simple and happy, and comparable, in more than one instance, to those that the Greeks were to adopt in later years. Goblets with feet and without (Figs. 174–176), a well-shaped ewer (Fig. 177) and some variously contoured amphoræ, should be noticed. One of the latter has a long neck and two very small handles (Fig. 178), the handles of the other two are larger and more boldly salient, while in one they are twisted to look like ropes.

The vase last figured, like many others from the same place, is glazed, and glazed in two colours, a bluish-green round the neck and a decided yellow upon the body. At the line where they meet the two colours run one into the other, producing a far from disagreeable effect.

It will be noticed that the decoration upon all these objects is very slight. We can point to little beyond the double row of chevrons on one of the amphoræ (Fig. 178), and the collar of reversed leaves round a kind of alabastron found at the same place (Fig. 181).

The taste for decorating their works seems to have spread among the Assyrian potters between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C. At least many traces of it have been found among the remains at Kouyundjik. The date is fixed for us by a fragment on which the name of Esarhaddon occurs, the letters of which it is composed standing out in light against a dull black background. There is no further ornament than a line of zig-zags traced with some brown pigment. The fragment we reproduce (Fig. 182) formed part of another vase decorated in the same way. We cannot point to a single complete specimen of this work, but by comparing many pieces all from the same place, we may gain some idea of the taste in pottery that prevailed under the Sargonids. A vase upon which certain Aramaic characters were traced with the brush was decorated with bands of a reddish-brown pigment turning round the neck and body at irregular intervals (Fig. 183).[362] Elsewhere we find a more complicated form of the same ornament. The horizontal bands are separated by a kind of trellis-work, in which the lines cross each other, sometimes at right angles and sometimes obliquely, while in the blank spaces we find a motive often repeated, which might be taken at first sight for a Greek _sigma_. The resemblance, we need hardly say, is purely accidental (Fig. 184). We may also mention a fragment where the surface is sprinkled with reddish-brown spots on a light yellow ground (Fig. 185). So far as we know the only complete example of this decoration is the fine goblet dug up by Place in the Jigan mound (Fig. 186).[363]

In all these fragments the decoration is purely geometrical; it is composed of lines, spots, and other motives having no relation to the organic world. A step in advance of this seems, however, to have been taken. On some other fragments from the same districts, files of roughly-suggested birds appear upon the bands and between opposed triangles (Figs. 187 and 188). We shall find the same motive in Cyprus, at Mycenæ, and at Athens, in the pottery forming the transition between the purely geometrical period and that in which imitation of life begins. In a fragment which is tantalizingly small we catch a glimpse of three lion’s paws playing with a chess-board ornament. A row of cuneiform characters runs along the lower part (Fig. 189).

These fragments, taken altogether, show that a certain effort was made to produce decorated pottery towards the end of the Assyrian period. Why was the attempt not carried farther? Why were earthenware vases not covered with ornamental designs that might be compared for richness and variety with those chiselled in or beaten out of stone or wood, ivory or metal? The reason may, we think, be guessed. Clay appeared such a common material that they never thought of using it for objects of luxury, for anything that required great skill in the making, or in which its proprietor could take any pride. When they wanted fine vases they turned to bronze; bronze could be gilded, it could be damascened with gold and silver, and when so treated was more pleasing to the eye and more provocative of thought and ingenuity on the part of the artist than mere clay. It was reserved for Greece to erect the painted vase into a work of art. Her taste alone was able to make us forget the poverty of the material in the nobility of the form and the beauty of the decoration; we shall see that her artists were the first to give to an earthenware jar or cup a value greater, for the true connoisseur, than if they were of massive gold or silver.

During the period on which we are now engaged, the Mesopotamians sometimes attempted to cover their vases with enamel. The British Museum has several specimens of a pottery covered with a blue glaze like that of the Egyptian faïence.[364] Here and there the blue has turned green under the action of time. One of the vases reproduced above (Fig. 180) belongs to this class. Vases of the same kind, covered with a rather thick layer of blue and yellow enamel, have been found among the rubbish in the Birs-Nimroud at Babylon,[365] but it is difficult to fix an exact date for them with any confidence. On the other hand, it is generally agreed that the large earthenware coffins brought from the funerary mounds of Lower Chaldæa are very much later. In style the small figures with which they are decorated resemble the medals and rock sculptures of the Parthians and Sassanids.[366]

The art of making glass, which dates in Egypt at least as far back as the first Theban dynasty,[367] was invented in Mesopotamia, or imported into it, at a very early period. No glass objects have been found in the oldest Chaldæan tombs, but they abound in the ruins of the Assyrian palaces. A great number of small glass bottles, resembling the Greek _alabastron_ or _aryballos_ in shape,[368] have been dug up; many of them have been made brilliantly iridescent by their long sojourn in the earth.[369] A vase found by Layard at Nimroud, and engraved with Sargon’s name just below the neck, is generally quoted as the oldest known example of transparent glass (see Fig. 190).[370] It has been blown solid, and then the inside cut out by means of an instrument which has left easily-visible traces of its passage; this instrument was no doubt mounted on a lathe. Sir H. Layard believes, however, that many of the glass objects he found are much older, and date from the very beginning of the Assyrian monarchy, but their material is opaque and coloured.[371] Some bracelets of black glass, which were dug up at Kouyundjik, prove that common jewelry was sometimes made of that material; glass beads, sometimes round, sometimes flat, have also been found.[372] A glass cylinder or tube, of unknown use, was found by Layard at Kouyundjik; it is covered with a decoration made up of lozenges with a concave surface (Fig. 191).

It is curious that no cylinders or cones of terra-cotta or glass have come down to us from the Assyro-Chaldæan period. Clay was doubtless thought too common a material for such uses, and as for glass, they had not yet learnt how to make it a worthy substitute for _pietra dura_, as the Greeks and Romans did in later years.

Before we quit the subject of glass we must not forget to mention a very curious object found by Layard at Nimroud, in the palace of Assurnazirpal, and in the neighbourhood of the glass bottle and the two alabaster vases on which the name of Sargon appears. It is a lens of rock-crystal; its convex face seems to have been set up, with some clumsiness, opposite to the lapidary on his wheel. In spite of the imperfect cutting, it may have been used either as a magnifying, or, with a very strong sun, as a burning, glass.[373] The fineness of the work on some of the cylinders, and the minuteness of the wedges on some of the terra-cotta tubs, had already excited attention, and it was asked whether the Assyrians might not have been acquainted with some aid to eyesight like our magnifying glass. It is difficult, however, to come to any certain conclusion from a single find like this; but if any more lenses come to light we may fairly suppose that the scribes and lapidaries of Mesopotamia understood how thus to reinforce their eyesight. In any case it is pretty certain that this is the oldest object of the kind transmitted to us by antiquity.

§ 2. _Metallurgy._

Even at the time to which we are carried back by the oldest of the graves at Warka and Mugheir, metallurgy was already far advanced in Chaldæa. Tools and weapons of stone are still found in those tombs in great numbers;[374] but side by side with them we find copper, bronze, lead, iron, and gold. Silver alone is absent.

Copper seems to have been the first of all the metals to attract the notice of man, and to be manufactured by him. This is to be accounted for partly by the frequency of its occurrence in its native state, partly by the fact that it can be smelted at a comparatively low temperature. Soft and ductile, copper has rendered many services to man from a very early period, and, both in Chaldæa and the Nile valley, he very soon learnt to add greatly to its hardness by mixing a certain quantity of tin with it. Where did the latter material come from? This question we can no more answer in the case of Mesopotamia than in that of Egypt; no deposits of tin have yet been discovered in the mountain chains of Kurdistan or Armenia.[375] However this may be, the use of tin, and the knowledge of its properties as an alloy with copper, dates from a very remote period in the history of civilization. In its natural state, tin is always found in combination, but the ore which contains it in the form of an oxide does not look like ordinary rock; it is black and very dense; as soon as attention was turned to such things it must have been noticed, and no great heat was required to make it yield the metal it contained. We do not know where the first experiments were made. The uses of pure tin are very limited, and we cannot even guess how the remarkable discovery was made that its addition in very small quantities to copper would give the precious metal that we call bronze. In the sepulchral furniture with which the oldest of the Chaldæan tombs were filled we already find more bronze than pure copper.[376]

Lead is rare. A jar of that metal, and the fragment of a pipe dug up by Loftus at Mugheir may be mentioned.[377] It is curious that iron though still far from common, was not unknown. Iron nowhere exists in its native state on the surface of our planet, except in aerolites. Its discovery and elimination from the ore requires more time and effort and a far higher temperature than copper or tin. Those difficulties had already been surmounted, but the smelting of iron ore was still such a tedious operation that bronze was in much more common use. Iron was looked upon as a precious metal; neither arms, nor utensils, nor tools of any kind were made of it; it was employed almost exclusively for personal ornaments, such as rings and bracelets.[378]

Gold, which is found pure in the veins of certain rocks and in the beds of mountain torrents, and in pieces of a size varying from that of a grain of dust to nuggets of many pounds, must very soon have attracted the attention of man, and excited his curiosity, by its colour and brilliancy. We find it in the tombs mixed with objects of stone and bronze. Round beads for necklaces, earrings and finger rings of not inelegant design were made of it.

If, when the Chaldæans built their first cities, they already knew how to put metals to such varied uses, they could hardly have failed to take farther strides in the same direction. In order to measure the progress made, we have only to establish ourselves among the Assyrian ruins and to cast an eye over the plunder taken from them by Botta, Layard, and Place. Metal is there found in every form, and worked with a skill that laughs at difficulties. Silver and antimony are found by the side of the metals already mentioned,[379] and, stranger than all, iron is abundant. The excavations at Warka seem to prove that the Chaldæans made use of iron sooner than the Egyptians;[380] in any case it was manufactured and employed in far greater quantities in Mesopotamia than in the Nile valley. Nowhere in Egypt has any find been made that can be compared to the room full of instruments found at Khorsabad, to the surprise and delight of M. Place.[381] There were hooks and grappling irons fastened by heavy rings to chain-cables, similar to those now in use for ships’ anchors; there were picks, mattocks, hammers, ploughshares. The iron was excellent. The smith employed upon the excavations made some of it into sickles, into tires for the wheels of a cart, into screws and screw-nuts. Except the Persian iron, which enjoys a well-merited reputation, he had never, he said, handled any better than this. Its resonance was remarkable. When the hammer fell upon it it rang like a bell. All these instruments were symmetrically arranged along one side of the chamber, forming a wall of iron that it took three days to dig out. After measurement, Place estimated the total weight at one hundred and sixty thousand kilogrammes (about 157 tons).[382]

According to the same explorer some of these implements, resembling the sculptor’s sharp mallet in shape, were armed with steel points (Fig. 192).[383] Until his assertion is confirmed, we may ask whether Place may not, in this instance, have been deceived by appearances. Before we can allow that the Assyrians knew how to increase the hardness of iron by treating it with a dose of carbon, we must have the evidence of some competent and careful analyst.

It is certain, however, that in the ninth and eighth centuries this people used iron more freely than any other nation of the time. Thus several objects which appear at the first glance to be of solid bronze have an iron core within a more or less thin sheath of the other metal. Dr. Birch called my attention to numerous examples of this manufacture at the British Museum, in fragments of handles, of tires and various implements and utensils, from Kouyundjik and Nimroud. The iron could be distinctly seen at the fractures. The Assyrians clung to the bronze envelope because that metal was more agreeable to the eye and more easily decorated than iron, but it was upon the latter substance that they counted to give the necessary hardness and resistance. The contact and adhesion between the two metals was complete. From this, experts have concluded that the bronze was run upon the iron in a liquid state.[384]

It is easy enough to understand how the inhabitants of Mesopotamia came to make such an extensive use of iron in the instruments of their industry; it was because they were nearer than any other nation to what we may call the sources of iron. By this we mean the country in which all the traditions collected and preserved by the Greeks agreed in placing the cradle of metallurgy--the region bounded by the Euxine, the Caucasus, the Caspian, the western edge of the tableland of Iran, the plains of Mesopotamia, the Taurus, and the high lands of Cappadocia. To find the deposits from which Nineveh and Babylon drew inexhaustible supplies, it is unnecessary to go as far as the northern slopes of Armenia, to the country of the Chalybes, the legendary ancestors of our mining engineers. The mountains of the Tidjaris, a few days’ journey from Mossoul, contain mineral wealth that would be worked with the greatest profit in any country but Turkey.[385]

Bronze was reserved for such objects as we should make of some precious metal. Botta and Place found numerous fragments of bronze, but it is to Layard that we owe the richest and most varied collection of bronze utensils. It was found by him in one room of Assurnazirpal’s palace at Nimroud.[386] The metal has been analysed and found to contain ten per cent. of tin, on the average.[387] These proportions we may call normal and calculated to give the best results. In one of the small bells that were hung to the horses’ necks the proportion was rather different; there was about fifteen per cent. of tin. By this means it was hoped to obtain a clearer toned and more resonant alloy.

Pure copper seems to have been restricted to kitchen utensils, such as the large cauldrons that were often used as coffers in which to keep small objects of metal, like the little bells of which we have spoken, rosettes, buttons and the feet of tables and chairs not yet mounted, etc.[388] It is probable that these vessels were also used for heating water and cooking food.

All these metals, and especially iron and copper, were dearer perhaps in Chaldæa than in Assyria, because Babylon was farther from the mineral region than Nineveh; but the southern artizans were no less skilful than their northern rivals. In our review of the metal industries we shall borrow more frequently from the north than from the south, but the only reason for the inequality is that Chaldæa has never been the scene of exhaustive and prolific excavations like those of Assyria.

§ 3. _Furniture._

Cursing Nineveh and exulting in the prospect of her fall, the prophet Nahum calls to all those who had been crushed by the Assyrian hosts; he summons all the nations of the east to take their part in the work of revenge and their share in the spoil to be won. “Take ye the spoil of silver,” he cries, “take ye the spoil of gold; for there is none end of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture.”[389] We shall find all this among our spoils of Nineveh. The princes and nobles of Assyria seem to have had a peculiar love for luxurious furniture. To see this we have only to look at the bas-reliefs, where the artist took the greatest care to imitate every detail of the thrones on which he placed his gods and kings; and many fragments of these richly decorated chairs have been recovered in the course of the excavations; with the help of the sculptures they could be put together and the missing parts supplied. The elements of many such restorations exist in the British Museum, and we may well ask why no attempt has been made to reconstitute an Assyrian throne with their help, so as to give an exact idea of the kind of state chair used by a Shalmaneser or a Sennacherib.

In order to carry out such a restoration successfully we should have to begin by renewing all the wooden parts of the piece, the legs, back and cross-bars. Wood alone could be used for such purposes. Metal would be too heavy if solid, and not stiff and firm enough if hollow. We have, besides, direct proof that the Assyrian joiner so understood his work. “I found among the ruins,” says one explorer, “small bulls’ heads of copper, _repoussé_ and carefully chased, inside of which a few fragments of dried wood still remained. These pieces had certainly belonged to chairs exactly similar to those figured in the reliefs.”[390]

At Nimroud, in the room in Assurnazirpal’s palace in which so many precious objects were discovered, Layard found the royal throne, and close beside it, the stool upon which the royal feet were placed, an arrangement of which we may gain an exact idea from the reliefs (Figs. 47 and 127). The sides of this chair were ornamented with bronze plaques nailed on to wooden panels, and representing winged genii fighting with monsters. The arms were ornamented at the end with rams’ heads, and their points of junction with the uprights of the back were strengthened with metal tubes.[391] All the wood had disappeared, but it was impossible to look at the remains for a moment without seeing how they were originally put together and what office they had to fill in the complete piece. Most of the fragments are now in the British Museum.

The same collection has been recently enriched by the fragments of another throne, from Van.[392] A claw foot, uprights ending in several rows of dentations, and two winged bulls that once in all probability formed part of the arms, are among the parts preserved. The bulls are without faces, which may have been carried out in some other materials, gold perhaps, or ivory. The wings also are covered with hollows in which inlays of ivory or lapis may have been fixed. From Van also came the remains of another throne which now belongs to M. de Vogué, who has been good enough to allow us to reproduce the more important fragments. The best of these is one of the front feet which ends at the top in a rectangular tablet on which a winged lion is crouched (Fig. 193). Another piece seems to have been one of the cross pieces of the back;[393] the round sockets with which one face of it is nearly covered must once have been filled with precious stones. This lion, like that on the London chair, also has its wings covered with incisions, and its eyeballs represented by gaping hollows. The effect of the whole was heightened by threads of gold inlaid on its leading lines, such as round the grinning jaws of the lion. The largest piece is a hollow casting, but very heavy. The various members were connected by tenons and mortices; some of the latter are shown in our illustrations. The large rectangular openings on the upper surface of the cross-bar received a metal stem to which some small figures were attached; their bases have left marks on the cross-bar which may still be distinguished. Their feet were surrounded by a line of gilding.

These pieces of furniture show great variety in their forms and decorative motives. Sometimes the ornament is purely geometrical, like that of the foot shown in our Fig. 195, where it is composed of several rings placed one above the other with a bold torus-like swell in the middle. More frequently, however, the bronze uprights end in capitals resembling a bunch of leaves in shape. We have already encountered this type in the ivories, where it occurs in the balustrade of a small window (Vol. I., Fig. 129); we also find it strongly marked in the throne from Van, where the drooping leaves are chiselled with much care. We find the same motive in a small sandstone capital in the British Museum. It is in one piece with its shaft. We are inclined to think it a part of some stone chair in which the forms of wooden and bronze furniture were copied (Fig. 196).[394]

Two pieces of the same kind found at Nimroud are more complex in design. In one we have a bouquet of leaves reminding us of the Corinthian capital (Fig. 197), while, in the other, a band seems to hold two lance heads, opposed to each other at their base, and two bean-shaped fruits, against the shaft (198). As for the feet of all kinds of furniture, the favourite shapes are pine cones (Figs. 47 and 127) and lions’ paws (Figs. 47 and 199).

These elaborate decorations are found not only on the royal thrones but also on the footstools which are their necessary complement (Fig. 199), and on the seats without backs which were used, perhaps, instead of the more unwieldy throne when the king was away from his capital (Fig. 200). The footstool has lions’-claw feet, the more important object has rams’ heads at each end of the upper cross-bar;[395] the leg shows the capital with drooping leaves noticed above; volutes, opposed to each other as in the capital from Persepolis, ornament the cross-bar which holds the uprights together. In this piece of furniture, where the sculptor has confined himself to the scrupulous reproduction of his model, we may see how these objects were upholstered. A cushion of some woven material with long bright-coloured woollen fringes, was fitted to the seat. The whole is characterized by happy proportions and severe simplicity of design. We know from the Sippara tablet that even the gods were sometimes content with such a seat (Vol. I., Fig. 71). The figures of Izdubar and Hea-bani are there introduced between the uprights of Samas’s stool.

One of the most complex and effective of all these examples of decorative art is the throne upon which Sennacherib is seated before the captured city of Lachish (Fig. 47). The space between the uprights is occupied by three rows of small male figures, who with their uplifted arms and heads gently thrown back, seem to bear the weight of the cross pieces. This naïve device is also to be met with in the sculptures of Persia; it is suggestive of the absolute power which places the king so far above his subjects that nothing is left for them but to support and add to the edifice of his grandeur.[396]

Bronze and wood were not the only materials used in these objects of regal luxury. As in the throne of Solomon,[397] the glory of gold and the creamy whiteness of ivory were mingled with the sombre tones of bronze. This is proved by the thrones from Van, and it was noticed by the explorers of the Assyrian ruins; small fragments of ivory were mixed with the pieces of bronze that have been recognized as the _débris_ of furniture.[398] Some pieces of rock-crystal, found in the palace of Sennacherib, appear also to have helped to ornament a chair.[399]

It is easy to guess how ivory was used on these objects. Look at the throne of Sennacherib (Fig. 47), the couch of Assurnazirpal, the table on which his cup is placed and the high chair of his queen (Fig. 127). The cross-bars and uprights are divided into numerous small panels or divisions; each panel may have inframed a plaque of carved ivory.

Were all these plaques made in Mesopotamia? or were they imported from Phœnicia and Egypt? The frankly Egyptian character of some among the tablets we have reproduced (see Vol. I. Figs. 129 and 130; and above, Figs. 57, 58 and 59) forbid us to deny that some of the ivories were imported;[400] but we believe that to have been the exception rather than the rule. We know both from the sculptured reliefs and from actual finds that ivory was brought into Assyria in its rough state. Layard found some elephant’s tusks in the royal houses at Nimroud,[401] and we see others brought by tributaries as presents to the king, both in the reliefs of Assurnazirpal’s palace,[402] and in those of Shalmaneser’s obelisk.[403]

Hence it appears probable that ivory was worked at Nineveh and Babylon, and that probability is changed into a certainty when we examine the other ivories in the same collection. Although not a few of the ivories chiselled in relief offer motives that are strange to Mesopotamian art, it is not so with a series of tablets on which the designs are carried out in pure line and with extreme refinement (Fig. 201). Figures and ornaments are purely Assyrian; winged genii wearing the horned tiara, dressed as in the reliefs, and surrounded with the rosettes and cable pattern to which we have so often referred, and other motives of the same kind. Among the latter may be noticed the variety of knop and flower border that we find so often in the painted and enamelled decoration, in which the knop is replaced by a disk (see Vol. I., Figs. 117 and 118).

We believe the truth to be as follows. A considerable quantity of Indian ivory entered Mesopotamia by the Persian Gulf and the caravan routes. It was there carved by native artists into the various shapes required, but, especially during the heyday of the Assyrian monarchy, it was far from supplying the whole demand. Africa, through Phœnicia, was called upon to make up the deficiency. But the African ivory was not imported in its raw state, it came in in the form of skilfully chiselled plaques that only required mounting; the merchants, through whom the trade was carried on, delivered sets of these plaques for beds, or chairs, or what not. We thus get at some reason for the difference in style between the tablets in relief and those engraved by the point. The latter represent native art; in the former, where we so often see the characteristic gods, sphinxes, costumes, head-dresses, and even cartouches of the Egyptian monuments, we may recognize the product of the Nile delta, or even of Tyre and Sidon. The inscriptions on several fragments seem to confirm this hypothesis. I have seen no ivory tablets with cuneiform characters, but plenty with those of the Phœnician alphabet.[404]

Ivory was used for many purposes; we have described how it was employed upon ceilings and doors;[405] we have just seen how it helped to ornament articles of furniture; it also supplied the material for many useful and ornamental objects, such as sceptres, boxes, cups, knife-handles, etc. (Fig. 202). Did the Assyrians understand how to give still greater variety to the appearance of these things by staining the ivory? At first sight it might appear that they did. Among the specimens in the British Museum some have the fine yellow colour of the Renaissance ivories; others are white, grey, brown or even quite black. These tints, as I myself ascertained, are not superficial; they extend entirely through the pieces. But we do not believe they were produced by any artificial process. If the Assyrians had understood how to dye ivory, would they not have dyed it red and blue as well as the colours above mentioned? But they did nothing of the sort. The tints in question are, then, to be otherwise explained. They are not the direct result of fire. Wherever the flame has touched the ivory it has calcined it, and left nothing but a whitish friable substance. They may, however, have been caused by the long continued impregnation with smoke and carbon received from a soil filled with ashes and washed by the rain. An effect of the same kind is produced upon objects buried in a peaty soil. In any case several of the fragments that have come down to us are of a fine, glossy black, like that of ebony.[406]

In beds, tables, chairs, and footstools the framework was of wood and the decoration of metal, an important _rôle_ being assigned to incrustations of ivory, of lapis lazuli, of crystals, and other materials of the kind. But there were also pieces of furniture whose purpose made them well fitted to be carried out entirely in bronze; such, for example, were the tripods on which the braziers or censers, used in sacrifices, were placed. We have seen these figured in the reliefs (Vol. I., Figs. 68 and 155); the Louvre possesses one that was found at Babylon (Fig. 203). It is formed of three stems very slightly inclined inwards, and bound together at the top by a circle decorated with incised ornaments and four rams’ heads in relief. Towards the bottom they are held together by three straight cross-bars, the points of junction with the legs being masked by three human faces. The feet are shaped after those of oxen. Cords are twisted round the point of junction of foot and leg, then crossed in front of the fetlock and knotted at the back.[407]

The chafing-dishes placed upon these bronze tripods were of the same material. Chaldæans and Assyrians, although they neglected to give their earthen vessels any great beauty of form or richness of decoration, attached great importance to their metal vases. The bronze vessel seems to have been one of the chief objects of luxury both in the temple and the palace. The peculiarities offered by certain of these objects and the interest of the problems they suggest, make it necessary that they should be studied separately and in some detail.

§ 4. _Metal Dishes and Utensils._

Metal vases are often represented in the bas-reliefs, where we find them sometimes of very simple form, like the bowl (Fig. 204) and bucket (Fig. 205) here figured, which may have been of copper. They are provided on the upper edge with small loops through which a cord might be passed. As for the buckets that were used in the ritual of public worship, and that the sculptor put in the hands of the winged genii adoring the sacred tree (Vol. I., Figs. 4 and 8), they were certainly of bronze, both body and handle. Their forms are very elegant, and their walls are ornamented at the top and bottom with twisted and wavy lines, with palmettes and flowers both open and closed. In the example we figure (Fig. 206) the winged globe, which is introduced just below the upper edge, attests the religious character of the object.[408]

The bas-reliefs tell us nothing about those large vessels, analogous, no doubt, to the λέβης and κρατὴρ of the Greeks, upon the sides of which the human-headed birds with extended wings, one of which we have already figured, were fixed (Fig. 91). Neither has any complete specimen of the class yet been discovered in the excavations. The frequent employment of this motive is proved, however, by the number of these detached pieces that we possess. They all come from Van, but they belonged to different vases. We here engrave a second example (Fig. 207). The ring on the back by which the handle was attached will be noticed. As in the throne described above the bronze was relieved with inlaid ornament; there is a hollow in the breast in which it was set. In the originals the rivet-holes which afforded a means of fixing them may be seen; in one or two the heads of the rivets are still in place. This specimen differs from one figured on page 172, in that it has two heads.

We do not multiply examples of the vessels used to transport liquids, because their decorative forms were found pretty equally distributed all over Chaldæa and Assyria. We have every reason to believe that they were produced in great numbers in all the towns of Mesopotamia. On the other hand, there is a whole class of vessels that perplex and embarrass archæologists almost as much as they delight them--the class of _metal cups_. This name is to some extent a misnomer. We shall employ it for the sake of simplicity, but most of the objects in question are rather what we should call dishes or platters than cups. They belong to the same class as the Greek φιύλη and the Roman _patera_. Their vertical section is shown at the bottom of our Fig. 208. The slight ridge underneath, caused by the gentle elevation of the flat bottom, enabled the dish to be more firmly grasped than would otherwise have been possible.

Such things must have been comparatively rare and costly. In a store-room of the North-Western Palace at Nimroud, Layard found a great number of them, packed one within another in cauldrons like those mentioned above; others, of less value no doubt, were stacked against the wall. At first the explorers were inclined to think that they all dated from the reign of Assurnazirpal, the founder of the building; but many things combined to suggest that the palace was repaired by Sargon and even inhabited by him.[409] He may have lived there until his own house at Khorsabad was finished. It is possible, therefore, that some or all of these cups date from the eighth century B.C.

In many instances oxydization had gone so far that the cups could not be lifted without falling to pieces; others, however, though covered with a thick coat of oxide, were brought away and successfully cleaned.[410] At the British Museum I compiled a catalogue of forty-four plates or cups of this kind, nearly all from the same treasure, while in the store rooms of the same institution there are many more waiting to be cleaned and rendered fit for exhibition. All these, with a few exceptions, are ornamented, the simplest among them having a star or rosette in the centre. Wherever the bronze has not been completely eaten away the decoration may be recovered, and often it is still singularly clear and sharp. A few cups that had been protected by those placed above them showed, when discovered, such brilliant copper tones that the workmen at first thought they were of gold. The mistake was soon recognized, but we may well believe that the conquerors of half Asia numbered gold and silver vessels among the treasures stored in their palaces; as yet, however, none have been found. All these cups, like the deeper vessels recovered at the same time, were of bronze; the precious metals only appear in the form of small inlays and incrustations in the alloy. In the centre of the rosettes with which some of the bands are decorated a small silver stud, slightly raised above the rest of the surface, is sometimes placed, and in a few cases the points of the great rosette that occupies the centre of the plate radiate from a centre of gold, silver being banished to the small rosettes at the edge. Again, the middle is sometimes a kind of boss, over the whole of which traces of gold may still be distinguished.

The decoration of these _pateræ_ is always inside: on the outside nothing is to be seen but the confused reverse of the pattern, such as may be seen on the left of our Fig. 208. I have found but one exception to this rule in a much deeper cup on the outside of which a lion hunt is represented.[411] In that case figures engraved within the vase would have been invisible, for it is very deep.

In most cases the ruling principle of the decoration is the division of the disk into three, four, or five concentric circles, but in some instances the whole field, with the exception of a simple border, is occupied by one subject. In those cups upon which the greatest care and thought seem to have been lavished, the figures are beaten up into relief with the hammer and then finished with the burin. In the others the whole design is carried out with the latter tool, which is sometimes used with a degree of refinement that is amazing. As an example of this we may quote a _patera_ that has been cleaned and put on view quite recently. Stags march in file around its five concentric zones, which are all of the same width. It is difficult to explain either the fineness of the lines or the regularity of the design, each animal being an accurate reproduction of his neighbour and the intervening spaces being exactly equal. One is almost tempted to believe that the work must have been done by machinery.

We know, however, that such mechanical helps were unknown to the ancients, and, although there are many cups and vases at the museum bearing a strong mutual resemblance, we cannot point to any two that are exactly similar. To give a fair idea of the variety of their designs we should have to reproduce not only all the cups figured by Sir H. Layard, but several more that have only been prepared for exhibition quite lately. Among the latter are some very curious ones. We cannot afford the space for all this, and must be content to give a few examples chosen from those on which the ornament is most definite and clearly marked.

It was noticed by those who saw the veil of oxide drawn away from the ornamentation of these bronze vessels that a large proportion of them were Egyptian rather than Assyrian in their general physiognomy. Some of them displayed motives familiar to all those who have travelled in the Nile valley. Take, for instance, the fragment we have borrowed from one of the best preserved of them all (Fig. 209).[412] Neither the minute lines of palmettes in the centre, nor the birds that occur in the outer border, have, perhaps, any great significance, but nothing could be more thoroughly Egyptian than the zone of figures between the two. The same group is there four times repeated. Two griffins crowned with the _pschent_, or double tiara of upper and lower Egypt, have each a foot resting upon the head of a kneeling child, but their movement is protective rather than menacing. Instead of struggling, the child raises its hands in a gesture of adoration. Between the griffins and behind them occur slender columns, quite similar to those we have so often encountered in the open architecture of Egypt.[413] Between the groups thus constituted are thicker shafts bearing winged scarabs on their campaniform capitals. These same columns and capitals occur on another cup from which we detach them in order to show their details more clearly.[414] In one instance the terminal of the shaft is unlike anything hitherto found elsewhere; it is a sphere (Fig. 210); but the contour of the next is thoroughly Egyptian (Fig. 211), and the symbols on the last three, a scarab and two uræi, proclaim their origin no less clearly (Figs. 212 to 214).

We gather the same impression from a platter only cleaned quite lately and consequently not to be found in Sir H. Layard’s works; it is now reproduced for the first time (Fig. 215). The whole decoration is finely carried out in line with the burin. The middle is occupied by a seven pointed star or rosette, nine times repeated. Around this elegant and complex motive there are concentric circles, the third of which, counting from the centre, is filled up with small figures hardly to be distinguished by the naked eye. We divine rather than see lions, birds, seated men, and certain groups of symbols, such as three lines broken and placed one above the other, which are continually recurring in the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt. The fifth zone has conventional papyrus stems alternating with rosettes. The sixth, much larger, is filled with ovals surmounted by two plumes and the uræus, that is by the royal cartouch of Egypt in its usual form. The interior of each oval contains very small groups of figures separated from one another by four horizontal lines.

We may quote a cup figured by Layard as a last example of this exotic style of decoration. In the centre there are four full-face heads with Egyptian wigs (Fig. 216). Around them a mountainous country is figured in relief, and sprinkled with trees and stags engraved with the point. The wide border, which is unfortunately very much mutilated, is covered with groups of figures apparently copied from some Egyptian monument, if we may judge from the attitudes and costume. One figure, whose torso has entirely disappeared, wears the _pschent_ and brandishes a mace over his head; the movement is almost identical with that of the victorious Pharaoh with whom we are so familiar. A goddess, who might be Isis, stands opposite to him. In another part of the border there is a misshapen monster crowned with feathers and resembling the Egyptian Bes.[415]

Side by side with these platters we find others on which nothing occurs to suggest foreign influence. Take, for instance, the example reproduced in Fig. 208. In the centre there is a small silver boss, while the rest of the flat surface is occupied by the fine diaper pattern made up of six-petalled flowers that we have already met with on the carved thresholds (Vol. I. Fig. 96). The hollow border is ornamented with four lines of palmettes united by an undulating line, a motive which is no less Assyrian than the first (Vol. I., Figs. 128, 138, 139, etc.). In Fig. 217 we reproduce a cup on which its original mounting, or ring by which it was suspended, is still in place. The whole of the decoration is pure Assyrian. The rosette is exactly similar to many of those found on the enamelled bricks (see Vol. I., Figs. 122, 123). In the first of the three zones, gazelles march in file; in the second, a bull, a gazelle, an ibex, and a winged griffin, followed by the same animals attacked by lions and making fourteen figures in all; in the third zone fourteen heavy-crested bulls follow one another round the dish. All these animals are among those most constantly treated by the Assyrian sculptor; their shapes and motions are as well understood and as well rendered as in the bas-reliefs. The bulls especially are grandly designed. Moreover, the idea of employing all these animals for the adornment of such a surface is entirely in the spirit of Assyrian decoration. We shall meet with it again in the shields from Van; we figure the best preserved of the latter on page 347.

It would be easy to give more examples, either from Layard or from our own catalogue of these objects, of the purely Assyrian style on the one hand, or of that in which the influence of Egyptian models is so clearly shown, on the other. It is enough, however, that we have proved that these little monuments may be divided into two clearly marked classes. Did the two groups thus constituted share the same origin? Did they both come from the same birth-place? Further discoveries may enable us to answer this question with certainty, and even now we may try to pave the way to its solution.

There would be no difficulty if these bronze vessels bore cuneiform inscriptions, especially if the latter formed a part of the decorative composition, as in the palace reliefs, and were cut by the same hand. But this, so far as we know at present, was never the case. In some fragments of pottery we have found cuneiform characters (Fig. 185), and the name of Sargon has even been read on a glass phial (Fig. 190), but--and we cannot help feeling some surprise at the fact--none of these objects of a material far more precious bear a trace of the Mesopotamian form of writing. I do not know that a single wedge has been discovered upon them. A certain number of them are inscribed, but inscribed without exception with those letters which Phœnicia is supposed to have evolved out of the cursive writing of Egypt.[416] They were not introduced with any idea of enriching the design, as they always occur on the blank side of the vessel. They are close to the edge, and their lines are very slender, suggesting that they were meant to attract as little attention as possible. They consist of but a single name, that of the maker, or, more probably, the proprietor of the cup.[417]

May we take it that these inscriptions afford a key to the mystery? that they prove the vases upon which they occur at least to have been made in Phœnicia? We could only answer such a question in the affirmative if peculiarities of writing and language belonging only to Phœnicia properly speaking were to be recognized on them; but the texts are too short to enable us to decide to which of the Semitic idioms they should be referred, while the forms of the letters do not differ from those on some of the intaglios (Figs. 156 and 157) and earthenware vases (Fig. 183), and upon the series of weights bearing the name of Sennacherib.[418] The characters belong to that ancient Aramæan form of writing which seems to have been practised in Mesopotamia in very early times as a cursive and popular alphabet.

The inscriptions, then, do little to help us out of our embarrassment, and we are obliged to turn to the style of the vessels and their decoration for a solution to our doubts. The conviction at which we soon arrive after a careful study of their peculiarities is that even those on which Egyptian motives are most numerous and most frankly employed were not made in Egypt. In the first place we remember that the Egyptians do not seem to have made any extensive use of such platters; their libations were poured from vases of a different shape, and the cups sometimes shown in the hands of a Pharaoh always have a foot.[419] Moreover, in the paintings and bas-reliefs of Egypt, where so many cups and vases of every kind are figured, and especially the rich golden vessel that must have occupied such an important place in the royal treasure, we only find the shape in question in a few rare instances.[420]