Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/104

 84 A HISTORY OF ART i CIIAI.D.KA AND ASSYRIA. inscriptions, some to the floating quality of the conceptions to which they relate. It may never, perhaps, be possible to make out a complete list, or one which shall not be obnoxious to criticism on other grounds ; moreover, the historian of art has no need to enter into any such discussion, or to give the details of a nomen- clature as to which Assyriologists themselves have many doubts. It suffices that he should point out the multiplicity of couples and triads, the extreme diversity ot deities, and thus indicate a reason for the very peculiar aspect of the cylinders and engraved stones of Chaldsea, for the complex forms of the gods, and for the multitude of varied symbols which encumber the fields of her sculptured reliefs. Some of the figures that crowd these narrow surfaces are so fantastic that they astonish the eye as much as they pique the curiosity (see Fig. 17). I'K;. 17. --A ChalJa-an Cylinder : from Mciunt'? /-<? ffi/'.'f ct ks Cyli/idres C ha Id sens. The number of divine types and the consequent difficulties of classification are increased, as in Egypt, by the fact that every important town had its local deities, deities who were its own peculiar gods. In the course of so many centuries and so many successive displacements of the political centre of gravity, the order of precedence of the Mesopotamia!! gods was often changed. The dominant city promoted its own gods over the heads of their fellows and modified for a time which might be long or short, the comparative importance of the Chalda-an divinities. Sin, the moon god, headed the list during the supremacy of Ur, Samas during that of Larsam. Yith the rise of Assyria its national god, Assur, doubtless a supreme god of the heavens, acquired an uncontested pre-eminence. It was in his name that the Assyrians subdued all Asia and shed such torrents of blood. Their wars were the wars of Assur ; they were undertaken to extend his