Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/52

 32 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD/KA AND ASSYRIA. and when the wedge became the primary element of all the characters, the scribe ceased to give even the most distant hint of the real forms of the things signified. Throughout the period which saw those powerful empires flourishing in Mesopotamia whose creations were admired and copied by all the peoples of Western Asia, the more or less complex groups and arrangements of the cuneiform writing, to whatever language applied, had no aim but to represent sometimes whole words, sometimes the syllables of which those words were composed. Under such conditions it seems unlikely that the forms of the written characters can have contributed much to form the style of artists who dealt with the figures of men and animals. We may say that the sculptors and painters of Chaldsea were not, like those of Egypt, the scholars of the scribes. And yet there is a certain analogy between the handling of the inscriptions and that of the bas-reliefs. It is doubtless in the nature of the materials employed that we must look for the final explanation of this similarity, but it is none the less true that writing was a much earlier and a much more general art than sculpture. The Chaldsean artist must have carried out his modelling with a play of hand and tool learnt in cutting texts upon clay, and still more, upon stone. The same chisel-stroke is found in both ; very sure, very deep, and a little harsh. However this may be, we cannot embark upon the history of Art in Chaldaea without saying a word upon her graphic system. If there be one proof more important than another of the great part played by the Chaldseans in the ancient world, it is the success of their writing, and its diffusion as far as the shores of the Euxine and the eastern islands of the Mediterranean. Some cuneiform texts have lately been discovered in Cappadocia, the language of which is that of the country, 1 and the most recent discoveries point to the conclusion that the Cypriots borrowed from Babylonia the symbols by which the words of the Greek dialect spoken in their island were noted. 2 1 See the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Arc/oology, twelfth session, 1881-2. 2 See MICHEL BREAL, Le Dechiffrement des Inscriptions Cypriotes (Journal des Savants. August and September, 1877). In the last page of his article, M. Bre'al, while fully admitting the objections, asserts that it is " difficult to avoid recognizing the general resemblance (difficile de me'connaitre la ressemblance generale)." He refers us to the paper of Herr DEECKE, entitled Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift, eine paheographische Untersuchung, Strasbourg, 1877. Another