Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/109

 Themes of Chald^eo-Assyrian Sculpture. 9i all the theme is the same, and the type almost exactly similar. We can hardly be mistaken in recognizing a god in the personage seated on a richly decorated throne, towards whom two or three figures, sometimes of smaller size than himself, advance in an attitude of respectful homage. He is crowned with a lofty tiara, a long beard flows over his breast, a robe of fine plaited stuff enwraps his whole body and falls to his feet. He is a man in the prime of life ; his air and costume must have been taken from those of the king. May we not look upon him as the first sketch for the Greek Zeus, the Zeus of Homer and Phidias ? This type is never disfigured by any of those attempts, of which the Chaldaeans were so fond, to add to the significance of the human figure by endowing it with features borrowed from various lower animals. It should be noticed, however, that on one of the cylinders we have figured (Vol. I., Fig. 17) there is a '•ft m V K J "S- Fig. 40. — Lapis-lazuli cylinder. In the French National Library. personage with two faces, like the Roman Janus. But this is not the seated god. It is not the great deity before whom the other actors in the scene stand erect, it is one of the secondary per- sonages, one of the inferior divinities who bring offerings or receive instructions, in short, one of those genii whose numerous and complex attributes first suggested these fantastic combinations. We find then that when the Chaldaeans set themselves to search for the most suitable way of figuring their gods, they ended by thoroughly appreciating the excellence of the human form ; with a few exceptions, they abandoned the idea of correcting and perfecting it ; they were content to copy it sincerely and unaffectedly, to render the characteristic features of the maid and. the mother, the youth and the man of mature age to whom years