Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/134

 ii6 History of Art in Chald.-ea and Assyria. journeymen. The master produced the model, and nothing was required from the carvers who copied it but skill in enlarging and in the handling of their tools. From the earliest times of which any remains have come down to us the Chaldseans understood how to make use of all the different materials that offer facilities to the artist for the rendering of living form. Until bronzes dating from the times of the pyramid builders were found, 1 it was thought that they had anticipated the Egyptians in the art of making that precious alloy and casting it in earthen moulds. 2 This conjecture was suggested by the discovery, near Bagdad, of a metal statuette, which is now in the Louvre (Fig. 53). It is what the Greeks called a canephoros. A young woman carries a basket on her completely shaven head, keeping it in place with her hands. From her waist upwards she is nude, but the lower part of her figure is wrapped in a kind of narrow skirt, on which is engraved a votive inscription containing the name of a king Kourdourma- pouk, who is believed to have flourished in the sixteenth century before our era. The casting is solid. The bronzes inscribed with the name of Gudea (Vol. I. Figs. 146-148) are perhaps still more ancient. The motive of one is identical with that of this canephoros. Metal working cannot have begun with such objects as these ; it is pretty certain that forging metals was everywhere an earlier process than casting them. Before learning to prepare the mould and to force the liquid copper into its farthest recesses, men must have com- menced by beating it into plates upon the anvil. When they had gathered sufficient skill to make these plates very thin and pliant, the next thing they attempted was to ornament them, which they first did by hammering one of their sides, and so producing reliefs on the other which could be brought to sufficient perfection by repeating the process with varying degrees of strength and delicacy, and by chasing. This is what is called repoussé work. There is no doubt that these processes were invented in the southern cities. The oldest of the Warka tombs show that metals were abundant from a very ancient period, and that their 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 197-203, and figs. 179 and 180. 2 This was the opinion of M. de Longperier {Musée Napoleon 7II. y description of plate 1).