Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/214

 t"84 A History of Art in Chald.ka and Assyria. there would be a head no less bald. In our own day the small cap of cotton or linen covered by the twisted scarf or shawl of the Turk or Hindoo, conceals little but the smooth skin of the skull. 1 The custom had yet to be introduced of wearing the long and closely-curled hair and beard that we find reproduced in the sculptures of Nineveh. The nose is broken in both heads, but if we may judge from the statuettes and bas-reliefs of the same epoch, especially from a curious fragment recovered in the course of the same excavations, it must have been arched — but not so much as the Assyrian noses — and a little thick at the end. Taking the face as a whole it is square in structure, like the body ; in the few examples of Assyrian heads in the round that we possess the oval of the face seems longer, but the beard by which the whole of its lower part is concealed renders any comparison difficult. We do not think, however, that there is any necessity to raise a question of race. " It is only subject to the greatest reserve that we can venture to say anything as to the ethnography of the types created by sculpture, especially when those types are archaic, and therefore exposed more than all others to the influ- ence of school conventions. 2 It is a common habit with antique sculptors to allow traces of their work in its rough shape to subsist in the finished creation. In all countries the march of art has been from square and angular to round and flowing shapes, from short and thick-set to graceful and slender proportions." 3 The tendencies shown in the rendering of the face and the uncovered parts of the body are also to be recognized in the treatment of the drapery. " The sculptor has attempted with much truth and simplicity to suggest the relief of the drapery and the direction of its folds. This early and timid attempt at study- ing folds is all the more remarkable as nothing like it is to be 1 In the sculptures representing the erection of Sennacherib's palace, many of the workmen have their heads protected from the sun by a turban resembling that of the Tello statue. This can hardly be clearly seen in small scale reproductions (Vol. I. Figs. 151 and 152), but Layard gives two of these heads on the original scale, for the express purpose of calling attention to their singular head-dress (Monuments, series ii. plate 16). 2 Here M. Heuzey anwers M. Menant, who thought he could discover in these two heads that the sculptor's models had not been Semites, but belonged to the primitive race, of Turanians, no doubt, by whom the Chaldgean civilization was founded (Les Fuuilles de M. de Sarzec en Mesopotamia, in the number for December, 1880, of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts). 3 Heuzey, Les Fouilles, &c, p. ii.