Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/300

 268 A History of Art in Chald.-ea and Assyria. scene as a preparation for a feast offered to one of those goddesses of maternity whom we find on the terra-cottas (see above Fig. 107). We shall not here go into the question whether we may see in all this an episode in the legend of the ancient Sargon, the royal infant whom his mother exposed upon the water after his clandestine birth ; after commencing like Moses, the hero of this adventure was found and brought up by a boatman, and became the founder of an empire when he grew to manhood, like Cyrus and Romulus. 1 If we may believe M. Menant some of the cylinders belonging to this period represent human sacrifices. Such he supposes to be the theme of the example reproduced in Fig. 146. The figure with arm uplifted w r ould be the priest brandishing his mace over the kneeling victim, who turns and begs in vain for mercy. The issue of the unequal struggle is hinted at by the dissevered head FlG. 146. — Chaldœan cylinder. Montigny collection. introduced in the lower right-hand corner. To make our descrip- tion complete we must notice the subordinate passage, a rampant leopard, winged, preparing to devour a gazelle. 2 The conjecture is specious, but until confirmatory texts are discovered, it will remain a conjecture. Those texts that have been quoted in support of it are vague in the first place, and, in the second, they appear to refer less to the sacrifice of human victims than to holocausts of infants, who must have been thrown into the flames as they were in Phoenicia. Why should we not look upon it as an emblem of the royal victories, an emblem similar in kind to the group that recurs so persistently in Egyptian sculpture, from the time of the ancient Empire to that of the Ptolemies? 3 The 1 MENANT, Essai, &c, p. 166. M. Menant mentions some other myths, with which this scene may be connected. The true explanation cannot be decided, however, until the Chaldee mythology is better known than at present. 2 Ibid. p. 153. 3 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. i. Fig. 85.