Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/310

 278 A History of Art in Ciialdra and Assyria. figured we again encounter the strange composite beast we have already seen upon a stone tablet and a cylinder (Figs. Sy and 141). In spite of the alphabet employed, this cone must have been engraved either in Nineveh or its neighbourhood. The narrowness of the field explains the want of variety in the subjects. In a small circle like this there was no room for more than a single figure with a few accessories, or, at most, for two figures. We cannot expect to find scenes as varied and complicated as those upon the cylinders. A very small number of the simplest themes formed the stock-in-trade of the engraver. There are about four hundred specimens in the British Museum, and as many more in Paris, in the Louvre and the Cabinet des Antiques. In the presence of them all we can only confess to a feeling of embarrassment. They are never arranged in chro- nological order ; Assyrian intaglios are mixed up with those from Chaldaea, from Phoenicia and Persia. Certain types were re- produced and copied in this region even as late as the Arsacids and Sassanids. We shall choose a few, however, which we may with some certainty attribute to Assyria. There is in the first place one on which two winged figures seem to be adorning the sacred tree (Fig. 158). We find the impression of an almost exactly similar cone on a contract dated 650 b.c. The only differences lie in the more careful execution of the latter seal and in the substitution of the radiant disk of the sun for the crescent moon. 1 In another impression we find the radiant disk changed into the winged globe. 2 The shape and fringe of the Assyrian robe may be recognized in the intaglio in which a man with long hair and beard does homage to a winged genius (Fig. 159). The worshipper is standing, but behind him appears a kneeling figure. This posture is rare, but it is met with in a few instances on monuments from this period, and is always used to suggest the profound respect with which a man does obeisance either to his god or his king. 3 1 Menant, Empreintes de Cachets assyro-cha/déens relevées au Musée britannique {Archives des Missions, 1882, p. 375), fig. 5. 2 Ibid. fig. 25. 3 A kneeling figure occurs on a contract dated from the seventh century, Menant, ibidy p. 376, fig. 7. Several impressions in the London collection show us personages in the modern attitude of prayer before the figure of a god overshadowed by huge wings. Ibid. figs. 26 and 27.