Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/376

 ôô 8 A History of Art in Ciialiu.a and Assyria. the scarabs on standards and the opposed sphinxes appear (Fig. 209) seems pure Egyptian at first sight; but if we take each motive by itself we find variations that are not insignificant. In Egyptian paintings, when the scarab is represented with ex- tended wings they are spread out horizontally, and not crescent- wise over its head. 1 We may say the same of the sphinx. The griffin crowned with the psclient is to be found in Egypt as well as the winged sphinx, 2 but the Egyptian griffins had no wings, 3 and those of the sphinxes were folded so as to have their points directed to the ground. In the whole series of Egyptian monuments I cannot point to a fictitious animal like this griffin. It is in the fanciful creations of the Assyrians alone that these wings, standing up and describing a curve with its points close to the head of the beast that wears them (see Fig. 87), is to be seen. It is an Assyrian griffin masquerading under the double crown of Egypt, but a trained eye soon penetrates the disguise. The arrangement, too, of the group is Assyrian. When the Egyptians decorated a jewel, a vessel, or a piece of furniture by combining two figures in a symmetrical fashion, they put them back to back rather than face to face. 4 Very few examples can be quoted of the employment in Egypt of an arrangement that is almost universal in Assyria. In the latter country this opposition of two figures is so common as to be common-place ; they are usually separated from each other by a palmette, a rosette, a column or even a human figure (see Vol. I., Figs. 8, 124, 138, 139; and above, Figs. 75, 90, 141, 152, 153, 158, etc.), and it was certainly from Mesopotamia that Asia Minor borrowed the same motive, which is so often found in the tombs of Phrygia and in Greece as far as Mycenae, whither it was carried from Lydia by the Tantalides. 5 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. figs. 287, 288. See also the great vultures on the ceilings (ibid. fig. 282), and winged females (ibid. fig. 287). 2 Prisse, Histoire de PArt égyptien, vol. ii., the plate entitled Types de Sphinx. 3 Art in A?icient Egypt, vol. ii. fig. 239, and Prisse, in the plate above quoted. 4 A cursory glance through the pages dedicated by Prisse to the industrial arts is conclusive on this point, the heads of snakes and horses, the figures of negroes and prisoners of war are almost invariably placed back to back on the objects they are used to adorn. Examples of this abound, but in order to understand what we may call the principle of this ornamentation it will suffice to refer to figs. 314, 327, and 328 of the second volume of our History of Art in Ancient Egypt. '° In Prisse's plate entitled Choix de Bijoux de diverses Epoqnes, there is a bracelet