Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/158

 Decoration. '47 When the bull fulfils a function of this nature he already belongs to the category of those fentastic and complex animals dear to the taste of Oriental art ; when, for example, he has a man's head and the claws of an eagle. To this may be added the unicorn, who first appears in Mesopotamia with a horn stuck in the middle of the fordiead, and a mouth and folds of skin that recall the head of a lion — characteristics that are well broi^ht out in the standard figured a few pages back (Fig. 41) ; * but nowhere, not even in the country of its birth, is the type worked out in so grand a manner as in one of the capitals of die great Palace of Xerxes (Fig. 31), where the unicorn appears with the legs and paws of a lion. Some- times, as in the group of the Palace of Darius, depicting the combat of the king with a monster, the chief elements of the grotesque figure are those of a bird (Fig. 71). The ears resemble a bull ; there are no horns ; an eagle*s head ; feathers on the neck, the breast, and the back ; the wings are folded against the flanks of the animal; whilst the hind legs terminate in sharp claws. His taU is a tuft of feathers, but the body and the shoulders are those of a lion. Elsewhere is found a curious combination of forms, which, while retaining a feathered crest, wings, and claws, exhibits the head of a lion and a horn flattened at the point Quaintest of all is a scorpion's tail (Fig. 72). Similar grotesque animals, wherein the shapes of birds and animals of prey are united and fused together, belong to the category of monsters to which the Greeks gave the name of ypwres. We have found them every- where on our path, whether in Egypt or Mesopotamia, Phoenicia or Asia Minor, and have called them griffins. Winged lions, man-headed, are not among the properties of the Persepolitan artist As to sphinxes, they are seen nowhere, either in their Egyptian form, or that which Assyria assigned to the animal when she borrowed the type. The fact that the repertory of the Persian sculptor was less rich than that of his Egyptian and Assyrian colleagues should cause no surprise ; Persian art, in its capacity of late comer, selected, anioti^ the various types created by a past to which it turned for its inspiration, such forms as were most to its taste. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that one of the characteristics of the Persepolitan de- coration is the small space allotted to sculpture, compared with torn. ii. Figs. ^77, 331,347 ; and torn, iii Fig. 41 1. Digitized by Google
 * Other spedmens of theChaldco-Aasyrian unioora will be found in Hist. tfArt^