Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/398

 37.6 History of Art in Antiquity. CHAPTER VL sculpture. Sculpture in Media and Susiana. The empire of Cyaxares and Astyages was of too short a duration to create an independent art ; as a matter of fact, up to the moment we write no statuary has been found which might have served to decorate their palaces. The Medians had no relations with the culture of £gyptand Greece, and were influenced by Assyria alone ; at first as vassals and tributaries, and even later, when they got the upper hand, took Nineveh, and destroyed it> they remained none the less the clients of the industrial centres of Mesopotamia. Their architecture may have been imbued with a certain d^fiee of individuality, due to materials which ChaldaLi did not possess, but within the limits of plastic art, where the devices resorted to by sculptor and painter for the representation of the human form are purely conventional, the Medes, both when they modelled clay or when they fashioned stone in the semblance of their gods and kings, were from beginning to end the faithful pupils of Babylonia and Nineveh. Shapes, symbols, and types were derived from the weapons, the artistic furniture, and manufactured objects procured in the markets of the Euphrates basin, the northern part of which had been incorporated with the empire. Should a piece of sculpture, older than the reign of Cyrus, ever come out of the ruins of Ecbatana, the chances are that it would be a copy pure and simple of Assyrian bas-reliefs, more or less skilfully executed. This does not apply to Susiana ; from that quarter hoary an- tiquities may be discovered which will move back the present boundary line of our horizon. If from the days of Cyrus, and perhaps even before his accession to power, the Medes were subject to Persia and henceforward shared her destinies, they could look Digitized by Google