Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/402

 38o History of Art in Antiquity. a king in warlike costume^ whilst a priest seems to be intended in the flowing drapery of the other. In front are three temple slaves, carrying sevendly a vase and musical instruments, a harp and a kind of lyre. Below, a servant is seen leading a high- homed animal, doubtless to the sacrificial altar, but to what species it belongs it would be hard to say. The next plane, in a descending scale, exhibits the bodies of three rams stretched out on the ground, and in front their heads arranged in a row. Below these, again, appear two men uiging a young heifer in the direction of the officiating priest, before whom, on the ground, lies a bull's head. The other bas-relief is both simpler and ruder in make (Fig. 184). The bodies of seven animals, supposed to represent a lioness and her cubs, are spread out before the god. Stooping over the lioness is a figure which, to judge from the feet, must be a man. Could it perchance be the sportsman skinning the animals? The work is so uncouth and barbarous as to preclude a decided opinion. Lastly, about the middle of the picture to the right, are four diminutive figures habited in long robes, which may be priests or worshippers. The attitudes and instruments figured in one of the sculptures recall certain bas-reliefs of Chaldsea and Assyria, notably the latter,' whilst the other challenges comparison with the bas-reliefs chiselled in the £ice of the rocky walls of Amanus, Taurus, and the minor ranges of Asia Minor, which we assigned to the Hittites.* Many of the details, be it the peculiar boots, the thick legs, the bell-shaped tunic, and, above all, the roughly suggested and barely outlined figures, are almost identical. There is an enormous gap between this and the other divine simulacrum, wherein a full face and side view are so curiously mingled, where, too, the rendering of the draperies denotes great skill. Supedictal examination would incline one to regard the bas-relief we have compared with the art of Northern Syria and Cappadocia as the older of the pair described, but uncouth make is not always a sure sign of great antiquity. This much seems probable, that if the Malamir bas-reliefs belong to one people, they were not chiselled in the same day, or by the same sculptors. We know next to nothing of the history of the Susian nation, save that their situation between the mountains and the sea, coupled with the fertility of their soil, excited at all times the cupidity of their Digitized by Google
 * HiU, 0/ Ari, torn, it Figs. 157, 291. ' /(a/., torn. iv. § vL