Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/435

 AH History of Art in Antiquity. IV. and IX.). As to the bulls set to guard portals, either upon pedestals or at the summit of antae» and walking Uons on friezes, they are traditional and purely decorative figures. In that portion of the work where the Persian sculptor expresses ideas of his own, there is nothing which may not be classed in either of the broad divisions we have delineated, with the palace at one end and the tomb at the other, under the multiform aspects imposed upon the artist by the variable dimensions of the fields and the peculiar character of the edifices to be decorated. . We do not find here the variety offered by the sculptures of Egypt, or even the bas-reliefs of Assyria, although the circle of these is already comprised within narrower limits. Here are no war scenes, no pictures of life passed in the camp, no marching of armies, no beleaguered cities and no batdes, no long processions of prisoners, from which many an in- structive and picturesque detail may be gathered. Then, too, we might expect to come across those royal hunts, in which the Achxmenids, like the Sargonidae, loved to exhibit their dexterity and fearlessness.' Instances of these occur in the rock bas-reliefs of the Sassanidae,* but not one specimen could be cited in proof that a similar pastime was favoured by their predecessors. The expedients resorted to by the scene-manager, the boundaries within which he rigorously confined his theme, prove that his persimnel was singularly small. There were no women in his company. Woman, in the paintings and sculptures of Egypt, has her young, supple, and el^^ant form half revealed through the transparent gossamer in which it is draped ; woman, who occasion- ally appears in Assyrian bas-reliefs, either as a captive or, though more rarely, as a queen and goddess, is entirely ignored by the Persian artist ; it looks almost as if he did not believe in her existence. As a natural sequence, and through no lack of opportunities, he did not introduce in his regal pageants those beardless, full-faced eunuchs who, at Nineveh, make so excellent a foil to the manly but somewhat hard-visaged princes and warriors. If Persian art deprived itself of the resources afforded by the was launched into space The bull is sometimes identified with the moon, but there is no proof of his connectioD with the lion. The latter is not once mentioned in the Areata. ' Herodotus, iv. 129; Ctesias, Excerpta Fersim, 40. (Flandin and Cosn, Pkrte aneieimt. Plates X. and XII.). Digitized by Google
 * The bas-relieb at Takhti-Bostan represent the hunting expeditions of Chosioes