Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/440

 419 Medes and Persians, the population of the adjacent country and of the town itself was Susian, and worshipped therefore gods and practised rites intimately related to those of Babylonia, which stretched back to the earliest days. For the rest it is quite impossible, even approximately, to date this or that statuette, all of which are equally uncouth and barbarous. The moulds into which were impressed these and sundry other typ"s dear to popular superstitions were kept constantly at work to the very last days of antiquity. The same remark applies to the small figures of musicians which Lofius picked up at Susa. They are reproduc- tions of a type which we know from the art of Chaldsa and . Assyria. In Egypt, Chal- daea, and Greece, small objects of this kind often come in as stop-gaps to bridge over lacuna; caused by accidents or un- toward events ; here, however, we must not rely upon having our imperfect infor- mation supplemented in this manner. The bas-reliefs at Per- sepolis tell us what were the ideas of the artist and the processes he made use of in translating them ; here, then, we are bound to study his handiwork, even after the excavations at Susa. l*rom the latter have only come fragments, which at the time of their discovery did not occupy their original position, so that Dieulafoy, in his restored building of Susa, mainly relied on analogies obser- vable between the edifices at Persepolis and the whilom capital of Susiana for the place he assigned to them. Under a seeming appearance of complexity which melts away before careful examination, the arrangement, grouping, and execution of all these figures is as simple as can be imagined. Whoever was the artist entrusted by Darius with the decoration of his palace, the first erected on the platform, it is clear that he had no intention of transmitting to posterity the remembrance of Fig. JOS.— BrooM vlatneuc. Lovvie. Dreim bf St Elme Gautier. ' Actnil nie. Digitized by Google