Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/227

 ANIMALS. specimens of them all. We pointed out a winged horse in a bas- relief of Assurnazirpal's palace, that is to say in a sculpture dating from the first years of the ninth century ; l but the sculptors of Calah were not the first to whom such an idea occurred. Our readers will remember what strange animals were figured on those egg-shaped landmarks by which the fields were placed under the protection of gods and demons. 2 Now, on one of these stones which comes from Chaldsea and is thought to belong to the twelfth century, we find a very interesting figure. 3 This is that of a monster built up of very diverse elements. Head and bust are those of a warrior, an archer, with conical helmet, long hair and beard, a quiver upon his shoulders, and an arrow upon the s tring of his stretched bow ; the human torso blends insensibly into that of a winged horse. At first sight the being thus composed seems to present no features but those proper either to a man or. a horse, but when we come to look a little closer we see that the artist, fearful, perhaps, that his monster as first conceived was hardly terrific enough, has added certain things for the purpose of making him seem more formidable. At the back of the human head he has placed a second, apparently that of a kind of griffin-unicorn, while he has supplemented the horse's tail with that of a scorpion. The complete scorpion which appears here under the body of the horse is scarcely ever absent from these steles. Leaving these added parts out of the question, what remains is a true centaur, a centaur which differs from that of classic sculpture only by the addition of wings. It should be noticed, too, that this is no awkward combination of a man's figure with the rear of a horse, as we see it in the Cypriot figurines and in the earliest Greek centaurs. Even in the metopes of the Parthenon the junction of the two forms is hardly better managed than it is here ; the boldly advanced fore-legs give a movement which recalls that of many centaurs at Athens, and on the Phigalian frieze. Of course we do not pretend that the Athenian sculptors of the fifth century 1 Art in Chaldtza and Assyria, Vol. II. Fig. 89. 2 Ibid. Vol. I. Fig. 10 ; Vol. II. Figs. 43, in, 112. 8 MR. PINCHES is our authority for this date. The name of King Meli-Sihu is to be read on the stone, and, according to Mr. Pinches, he reigned about 1107 (see his list of the Chaldaean princes, so far as we know them, in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology for 1884). The stone was found at Babylon by Mr. Rassam and sent to the British Museum in 1882.