Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/92

 76 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. to dress his personages in true Assyrian fashion, than modify the physical type which he saw everywhere about him, and which moreover was fixed by long usage. Hence it is that, albeit repro- duced here with lighter and more practised hand, it still preserves its special physiognomy. The nose, for instance, is not hooked, like that of the Semites, but straight, long, and pointed ; the treatment of the hair, too, in the central figure, is not quite what we should find on a Ninevite tablet ; and the lion is at once tame and clumsy. There is an abyss between this art and the consummate skill and truthfulness with which the sculptors employed by the Sargonides expressed the impotent rage, the supreme agony, of the hunted beasts in the throes of death. And last, not least, all these sculptures are on basalt slabs, a sure test that they were carved on the spot. The multitudinous points of touch which we have passed in review, admit of quite a natural explanation : the extension of the Assyrian empire began in the ninth century B.C. From that date the kings of Calah and Nineveh crossed the Euphrates and frequently moved their armies into Syria. They overran the twin kingdoms of Israel and Phoenicia along the shores of the Mediterranean, and, as a natural consequence, relations were entered into between the conquerors and the conquered. Such relations were doubtless of no friendly character whilst contests lasted ; but these were followed by long intervals of peace, during which caravans resumed their journeys from one country to another. The clay seals with Hittite characters, discovered in the treasure chamber at Kujunjik, affixed to the bags that contained the objects paid as tribute, may have been brought by kings of Hamath and Carchemish (Figs. 287, 288, 289). At any rate these and other petty princes of the Orontes and the Pyramus valleys, could not remain indifferent to the pomp and circumstance they beheld or had reported to them. They were stimulated by their powerful neighbours to build palaces, on whose walls their battles, hunting scenes, and religious sacrifices were portrayed. Under the influence of Chaldaea, their sculpture, hitherto rough Figs. 287, 288, 289. — Clay Seals. Layard. The Monuments of Nineveh, Plate LXIX. Berlin Museum.