Page 123 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART one: MESOPOTAMIA
and now, at he beginning of the seventh century b.c. the potentialities of tins larger sur-
face were My exploited and that for an evocation of the setting in winch the action
°b place. Plate iox shows the capitulation of Lacliish in Palestine. Vines growing on
.1C bUs arC ?rawn at the toP; the whoIc surface is covered by the scale-pattern used from
immemorial times to render mountains. Sennacherib is seated on an elaborate throne be­
fore his tent, and receives his Commanders, while Jewish prisoners kiss the ground be­
fore him. The king’s chariot, riding-horses, and charioteer stand in the foreground. But
may we use tins word? Is there a near and far expressed in this scene? Does the disposi­
tion of the figures over the stone represent their actual position during the surrender?
On the whole one must say ‘ no ’. The figures are grouped round the king as their centre.
But it has been shown that a vague suggestion of depth, and hence of space, follows from
the maimer in which the background is drawn into the design.40 It is no longer quite
neutral, as it was under Assurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III. The king’s tent appears to
be pitched upon a small eminence or bluff on the hillside — a likely enough choice in
actuality. Its surface is indicated by a ground line, a traditional aid in the arrangement of
figures. But the side of the liillock is merely adumbrated by the spacing of the officers
who mount it to report to the king. It is a result of this rendering that the horses appear
to us to be drawn in the foreground, the vines in the background of the scene. We could
not use these terms with any justification in describing plate 94B. Even in plate 101 there
is no question of a coherent rendering of space, as is shown by the drawing of the guards
between horses and liillock, and of the kneeling inhabitants of Lachish.
A similar rendering of the setting is used in the illustration of Sennacherib’s campaign
in the marshes about the mouths of Euphrates and Tigris (Plates 99-100). The condi­
tions shown in these scenes still exist to-day along the Shatt el Arab; water, and a
wilderness of reeds nine feet tall, cut by narrow channels, as in the foreground of our
plates. Here the marsh-Arab leads an amphibious existence, fishing and keeping a few
buffaloes on islands which are often no more than a mat of beaten-down reeds. All trans-
port is by skiffs of reeds covered with bitumen, and in the reed huts ‘ on the rush-strewn
and miry floor sleep men and women, children and buffaloes in warm proximity . .. the
ground of the hut often oozing water at every step’.41
These impenetrable marshes, like the mountains on the north-east, offered hiding-
places to all who opposed Assyrian rule, and they were never fully subjugated. The re-
liefs show Sennacherib’s troops invading the area, using the local reed skiffs. The in­
habitants, living on the very surface of the water, on bent and matted reeds, hidden in
the bushes, seem sometimes to escape notice. Mostly they are routed out. On the right a
boat with captives lands while another approaches the shore carrying soldiers with cut-
offheads as trophies; captured women and a few male captives. Plate 99 shows that the
Assyrian draughtsman combined such a scene with the age-old scheme of superimpose
friezes without any qualms. This proves that we are apt to misinterpret his mtenaons in
the composition of his ‘landscapes’, because they appear to us as attempts to render a
“S impression. But in Iris pictorial account of the war the scenery was an ele-
Smlt Hke any other; a detailed record of warfare in the marshes required that the pecu-
*T£d»g be rendered, and rids could be done adequately now that the

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