Page 124 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE LATE ASSYRIAN PERIOD
of narrow friezes had been relaxed through the changes'in the reigns of Tig-
rigid use
lathpilcsar III and Sargon II. When the capti ves of the marshland had to be enumerated,
the strips offered advantages and were used without hesitation in conjunction with the
more modern scenes; on die right of plate 99 die two modes of composition merge
into one another. The friezes continue across the next stone, and this part of the design
docs not differ in essentials from similar subjects treated on the gates from Balawat
(Plate 92).
hi the reign of Sennacherib a curious attempt was made to combine the advantages of
a large surface used for a single narrative with that of the orderly arrangement of figures
offered by the narrow strips (Plate 102A). The surface is divided into three registers; the
episode of die campaign is treated at the top and bottom, and the central strip defines the
event geographically; for we can hardly speak of a ‘ setting ’ when the landscape elements
are concentrated into a strip by themselves. One relief shows at the top the taking of a
city, at the bottom Sennacherib in his chariot receiving captives. Between them flows
a broad river.42 Another shows the advancing army of Assyria, with a neat alternation
of vines and palms in the central strip. Yet another represents the return of the victors
carrying heads as trophies. The interest of these reliefs of Sennacherib is the treatment of
a surface combining three strips in a single unit. This is also done, and with greater in­
genuity, in the record of Assurbanipal’s Arab war (Plate I02b). The desert scenery was
not suited to pictorial rendering, and we find, as of old, three strips each accommodating
a standing figure with a little width to spare. But instead of being used merely for an
enumeration of episodes, the latter are so composed that something more than the bare
occurrence is recorded. The main motifs are spaced diagonally across the three strips and
suggest the forward urge of the pursuit: the galloping camel in the upper right-hand
comer recurs a little more towards the left in the middle strip and yet farther towards the
left in the lowest. There the Assyrian horseman is placed at the foot of the descending
diagonal; but the movement does not end here. It rises again from the camel in front of
him, through the horseman in the second strip to the galloping camel in the upper left-
hand corner. The fragmentary figures at the edge of the stone indicate that this com-
positional skeleton underlies the whole scene, transfusing it with the agitation and for­
ward urge of die swift, confused, headlong pursuit. The smaller figures sustain this
movement, the spearmen and archers by their gestures, the prostrate bodies of the
dead by their emphasis on the horizontal. Even the static groups do not interrupt the
current; the collapsing camels are part of it, and its speed is stressed where it swirls, in
the lowest strip, round two dismounted Arabs in desperate colloquy. The novelty and
power of this composition can best be seen when it is compared with the Arab war of
Tiglathpilesar III, rendered in strips, which are, in die old manner, used as independent
units.43
hi Assurbanipal s war against the Elamites the new treatment of the strips, as a mere
convenience for the designer and not as separate entries in the pictorial chronicle, is
app e with the greatest effect, and that in two directions. Either the central register is
-V° ^°Ver a Arable height of stone, and the upper and lower strips become its
subsidiaries (Plate 103), or die separation between the registers is not drawn and survives,

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