Page 129 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART one: MESOPOTAMIA
Tllidl f St;u§uishes thc animal Swings of the Assyrians. The lion’s force

cw **,he—
m a moment the heavy
body will sink towards the ground.
It may be that some animals were unwilling to fight, and at times Assurbanipal is
shown twistmg a Hon s tail while the animal wheels round in fury. But in addition to
these combats on foot there were also chariot courses, in which thc king shot while his
vehicle sped through thc arena strewn with dead bodies (Plate no). Once again we need
not assume (nor is it Hkely) that all these animals were released at once; but occasionally
a victim thought to be dead would return to the attack. Assurnasirpal, too, depicted this
kind of incident (Plate 87), and thc comparison of his relief with that of his
successor,
200 yeais later, shows the change which had taken place in Assyrian art. The abstract
but splendid design of the ninth century is replaced by one more complex, less decora­
tive, and very close to reality. The king remains concentrated on his aim and gives no
attention to the desperate beast who springs at its torturer. Thc chariot, packed to capa­
city, carries two spearmen detailed to cope with the unexpected.
The love and care expended on the rendering of the dead and dying animals (Plate
110 and in) turn these scenes, intended as a pictorial epic, into a tragedy in which the
victims, not the victor, play the chief part. Viewed in a similar manner, the hunts of in­
offensive game appear as elegies. Among the panicking wild asses (Plate 112) is the mare,
looking round, before breaking into a gallop - note the tension of its pace - at the awk­
ward foal which she must abandon to the mastiff.
In plate 113 we are for once spared the spectacle of slaughter and given a supreme
example of the Assyrian’s mastery of design. In most of the hunting scenes the spacing is
bold; here the animals are spaced so widely that they would fall apart into an incoherent
conglomeration, were it not that the rhythm of their pace binds them together across the
intervals. One gets the impression, not of separate animals, but of a herd grazing, dis­
persed in the open plain. They move in unison, and thc pointed grace of dieir steps is
beautifully observed. But the buck bringing up the rear is disturbed, and has just caught
sight of the approaching men; his scamper (note the poised foreleg) will send off the
whole herd in speed over the face of the desert.
Plate 113 does not give an impression of the relief as it appears on the walls. In close
proximity to the alarmed buck, the source of his disquiet is shown: a beater has dis­
mounted and waves his riding-whip to drive the herd within reach of die king s arrows.
If we falsified the impression by depicting the herd by itself, we should have distorted it
no less by including the beater, for modern eyes accustomed to taking in the whole o a
work of art are not Hkely to detect the subtleties with which the animals and their be­
haviour are rendered when these are dominated by a large prosaic figure. We may
imagine that for the Ancients the excitement of the hunt winch these compositions re-
Xed unified their diverse elements, without loss to the intensity with winch each was
Tried Nevertheless, there is a curious discrepancy between the supreme artistry of
P , intine scenes and the position in which they are displayed. The herd of gazelles
ea« in fhe lowest of three strips. In the second of these, above the gazelles, we see an

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