Page 134 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE LATE ASSYRIAN PERIOD
manifest in it. A curious design below probably indicates a temple. To the left appears a
demonic hunter, holding two stags and two gazelles. This figure makes his appearance in
the Middle Assyrian Period, and die seal and its motifs are entirely Assyrian. The third
seal, although truly Assyrian in every respect, illustrates die survival of older traditions.
A man stands in adoration before a statue of the goddess Ishtar, in the full panoply of a
war goddess, mounted on a leopard. But her star, the planet Venus, is fixed to her crown,
and her immemorial connexion with the life of nature is recalled by the flowering palm
tree and the two ibexes. The crossing of these animals and the continuous frieze repre­
sented by this design recall Early Dynastic usage, just as the heraldic group of (A) re­
sembles Akkadian compositions and the juxtaposition of unconnected motifs of (B) that
of the First Dynasty of Babylon. In Assyrian glyptic art every principle of composition
known in the past was once more triumphantly applied. Together with the cylinders,
stamp seals were used, but their designs offer nothing that is not represented, mostly in
superior form, on the cylinders.

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