Page 135 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

CHAPTER 8
THE NEO-BABYLONIAN PERIOD

<circa 612-539 b.c.)

Nineveh fell in 612 b.c. before an alliance of Mcdcs and Scythians, who had been
attacking the Empire for some considerable time. Nabopolassar, a Chaldaean, who had
been an Assyrian commander in the south, had established himself as king of Babylon a
few years before the catastrophe, and under his dynasty the spiritual capital of Meso­
potamia experienced an Indian summer. In the seventy-odd years of its independence an
astounding amount of building was undertaken. Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchad­
nezzar reconstructed the temples of many cities throughout the land, often using baked
bricks; they also built themselves huge palaces in Babylon; and even Nabonidus, the last
Neo-Babylonian king, continued in the same manner.
If the scale of the buildings was Assyrian they represent in other respects a revival of
Babylonian traditions and cannot be treated as a mere appendix to the history of As­
syrian art. Reliefs show that even in the years of Assyrian domination the traditions of
the south survived. Many boundary steles are much closer to the Kassite relief of plate 71
than to any Assyrian works. The boundary stone of Mardukpaliddina (Plate 120) re­
cords a gift of land to a vassal and puts it under the protection of the gods whose symbols
appear at the top. The function and design of the monument are Babylonian, not As­
syrian, and this is also true of the physiognomies of the king and his vassal. The reduced
size of the latter figure would also be hard to match in Assyrian reliefs, and the style of
the carving is decidedly Babylonian; the soft and rounded forms recall the steles of
Hammurabi and Urnammu (Plates 53 and 65) rather than those of the Assyrian kings
(Plate 116) which are contemporary with it. Notice, for instance, the treatment of the
arms. There is a certain elegance in the portly Babylonian figures; the sweep of their
garments, the fine-boned hands, wrists, and feet are treated in a maimer unknown in
Assyria. This elegance is also distinctive of Neo-Babylonian seal-designs, which lack the
Assyrian fierceness. Note, further, that the Babylonians rendered a true profile and did
not extend the shoulders in the plane of vision, like those, for instance, at Khorsabad. It
is likely that this innovation is due to the heavy relief, almost modelled in the round,
and this again is an old Babylonian usage, employed in the steles we referred to above.
The affinities of the stele of plate 121 arc more complex. It was set up in 870 b.c. by
King Nabupaliddina to commemorate his restoration of the temple of Shamash at Sip-
par The text mentions the ancient statue of the sun-god, and it is probably shown in its
shrine. It exhibits a number of archaic features; its costume goes back to the third millen­
nium (Plate 53): its gesture and the ring-and-staff are as old; and the bull-men on le
s?dc of its throne are constant adjuncts of the sun-god in the time of Sargon of Akkad
and Hammurabi, but are rare in Assyrian iconography.

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