Page 137 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART one: MESOPOTAMIA
nezzar s throne stood in the centre of a long wall and faced the entrance. The outward
appearances of the two chambers differed also; instead of the overpowering concentra­
tion of demonic guardians at the doors (Figure 31) and the nine-foot images of Sargon
and lus courtiers, we find at Babylon a resplendent facade of glazed bricks, showing,
against a deep blue background, a pattern of slender masts with volute and palmetto
capitals, connected by graceful flower designs, all rendered in white and yellow and sky
blue.2 Only at the base dicrc was a dado of snarling lions, but they do not face die visitor
(as do die guardian figures in Assyria), but form a frieze of profiles, once more executed
in glazed bricks. A greater difference from the Assyrian decoration cannot be conceived.
The plan of Nebuchadnezzar’s city shows the palace situated roughly in the middle of
die northern town wall, between the Euphrates on the west and the main north-south
I / city-god Marduk; north of it, in a separate enclosure, stood Etemenanki, Marduk’s Zig-
avenue. This was the scene of die great processions which took place on various reli­
gious occasions. Farther to the south on the avenue stood Esagila, the main temple of the

gurat, the ‘Tower of Babel’.
Of tliis famous structure only the ground-plan and traces of the three stairs leading up
to it have been preserved, and the numerous attempts to reconstruct it belong to archaeo­
logy and not to history of art, since not one of them is fully supported by evidence. In
addition to the mere outline preserved in the soil, we have a tablet giving measurements
and the eye-witness accoimt of Herodotus.3 But separately and in combinations these
sources do not solve the ambiguities and uncertainties which remain.4
Where the Processional Way, after skirting the enclosure of the Ziggurat and the
palace, left the inner town, a splendid gate was erected. It was called the Ishtar gate and
decorated with glazed bricks where bulls and dragons appeared in relief on a blue ground
(Plate 122). The bulls were yellow, with their hair, distributed decoratively rather than
in imitation of nature, in blue. The dragons, sacred to Marduk, were white, with details
rendered in yellow. At Khorsabad panels of polychrome glazed brick had been used
(Figure 33), but these figures were flat. At Babylon the bricks were moulded and the
animals appear in relief; the play of light added brilliance to the deeply saturated colour-
contrasts which imparted extraordinary splendour to the massive structure.
The last great phase of Mesopotamian independence is inadequately represented by the
surviving remains, however impressive these may be. There is a scarcity of works of die
period which makes it impossible to estimate its artistic achievements. The seal designs
are more elegant but less forceful than those of Assyria, with a few idiosyncrasies in
subject-matter. There was an intense literary activity, and it was from Neo-Babylonian
sources that the Hellenistic world acquired its knowledge of astrology and other Meso-
potamian sciences; but Neo-Babylonian art did not affect the West. It was from Assyria
fhat Greece and Etruria obtained their models during their onentahzmg per
through the intermediacy of the Phoenicians.

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