Page 143 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO:
the peripheral regions
were Hi, the semetomb. I, has boo, suggested that the disk, represent the
this rna
Sts—

smee they also occur in the tombs of women.7 were certainly not military ensigns,
oJ“ f'SUrCS are !arSC and hcavy- soMlV “St in bronze. The stag of plat
c 123D,
one of the best preserved ones, is twenty-one inches high. The head and antlers
arc

Figure 44. (a) Pin, (b) and (c) car pendants, and (d) bracelet from the second city at Hissarlik (Troy)

covered with silver-foil and the body is inlaid with silver. It shows a curious contrast in
modelling. The body and limbs of the animal are over-simplified; not so the antlers,
and especially their coronets. Only in this detail do the makers display any interest in
natural forms. The elongated rendering of the face and the transposition of the markings
of the deer’s coat into zigzags, crosses, and concentric circles show so distant a relation to
the living animal that one is apt to see in the rendering of such creatures an innovation
within an art hitherto confined to the abstract decorations of neolithic times.8
The standards from Ala^a Huyiik are without parallel in the Near East, but a conjee-
about their place in the history of art is possible. It can be argued (though not
ture t their makers had recently entered Anatolia from the north-east and, also,
proved) tha
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