Page 164 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE LEVANT IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.
136 shows the best and largest of the heads; it is seven inches high. Perhaps 4 mask* would
be a better designation, for all of them have a groove gouged out at the back by means
of which they were mounted on statues of other material, perhaps polychrome wood.
Only the flesh-parts, face and neck, would then be rendered in the lucent stone. The
holes showing at the top and bottom of the carving in plate 139 would have accommo-
dated the pegs by which it was fastened to its wooden support, and the excessive length
of the neck is explained if we assume that it was inserted for about two inches into the
body. Headgear of other material was fastened above the masks, and the smaller ones
have conical dowels, carved in one piece with the face, round which bitumen or clay, or
even a piece of carved wood, could be applied.7 In plate 136 the top of the stone shows
the edge of the hair, parted in the middle. Perhaps the coiffure was modelled above this
in bitumen, which also covered as a thin paint the portions of hair rendered in stone.
The emphasis on the hair and the smooth cheeks and chin suggest to me (though there
can be no certainty) that the head is that of a woman, especially since one of the smaller
heads8 has a pointed chin, resembling that of die copper figure of plate 135, where a
beard is clearly indicated. This head has a dowel which may well have supported the
conical felt cap which was (and is) a part of male attire in north Syria.
There is no doubt that these carvings reflect Mesopotamian influence, although the
exact prototypes camiot be established; for we know next to nothing of sculpture in
stone during die latter part of the Protoliterate Period. The splendid head from Warka
(Plate 7) was also a mask fixed to a figure of other material, and such masks are found
occasionally among Early Dynastic stone work.9 The peculiar rendering of ears and eyes
has Early Dynastic parallels,10 and the joined eyebrows as well as the prominent narrow-
ridged nose are Mesopotamian features. The eyes are over-large and the pupils misplaced
(as in the copper figures from Tell Jcdeidch), but the modelling of the lower part of the
face is not without charm, while die other three heads from Brak are extremely rough.11
These earliest Syrian sculptures show greater independence of Mesopotamia than the
cylinder seals of the same age, which often follow southern models very closely. But
faithful although provincial imitations of Mesopotamian sculpture were found at Jebelet
el Beida, some forty miles west of Tell Halaf, in the Khabur valley. They were dis­
covered on a hill-top where, presumably, a shrine had once stood;12 the group consisted
of one statue and two steles of black basalt (Figure 59) and we can, for once, define their
prototypes with precision. The beards of the figures consist of strands running parallel
on either side of a series of oval hollows drilled out in the middle. This manner of render­
ing the beard is usual at Mari (Plate 23), and recurs in a statue of King Lugalkisalsi of
Erech,13 a work which belongs to the Third Early Dynastic Period. Their Syrian imita­
tions cannot be much younger; perhaps they are as late as the reign of Sargon of Akkad.
The steles are evidently monuments set up to commemorate or proclaim the subjection
of the Khabur region to a Mesopotamian ruler. There is a rock stele of Naramsin a little
farther to the north, near Diarbekr, and we know that his predecessor, Manishtusu, an­
other son of Sargon, was still depicted in Early Dynastic style.14 The statue, almost seven
feet high, shows a bearded man in a tasselled dress which leaves the right arm and shoul­
der bare but covers the left shoulder. This dress is worn by Eannatum on the Stele of the

135