Page 169 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO: THE PERIPHERAL REGIONS

isPurelY domestic. It is more flimsily built, of mud-brick alone, and skirts the
^closure waU of the Citadel at the top; it continues farther to the south but the re-
mams there arc very fragmentary. It is characteristic that these domestic quarters, and
not the state apartments, occupy the highest of the three terraces. They arc similar to
what the living quarters in any rich private house might have been, grouped round a
rectangular open court. A stairway (in 10) leads down to the main court and up to what
must have been a splendid suite of rooms on a second storey. For high in the upper
debris of rooms 11-1333 were fragments of painted plaster and basalt bases for wooden
columns winch must have fallen from above. The plaster is said to show bands of blue
and yellow; or of yellow, red, and black; also bulls’ horns, perhaps a bull’s car; and a
tree or shrub with twigs and leaves sketched in dark green on a greyish-green ground
colour, which itself appears against a red background. The description partly resembles,
and partly differs from, the contemporary paintings of Mari, but nothing more can be
said until the fragments are published. It seems, in any case, that some of the state apart­
ments were found on the south side of the main court, adorned with basalt ordiostats
like the rooms to the north of it. These had also basalt door-steps, fine cement floors, and
white walls where no trace of wall paintings was found. A few steps lead up to room 5,
which one entered through a wide doorway carried by four wooden pillars. Room 2
was raised yet one step higher and had a central column. Rooms 5 and 2 were evidently I
the most important in the building, and we shall see that they prefigure the bit-hilani
which was the distinctive palace of the same region in the first millennium B.c.
The head of plates 137 to 138 was found in a chapel adjoining the palace of Yarimlim.34
It is the only piece of statuary found in Syria which was made by a thoroughly com­
petent artist. This sureness of touch, the coherence of the work, betray a hand trained in
a well-established school. One thinks naturally of Mesopotamia, but there are nowhere
close parallels. The ‘head of Hammurabi’ (Plate 63) is much more impressionistic in its
surface treatment; and the sculptures from Mari are more conventional and coarser than
our piece. There is no evidence as to the sitter’s identity, but it is natural to think that
it represented Yarimlim, the builder of the palace in which it was found. It has an aston-
ishing freshness, and many details cannot be matched elsewhere. I do not now refer to
the curious head-dress, from which the hair protrudes in conventional spiral curls, but to
the rendering of the mouth, the eyebrows (which do not join in the middle), and to the
lively and alert carriage of the head as shown in the back view.
A small and badly damaged head was found together with the one just discussed; it
ill-proportioned and conventional,35 and no other objects of the period deserve
seems
mention.

The Mitannian Era (circa 1450-1360 b.c.)

The peaceful and prosperous age of Yarimlim was followed by a period of confusion.
Hammurabi conquered Mari about 1760 b.c., and may have advanced as far north
t U Jufnrsilis I the Hittite king, destroyed Alalakh in the course of lus rai •:
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