Page 170 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE LEVANT IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.
sue A by the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, anxious to establish their dominion
over the homeland of the hated barbarians. Their piecemeal conquests were consolidated
by Thutmosis III between 1500 and 1450 b.c., and the peace thus imposed on the Levan­
tine coast found its counterpart inland, where die state of Mitanni had maintained itself.
Tliis kingdom soon entered into an alliance with Egypt which was scaled by the mar­
riage of Mitanni princesses to successive Pharaohs. A period of great prosperity lasted
until 1360, when die Hittite king Suppiluliumas, unwisely drawn into a dynastic quarrel
by the Mitaimian royal house, crossed the mountains and subjugated Syria.
We have stated before (pp. 117 and 131) that the Mitanni were newcomers in the
north Syrian plains who spoke an Indo-European tongue, worshipped Indra, Mitra,
and Varuna, and imposed political unity on the natives. The population thus temporarily
united into a single state was by no means homogeneous; it contained, among older
strains, a recently immigrated element, the Hurrians, who had arrived a little in advance

Figure 63. Mitamiian seal impression

of the Mitanni, presumably as part of the same movement of peoples which caused ulti­
mately the Hyksos invasion of Egypt. Of the Hurrians little is known outside their lan­
guage, but they formed an important element in die state of Mitanni. Throughout the
kingdom, documents were written in Hurrian. But neither the Hurrians nor die Mitan-
nians possessed an art of their own,36 the latter resembling in this respect all other peoples
speaking Indo-European tongues. Unlike the Greeks, however, die Mitanni were not
granted the respite indispensable for the formation of an individual art under foreign
stimulus. Throughout the Mitannian domains the distinct origins of the elements of de­
sign remain clear. Mesopotamian traditions were combined with those of the local
regions and also with stimuli received from Egypt and from the Aegean. A distinctively
Mitannian style of design is found only on seals and on pottery. Figure 63 shows a char­
acteristic symmetrical seal design in two tiers, in contrast with Mesopotamian usage
which, in older periods, sometimes divided the surface horizontally, but did not space
its motives freely above as well as beside one another. The commonest motifs on Mitan­
nian seals are the Pillar of Heaven, the Sacred Tree, and the griffin.37 Fine specimens of
this school arc rare, but there is a widely distributed popular style, which is not a deriva­
tive, but, on die contrary, die foundation, of the more sophisticated style.

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