Page 172 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE LEVANT IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.

the latest phase of this ware at Alalakh. It is unknown elsewhere, and cannot be of
Aegean derivation.41 It is true that at Alalakh a porphyry pedestal lamp was found, of
Cretan type, and probably manufacture,42 but Cretan imports arc exceedingly rare in
the Mitannian area, and Aegean influence in the Levant remains an elusive factor during
tliis period.
There is neither architecture nor sculpture wliich we may call Mitannian, and neither
the capital nor the precise extent of the kingdom is known. All we can do is survey the
region wliich the Mitanni ruled or wliich shared, at least, the prosperity consequent upon
the comparatively stable conditions which they created.
Our survey starts far in the East, at Kirkuk, beyond the Tigris, where a city called
Nuzi (wliich had existed from Early Dynastic times) had been occupied by Hurrians
acknowledging Shaushattar of Mitanni as dicir overlord.43 It is remarkable that the
temples were planned on lines familiar from Early Dynastic times and wliich we have
described above (Figures 5, 6, and 10); but the entrance of one of them was apparently
flanked by two pairs of Hons, one pair standing and one crouching (Plate 140). This is an
old Mesopotamian usage, but the Nuzi Hons are rather smaller than the copper and terra­
cotta specimens of earlier periods, and they arc glazed. Glaze had been used for beads
and small objects in Mesopotamia, but its wide application to vases and figures, and a
little later to orthostats and bricks, goes back to the period under discussion. Whether
it was contact with Crete or with Egypt that was responsible for tliis innovation we can­
not decide; in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, but also in Middle Minoan Crete, objects
such as vases and figurines were coated with polychrome glazes, and both countries
traded with Mitanni.
If the technique of glazing large objects was new, modelling in clay was an old art in
Mesopotamia, and the crouching Hons from Nuzi are very well made. The pair of stand­
ing Hons44 is less satisfactory. They are built up of separate parts: body and head, legs and
base, but the body seems to have been modelled on a plank or mat. It has a flat under­
side, quite out of keeping with die rest. But this blemish only obtrudes itself in profde,
and in a figure guarding a gate die front view is, of course, the most important.
The crouching Hon (Plate 140), likewise about one foot long and ten inches high, is,
however, completely successful. The compact, muscular figure, excellently propor­
tioned, resembles Assyrian work of later times rather than its Babylonian predecessors.
In the same temple a green faience head of a boar (Plate 139) was found. It is small -
the disk is about five inches in diameter - but very well modelled. It is, perhaps, best
understood as the head of an ornamental nail. Such nails, with glazed round knobs, were
driven into the walls of the temples in horizontal rows in Assyrian times. But in earher
times too ornamental nails, whose heads, for instance, formed rosettes of coloured
stones, had been used in temple architecture. The boar’s head of plate 139 seems to have
been pressed from moulds consisting of two identical halves; and tliis process suggests
that a considerable number were made.
At Nuzi samples of mural painting survived too (Figure 65). They were found in
private houses where they emphasized the most important section of die room. This
section corresponded with the area round the altar in a temple. We have seen diat this

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