Page 173 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART two: the peripheral REGIONS
stood in front of the short wall farthest
awa y from the entrance. In private houses the
host and his
guests were evidently seated in the same place, and while the other walls
were coveted with an even colour, grey for instance, one short wall, behind the owner’s
place, was divided into three vertical panels, coloured grey-red-grey and separated by a
gumochc or twist. Above these panels there might be a decorative design of the type
shown in figure 64. This painting is a striking illustration of the fashion (found through­
out Mitanni) of combining designs and motifs of quite separate origins. Wliilc the guil-
loche or twist was used in Mesopotamia from Early Dynastic times, and occurs in wall-
pairitmgs in the palace of Zimrilim at Mari, the female heads arc shown by the cow’s
ears, and the form of their coiffure, to represent the Egyptian goddess Hadior. The three
little feathers on her head are a purely Asiatic addition. The plant designs in die panels

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Figure 66. Painted cup, from Tell Brak

are typically Syrian transformations of Egyptian prototypes. It would be pleasant if we
could be sure that the bull’s heads represent the Aegean in this medley, and this is quite
possibly the case, but such heads also occur in contemporary ceilings in the tombs at
Thebes in Egypt, and also, as space-fillers, on contemporary Syrian seals.45
Moving westwards we meet another type of painting at Tell Brak (Figure 66).
Among pottery usually decorated with geometric designs occurs a cup where such orna­
ments are confined to a secondary position, while the main surface shows the face of an
ill-shaven man with side-locks. The temptation to look upon this cup as a joke, a pre­
cursor of the Toby jug, would probably lead one astray, for a similar vessel, in a different
found at Jericho.46 And a little later cups with
technique and of an earlier period, was
throughout the Levant. But the meaning of
human faces - this time of women - occur
flgThe ntxtXemSto°the west, is Tell Atchana (ancient Alalakh) in the plain of Antioch.
& mi her of ivories found here47 shows the same mixture of foreign and native catures
whiXtc observed in the Nuzi wall paintings. Egyptian influence is represented by a i

144