Page 181 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO: THE PERIPHERAL REGIONS

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Figure 70. Ivory gaming board, from Enkomi

desert by his rushing team. However, if we compare the plate with another rendering
o this subject, which is not arranged within a circle, the influence of the round sur­
face becomes clear. On the side of an ivory gaming board found at Enkomi in Cyprus
(Figure 70) the disposition of the figures makes sense. Here, too, a charging bull
1 must admit that the transposition of the conventional knightly theme to a circle is
appears; it is a wounded animal which turns to attack its tormentors, but it may be
circumvented.
If we do not force a realistic interpretation on to the decoration of the gold plate,
we
cleverly managed, even though its mechanics are transparent: the chariot and the three
head of cattle form a square round the central design. A wild goat, in headlong flight,
fills the outer space, somewhat clumsily, on one side; a hunting dog on the other side
serves the same purpose.67 One more small animal may have filled the space in front and
above the cow where the surface is lost.
The Ras Shamra plate gives us the earliest Syrian version of a theme found throughout
the ancient Near East in the second and first millennia b.c. The knowledge of the
horse-drawn chariot spread with the migrations of the Hyksos Period and seems con­
nected with the Indo-European-speaking people which were part of the migrating
hordes. But the origin of the actual device has nothing to do with its rendering in art,
as is often erroneously assumed.68 Sooner or later, but independently, each country intro­
duced the new invention into its artistic repertoire. The Egyptians69 and die Mycenaeans
were the first to do so, in the fifteenth century b.c. But the question of priority is mean-
ingless, where the views taken of the subject differ so completely. The Assyrian saw in
the horse as a rule a labouring draught-animal (Plate 84); the Egyptians a noble creature,
prancing, with curved neck and hollow back; the Mycenaeans a miracle of fleetness
hardly touching the soil.70 The Ras Shamra plate does not conform to any of these
renderings. It is less realistic than the Assyrian, but more than the Egyptian.
Notwithstanding the individual treatment of the chariot-hunt in each country, it is
still a traditional theme. Tills is best shown by the fact that die rules of the game are
everywhere the same. On the flat Syrian desert one could almost everywhere let go ot
the reins to take aim. In Egypt - let alone at Ras Shamra - there were but few stretches
c „nrl where this was possible. The realistic Assyrians - but also the Mycenaeans
°fgr°cliarioteer in charge of die course beside the hunter. The Egyptians, and many

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