Page 194 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA
This designation has led to a great deal of confusion in our own time; but it was
reasonable enough to the Assyrians. For, in the fourteenth century b.c., when Assyria
had established its independence, north Syria had been part of the Hittite empire; hence
the designation of the region of Carchemish as ‘the land of Hatti* in late Assyrian
texts. This has led modern scholars to interpret Syrian art of the ninth and seventh cen­
turies as a continuation of imperial Hittite art. Demonstrably it is no such tiling, even
though in odicr fields Hittite usages sometimes survived in north Syria. But the very
nature of these survivals contrasts with what we observe in architecture and sculpture.
At Carchemish, Hama, and Tell Tayanat, as at Malatya (but not at Zin^irli, Sakjegeuzi,
and Tell Halaf), monumental inscriptions continued to be written in Hittite hiero­
glyphs; Hittite costume was still depicted here and there in the first millennium, especi­
ally on women; male figures are sometimes beardless, and gods often retain the Hittite
dress and attributes. But in art there are no comparable links with the second millennium.
The continued use of hieroglyphs proves the persistence of a specific scribal tradition.
The continuity of dress bespeaks the survival of special elements of the population.
There is even evidence of a particular continuity of legends at Karatepe.2 Nothing
equally specific is seen in the field of art. On the contrary, as soon as a traditional subject
is treated, the difference in rendering is glaring. For instance, we find at the Water-gate
of Carchemish,3 as at Malatya (Plate 13 313), a king pouring libations before a god who
mounts a chariot drawn by a pair of oxen. A servant behind the king leads a sacrificial
beast. We know that Carchemish was never taken by the Aramaeans, and this relief
shows that Hittite rites were still performed before Hittite gods in the eighth century
b.c. While, however, the style of the Malatya relief (Plate 133B) is intimately related to
that of other imperial Hittite monuments, such as the reliefs at Imamkiilu and Yasili-
kaya, the Carchemish relief shows a clumsier treatment which is independent of the
older Anatolian tradition and renders the subject in the style common to the Syrian sites
of the first millennium b.c. It remains to find a name for this new style.
In the middle of die second millennium a single power had subjugated north Syria
and we could speak of die art of the Mitannian era. In the ninth to seventh centuries b.c.
Assyria dominated the region, but its art cannot be called provincial Assyrian, since it
has an un-Assyrian character notwithstanding die strong Assyrian influence which it
underwent and which can be recognized in the surviving works. We call it north
Syrian art, even though it is well represented on south-east Anatolian sites such as Marash
and Malatya, for these in their turn were dependent for their art upon north Syria. If
this were not so, if there had been an independent and vital Anatolian art at this time
(which we should then have to assume as influencing north Syria), it would be in­
explicable that at Karatepe and near Ankara sculptures were made which differed gready
3
from those of Malatya and Marash; the explanation lies in die diverse foreign stimuli,
north Syrian for the last-named sites, Phoenician for Karatepe, Urartian, perhaps, for
Ankara. The term north Syrian has the great advantage of avoiding the implications of
a single ethnic basis for this art, which was, indeed, lacking.4
For north Syrian art of die first millennium b.c. was fostered by a number of prince-
gs of Syrian, Aramaean, and Hittite extraction who wished to emulate the royal set-

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