Page 204 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA
houses of north-west Anatolia and the Balkans. Both arc liighly specialized architectural
forms which arc consequently no longer adaptable to larger schemes.
Behind the bit-hilam of Tell Tayanat40 we meet a building very like the megaron and
which has been designated as such (Plate 154*). It is a temple with two columns in antis
and a large central room, The columns rest 011 pairs of Hons (Plate 156). But an im-
portent difference from die megaron exists: at Tell Tayanat the large central apartment
is not the main room (as it is in the megaron) but the ante-cclla. Behind it is the Holy
of Holies, with its altar or base for the statue of the god. Whether or not such a temple
had Syrian antecedents we cannot know, since earlier Syrian temples are imperfectly
preserved. But we do know that the temple of Tell Tayanat resembles, very closely in­
deed, the Assyrian temples as preserved at Khorsabad (Figure 30), and we have seen
at Tell Halaf a temple of this type built in Syria. The resemblance with die megaron
seems fortuitous, whereas diat with the Assyrian temple is part of the profound in­
fluence exercised by the political centre on its dependencies. At Tell Tayanat there is only
one difference: the usual Assyrian entrance lobby has been opened up and converted into
the portico beloved by north Syrian architects.

Sculpture

While north Syrian architecture of the first millennium b.c. is indigenous, its sculptural
decoration is inspired by Assyrian usage. It did not follow Assyrian examples, but the
basic notion of decorating the orthostats, and much of the repertoire of the decoration,
were derived from Mesopotamia. We have described in the introduction to this chapter
the general conditions under which north Syrian art arose (p. 164). It appears that
the prosperity as well as the ultimate ruin of the various cities depended on their relation
with Assyria, and this conclusion is corroborated by the history of the most easterly
among them, Tell Halaf. It stood in the heart of ancient Mitanni, 100 miles east of Car-
chemish, as the first strong point on the road leading from Assyria to the west;41 it flour­
ished and came to grief earlier than any other north Syrian site. Already in 894 b.c. a
ruler of Guzana (Tell Halaf) paid tribute to Adadnirari II when he asserted his suzerainty
over the regions on the western frontier of Assyria. At the end of that century, during
the minority of Adadnirari III, when Semiramis was regent, Guzana, with other As­
syrian vassals, made an attempt at independence. It failed; the city was burned, and be-
came the seat of an Assyrian governor (808 b.c.). The buildings and sculptures were all
made between those two dates.42
The repertoire of the Tell Halaf sculptures is more varied and more dependent upon
Mesopotamia than that of other north Syrian sites. This is particularly true of the reliefs,
and in a lesser degree of semi-detached guardians of gates and of die few sculptures in
the round. The latter are the most considerable works made on the site, and the greatest
skill and care was lavished on them. The most impressive are three figures which carried
the architrave of the Palace portico (Figure 86). Their height is about nine feet (ex­
cluding the conical capitals’), and each stands on an animal five feet high. These sup­
ports - a bull in the middle and two lions - would be understood most easily if the figures

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