Page 206 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA
the other hand, a certain elegance in the profile, with its sharp lower angles, the deeply-
cut chair (which reduces the heaviness of the whole), and the continuous curve from the
tip of the nose, over the skull, to the ends of the hair hanging down the back. In the front
view the bold undercutting of the sidclocks adds interest and lightness; the cup, too, is
more elongated than in the other statue. The primitive nature of this piece of sculpture
nevertheless becomes clear in the deplorable three-quarter view,52 which was not in­
tended to be seen, as so often in pre-Greek art. The divergencies between the tomb
statues arc - once more - due to the absence of a sculptural tradition. Every work was to
some extent an experiment and an improvisation, and the figure of plate 158c has some
merit from this point of view. It remained, however, without successors.
With the great bird of plate 157B we enter the sphere of religious imagery. It was
found on the terrace in front of the Palace and may have stood on top of a polygonal
column of basalt; fragments of such a column were found, and it would explain why the
bird is perched on a capital. The legs are lost and are restored in our plate. The creature is
sometimes described as an eagle, but the curls shown at the back and sides of the head
connect it with the griffin of Mitannian and Middle Assyrian art. Winged griffins with
low crests flanked, in fact, the doorway from the portico to the main room of the Palace
(Figure 86). It is likely that they arc manifestations of a similar power to that which we
imagine in the bird; in Middle Assyrian art the griffin-man and the griffin seem to denote
die same demon or deity. The break on top of the head of the great bird suggests a knob,
such as is found on griffin heads in Greek objects of the late geometric and orientalizing
periods, rather than a continuous crest. The eyes were inlaid and, unlike birds’ eyes, they
are trained forward like two cylindrical searchlights.
The griffins at the inner doorway belong to that large group of guardian figures whose
bodies appear in relief on the jambs while their foreparts are treated as sculpture in the
round. The mounts of the portico figures are treated in die same manner. In all these
cases there are subsidiary reliefs on the open space below the animals’ bodies, to the
detriment of the effect produced by the guardians. Below the lions of the male figures
there is a supine disembowelled stag; underneath the griffin a bull and a lion fighting;
underneath the sphinxes on the sides of the portico fighting groups. One of these is
reminiscent of the mirror handle from Enkomi (Plate 149B); for it shows a hero fighting
a rampant griffin, while the other group consists of a four-winged genius and two lions.
The sphinxes are die clumsiest of die guardian figures, and the most accomplished are the
scorpion men at the gate which gave access to the inner Citadel (Plate 158; Figure 85).
They have four horns - a sign of their divinity - which spring from the temples, and
they wear a low flat cap. They have the feet and wings of a bird of prey and a nonde­
script body, ending in a scorpion’s sting. The two figures are, curiously enough, not
identical. The western one (Plate 158A) lacks the fringes of curls along forehead, cheeks,
and lower.lip; its mouth has a more pronoimced curve and its beard ends in a single, not
a double, row of curls. These divergencies are signs of differences, not of period, but of
hands. It is certain that many stone-carvers worked simultaneously on die mass of sculp­
ture required for the Palace. It is also possible that the eastern figure (Plate 15 8b) was an
improved version of a theme of which its fellow was a first rendering.

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