Page 209 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART two: the peripheral
regions
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complex narrative scenes. But at Tell Halaf the inventions of the Assyrian sculptors were
apparently not well known; we sec, for instance, men in a chariot pursuing wild cattle
but their game, at which an archer aims, does not appear in front of the horses, but above
them where there is room.** In another scene, a lion-hunt, the game appears below the
horses;67 m yet another a diminutive archer is drawn on the back of a huge rampant
lion.68 On the other hand, groups of crossed fighting animals can easily be draw within
an upright oblong, and this explains their popularity at Tell Halaf.
At Zin^irli the oldest remains are contemporary with, or but a little later than those
of Tell Halaf.69 In the south gate of the Citadel (Figure 83) some figures - the bull and
the lion - are spread across two orthostats. One can also consider as a single scene ex-
tended over several stones the archer taking aim at a stag and a fawn, even though the
game is round a comer of the actual wall. At another point one stone shows an archer
taking aim, and the next a stag shot through the neck pursued by the hunter’s dog.70 So
we may speculate whether die gesturing man in front of the guitarist is a dancer or singer
I ■ whom he accompanies; whether the man with the long staff accompanies the warrior
pushing a captive before him; whether the winged monster belongs to the weather-god
on the next stone, an association valid in Mesopotamia from early to late times. Where
no single idea underlies the composition, and often the joining of orthostats is obviously
fortuitous, no possible interpretation is either wholly excluded or fully warranted by the
juxtaposition of the stones.
The influence of the minor arts of Mesopotamia is limited at Zin^irli to some mon­
sters. One - the sphinx with a human head, and a lion’s head on the chest (Plate 161) - is
probably of Hittite descent.71 The groups of crossed fighting animals are absent; the
goats flanking a tree are a Near Eastern commonplace. In contrast with Tell Halaf, Zin-
9irli included a number of divinities among its reliefs (Plate 160, b and c), and they are
indigenous, still dressed in provincial Hittite attire, with tall cap, kilt, and pointed shoes.
Weather gods swing their axes and hold a triple lightning or thunderbolt, unknown in
Mesopotamia, and appearing in Anatolia only with the Lion Gate reliefs of Malatya.
The figure with a long veil and a mirror is the goddess Kupapa. It is odd that two people
at a meal, a subject normally reserved for funerary steles, should be figured here on t le
orthostats of the Citadel Gate.
About this time - still in the ninth century - two large statues were set up, one at in
cirli and one at Carchemish. The first, which was over twelve feet high, was found
against the rough east wall of building J which was built by Kilamuva (P ate i 3J -
base was in place, but the statue had been lifted out of its socket and 1a een
alongside. In the eighth century an over-life-sized statue of a king ia een
treated at Malatya,” and this circumstance, as well as the absence o^ a J
makes it probable that the statue found at Zin$irli represents a king p P
aTd not a god as is sometimes asserted.” For another large statue, numb* ■££«.

identified as a representation of the god Hadad, does wear ahorne crown.
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