Page 215 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO: THE PERIPHERAL REGIONS

°f grfT and CarS °fCr- Bcf°rc him Ur^Uu clasPs botb hands and lifts them
witlf the ^tT10! UllllSUa,m,Nrai'EaStem art Rarc> t00> arc thc embroidered robe
cap C swastlka bordcr> the cloak fastened with a blobbed brooch and thc patterned

We had better avoid the term ‘Phrygian art’, just as we did not speak of‘Aramaean’
or Human art. In all these eases peoples without sculptural traditions adopted as best
they could forms prevalent hi thc region they occupied. Thc rock-relief at Ivriz, al­
though mflucnced by north Syrian or Assyrian art, belongs to neither. It reflects a vastly
different world of feeling. The north Syrian
monuments seem secular in comparison.
It is true that ancient art is never without reference to thc superhuman, and we have
noted, in gate-figures and reliefs, monsters, demons, or gods swinging their axes in a
conventional gesture. But they are interspersed among thc motley of designs which show
game and soldiers and thc king among his courtiers or musicians. At Ivriz, on thc other
hand, there is the stark confrontation of king and god, expressing the god’s power and
the king s dependence with a simplicity and directness wliicli we have not met, so far,
outside Mesopotamia. Thc relief also proclaims that the fruits of the earth are gifts of the
god, and however strongly this belief was held throughout the ancient world, Hittitc,
north Syrian, and Assyrian art did not express it in this striking fashion; they depicted
the rituals devised to ensure divine favour, not thc beliefs which inspired the rituals.102
Another group of monuments was probably Phrygian, but they are less novel and re­
vealing; it consists of some orthostats found near Ankara and hence in ancient Phrygia,
and showing a griffin, horse, Hon, bull, and a bearded human-headed lion.103 The bodies
are elongated and clumsy, but thc modelling is rather good. In their subjects as well as
their style they diverge from north Syrian art, but share with it an ultimate dependence
on Mesopotamia. It has been suggested104 diat they are linked with it, not through north
Syrian but through Armenian, Urartian, art. The kingdom of Urartu challenged As­
syrian supremacy from about 825 to about 750 b.c. It dominated the northern foothills
as far west as the Orontes from 780 to 750 b.c. when Tiglathpilesar III began to restore
the Assyrian suzerainty in north Syria.105 The Urartians are not known as sculptors, but
were excellent metal-workers, as we shall see, although dependent for their repertoire
on Assyria; and it may be that some of the orientalizing motifs which are found in
Greece and Etruria in the seventh century had reached the West, not through the Phoeni
cian ports, but from Armenia through Phrygia. Urartu and Phrygia were allied against
Assyria; both were overrun by the barbarous Cimmerians. It may be that tie master
metal-workers of Urartu, fleeing before the Assyrian and Cimmerian invasions, betoo'
themselves westward through Phrygia to Crete and onwards to find security m Etruria .
We may at least admit a possible Urartian influence in Phrygia about tins time, an
would explain the pronounced difference between the reliefs from Ankara and the north

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