Page 226 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA

among them, but at present we cannot distinguish these,181 and we shall describe the
Nimrud bowls, as far as they arc published, as one group.
We may begin by describing three pieces which stand apart. One bowl (Plate 172a)
presents a frantic incite of animals. Lions and griffins, bulls, and perhaps some other ani­
mals, arc fighting madly without any traceable pattern in the design. So sophisticated an
avoidance of order is a high achievement, but there is nothing in Assyria, or elsewhere
(including the contemporary Aegean) which would indicate the provenance of this
bowl.182
Two other bowls are equally remarkable. Their decoration with unprecedented bold­
ness suggests a mountain landscape seen from above (Plate 173a). In one case183 the
separate tops combine into four ranges forming a cross. In the centre is a lake, and be­
tween the arms of the cross, trees and wild animals, including a bear, arc engraved. There
is nothing in this design to preclude it from being Assyrian (there are no parallels any­
where), but it cannot be separated from the bowl of plate 173 A, which cannot be a
native product. For here the mountains surround a four-fold centrepiece with four quite
un-Assyrian heads. They recall Egyptian women, in a general way, but not, for instance,
in the detail of their hair-ornament. This kind of general resemblance to Egypt is char­
acteristic of Phoenician work. The frieze which surrounds the mountains clinches the
matter; in fact, the design has been described as ‘the Phoenician pantheon on its Olym­
pus’.184 All the figures are dressed as Egyptians and wear Egyptian attributes, and not
only in the conventional scheme of Pharaoh destroying a group of enemies but also in
the Asiatic scene of two men attacking a third (cf. Plate 159c).
This surrounding frieze connects the bowl of plate 173 A with more usual specimens.
The group of Pharaoh destroying his enemies is common among the Phoenician bowls
of the seventh century and the three fighting figures which are found in the Tell Halaf
reliefs (and of more ancient Mesopotamian lineage) form the centre-piece of another bowl
from Nimrud185 of which the surrounding design shows Hons hunted from chariots, on
horseback, and on foot (Plates 172A and 173a). This subject would seem to be Assyrian,
especially since a Hon approaches the chariot from behind, but the hunters in the chariot
look like Egyptians, a mixture of affinities which suggests Phoenician manufacture. A
similar bowl has been duly found in the west at Olympia,186 with a winged sphinx draw­
ing the chariot. This odd combination recurs on a bowl from Delphi.187 Here the sphinx
wears an Assyrian-looking helmet, but at Olympia a heavy Egyptian uraeus. The Olym­
pian bowl also resembles the example from Nimrud in its workmanship; die figures are
heavily embossed. At Delphi the design is Hghtly engraved as in some of die sevendi-
century Phoenician bowls with which it shares die rest of its design. The heavy emboss­
ing is also used in a Nimrud bowl188 showing a succession of heroes between pairs of
lions, an old Mesopotamian motif rendered with a total absence of Assyrian gravity; die
heroes are in many cases beardless, and wear kilts, tunics, and Egyptian-looking wigs.
The outer border shows hounds and hares, exactly as they occur on Greek orientalizing
vases; the central design is engraved and portrays a file of antelopes round a rosette, an
old Levantine device. On some Nimrud bowls, animals in procession fill all die__
con-
centric zones, or alternate with a circle in which they struggle.189 A different scheme of

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