Page 227 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

I’AHT two: the peripheral regions

through by figures afongaf^allot^17"^ “ ^ arC CUt
Nimrud bowl190 these uuri&htfiwnr^ ’ ‘ , * k° see m figure 96. But in the

Nile god Hapi. The female figures arc only Egyptian in their head-dress • their naked
ness and the gesture of holding the breasts belong to the Great Mother of Asia. Two of

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Figure 96. Bronze bowl, from Olympia

the four figured panels in this bowl depict a meal in the manner of Egyptian and north
Syrian funerary steles. Those who offer or consecrate the food hold an Egyptian atikh
sign in the left hand; the recipient of the meal is, in one case, a nursing mother, possibly
intended for Isis, although no attributes are given. The presence of musicians with dou e
flute tambourine, and lyre, already appears in such a context in the second millennium
/figure 75) and in nortli Syrian reliefs. The killing of the griffin shown in the fourth
nanel is an equally old motif, but commonly recurs also on the later Phoenician ow s.
H important totalize how intimately the repertoire of these bowls is connected
older Syrian traditions which were transmitted through them to Greece. In . ,

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