Page 239 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO:
THE PERIPHERAL
regions

Figure 104. Two horse-bits (a, b) and four cheek-pieces (c-f), from Luristan

first place, horse-bits with decorated check-pieces; they are shaped like a horse, a winged
moufflon (Figure 104A), a crouching wild boar; some show monsters (Figure 104, d, e) ;
another link-bit has at both ends of the bar-shaped cheek-piece, the small mouse-like
heads which are common in the animals of Luristan (Figure 10413). They recur in the
four nondescript animals filling the spaces between the four main figures in the pin-head
of plate 176A. Below, and hence appearing upside down, is the head of a moufflon;
opposite, at the top, a man-shaped being supports with its hands the horns which grow
from its head. Two little men stand at right angles to the figures just described.35
The vivid imagination that produced these designs is not unrelated to that of die seal-
cutters of the Early Dynastic Period in Mesopotamia; but it is different in one important
point. In Sumer each creature was conceived as a living organism; even the monsters
looked as if they were capable of life. Although the designs were intricate and decora­
tive, the organic coherence of each imaginative creature was respected. In Luristan, on
the other hand, they are ruthlessly abbreviated or malformed to suit the decorative pur­
poses of the designers, who show, in this respect, their affinity with the preliistoric vase-
-
painters of Persia.
The old Mesopotamian theme of a hero between beasts assumes forms quite unknown
in Sumer. On the pin-head of plate 176B he appears horned (as often in Luristan, and on j=
seals of Early Dynastic II), and clearly represented, holding two animals by e
some
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