Page 40 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE PROTOLITERATE PERIOD
being submerged in a decorative scheme, merely crowns a design which in all its con­
stituent parts reflects with a peculiar intensity the profound significance of the ritual
which it depicts. By its subject and style it allows us to perceive the spiritual climate in
which the art of this period came into being.
Vividness and vigour mark all the works of this great creative age; and the carving of
figures shows, moreover, certain distinctive features. The stocky, muscular men with
their emphatic but not entirely balanced stride recur on contemporary seals (Plate 8d).
The animals of the lowest frieze are matched by those carved on the side of a stone
trough (Plate 3 c), an object which probably served to water the temple flock. Their pen,
plaited of reeds, resembles the present-day dwellings of the Marsh-Arabs.28 But it is
crowned, not only by the uncut flowering ends of the reeds, but also by the bundles
which proclaim it sacred to the goddess. Lambs leap forth from the pen to meet the re­
turning flock. On the sides of the trough arc flower rosettes which represent the vege­
table kingdom of the goddess.29
We have seen that rosettes and herbivorous animals in terra-cotta were used as archi­
tectural decoration in the temple. There were also friezes of rams carved in stone, with
holes drilled into their backs so that they could be attached to the wall by means of
copper wire.30 The spectator sees their bodies in profile, but they turn their heads towards
him, as does the ram in plate 4A. This particular figure has dowel-holes in the base and
a silver rod rising from its back. It served as support of an offering-stand or incense-
burner. We do not know the purpose of the figure to which belonged the splendid sand­
stone head of plate 4B, with the beautiful rendering of the ears, the bold curves of fore­
head and face, and the soft prehensile bps.31
During the latter part of the Protoliterate Period both the subjects and the style of
carving changed. The thin, finely modulated relief was displaced by coarser, flat relief
with incised instead of modelled detail;32 or it was combined with a relief so heavy that
parts of it appear to be modelled in the round. At the same time new fantastic subjects
disturbed that serenity of natural life which was the exclusive concern of the earlier
works. The bowl of plate 5B exemplifies only the change in style. Its subject is the well-
established combination of herbivorous animals and plants33 - here a bull with an ear of
barley, four times repeated roimd the vase - which evokes the goddess or the god. But
the heads of the bulls project from the vase, they are almost worked in the roimd, and
this device recurs on a number of sculptured stone vases. The bodies of the animals are
no longer rendered by modelling, but incised lines are used to bring out the details. They
are inexpressive and conventional. For instance, the twice-scalloped line on the bull’s
thigh is mechanically repeated in reliefs throughout this period. It recurs on the ewer of
yellow sandstone of plate 5A; here, however, the advantages of the bold new relief, the
striking contrasts of light and shadows, are apparent. But the gain is more than offset by
the coarsening of the relief, shown at its worst in the clumsy rendering of the Hons’
fore-paws.34
That the rich and showy effects of the new type of relief expressed the taste of the later
part of the Protolitcrate Period is shown by a group of vases of dark stone, decorated
with inlays of shell, red jasper, and mother of pearl.33 The same colour scheme and the

11

M