Page 49 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

-

PART ONE: MESOPOTAMIA

worn by the men of plate iia recur on an inscribed limestone relief, known as the ‘Per-
sonnage aux Plumes* from Tclloh which can be assigned to this period on palacograpkic
grounds.5 It is difficult to know how close in time the other vases stand to the earliest of
the group. Several of them may belong to the Second Early Dynastic Period.6 In the
Third the decoration has lost its figures altogether, and the steatite vessels themselves
seem to be exclusively of a squat cylindrical type. They sometimes show buildings of
wattle or matting,7 and sometimes only the patterns to which matting gives rise.8
Like the seals and the stone vases, the pottery of the First Early Dynastic Period shows
a close patterning of the surface. For the first time vessels arc entirely covered with a fine
network of incised ornament, and the polychrome pottery of the earlier age survives in
the ‘scarlet ware*, which is technically inferior (the red wash is not fast), but shows not
only the shoulder but most of the vessel densely ornamented with designs; these are
sometimes geometrical, sometimes representational. In all the applied arts the beginning
of the new period is characterized by innovations of a similar nature. Contemporary
works of free-standing sculpture have not yet been discovered.

Architecture

In architecture the new age is characterized by the introduction of a somewhat inappro­
priate building-material, the plano-convex brick, flat on one side and curved on the
other, where finger-marks are often left by the hand that pressed the mud into the brick-
mould.9 Foundations were constructed of rough untrimmed blocks of stone where these
could easily be obtained, at Mari10 and at Al ‘Ubaid.11 At Ur such blocks were used to

20 METRES
60 FEET

Figure io. Sin Temple VIII, Khafajc
20