Page 53 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART ONE: MESOPOTAMIA

himself was immanent in the figure. But very few cult-statues have come down to us,
since they were mostly made of precious materials or decked with gold and other valu­
ables. But it so happens that we possess two examples of the Second Early Dynastic
Period.24 They belong to a group of ten figures which seem to have formed the com-
pletc sculptural furniture of a sanctuary at Tell Asmar (Plate 13) and were at some time -
either when danger threatened or when the shrine was completely renovated - buried
together under the floor beside the altar. The two divinities are differentiated from their
worshippers in three respects: by their stature, by the presence of identifying emblems
on their bases, and by the huge diameter of their eyes. The figure of the god (Plate 15)
is about thirty inches high, that of the priest (Plate 17) about sixteen inches, that of the
bearded man of plate 16, where the feet are missing, twelve inches. The base on which
the statue of the god stands bears a design in relief: an eagle (probably lion-headed, but
the head is lost) and on either side a gazelle with the branch of some plant, a group which
we have recognized as the emblem of the deities who were worshipped in the Proto­
literate temples at Warka. We know, from an inscribed copper vessel which belonged
to the temple, that this deity at Tell Asmar was called Abu, ‘the Lord of Vegetation’.
The statue of the mother goddess is identified in a very direct way: a tiny standing
figure was inserted into the base, representing her son. I11 quality her image is far inferior
to that of the god, and the immense eyes fail in their effect. The statue of the god, on the
odier hand, possesses a magnetism of which no one who has seen the original can remain
unaware. It seems charged with a fierce power, appropriate to the source of the vitality
of plants and beasts and men.
The deities each carry a cup, and this recurs in the hands of some of the worshippers;
occasionally they grasp a branch (Plate 19) or a flower as well. This probably means that
these men had represented themselves and the gods as participants in the greatest feast
in the calendar, when, at the New Year, the human and divine spheres for an instant
seemed to touch.25 If our interpretation is correct, the ten statues found together at Tell
Asmar constitute a group, not only by the circumstance of their discovery and the
homogeneity of their style, but also because they were intended to represent the gods
and the congregation at that most auspicious moment when man felt himself closest to
the deities he revered.
The statues representing mortals vary much in quality (Plate 13). The best show an in­
tensity well in keeping with the belief that a liidden life animated them (Plates 16 and 17)-
It is possible to distinguish the means by which this effect was mainly realized: a reduc­
tion, or rather a concentration, of all shapes to abstract, almost geometrical forms. The
kilt, for instance, is rendered as a truncated cone. The bare upper parts of the bodies are
square in section, with an almost brutal limitation of the primary consciousness of the
body as consisting of chest, flanks, and back. In plate 17 the chest-muscles are rendered
by planes meeting in a sharp ornamental line; the first or little finger in a closed hand
becomes a spiral, the chin a wedge, the ear a double volute. The shapes of skull, cheeks,
and arms are less easily described, but are equally abstract, and equally plastic. The hair
is rendered in two strictly symmetrical halves, clamped round the face and setting it offin
a system of horizontal ridges. This system harmonizes with that of die beard (Plate 14)»
24