Page 55 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART ONE: MESOPOTAMIA

Wc have said that the abstract form to which the figure approximates remains un-
changed throughout the history of a country’s art. But the manner of approach varies.
The first school of Early Dynastic sculpture (Plates 13-18) devotes itself to geometric
approximation with passionate intensity. It reduces to abstractions not only the main
forms, but even details like chins, checks, and hair. It is truly a school of carvers rather
I
than modellers, to which single-mindedness and coherence impart its peculiar beauty.
The richness of these works is enhanced by polychromy. The stone is a veined gyp­
sum; the eyeballs arc cut from shell, the pupils from lapis lazuli or black limestone. Hair
and beard arc covered with a black bituminous paint, which also fills the incised eye­
brows and serves as mastic in which the eyes are set. In the heads of women the hair is
treated in the same way. hi a figurine from Tell Asmar,28 the parting was neatly picked
out by a strip of mother of pearl set in the bitumen. In plate 18 the hair was modelled
in bitumen (of which traces remain) and protruded as a fringe from beneath the finely
plaited hcadcloth. The cars are fully pierced, and were probably supplied with earrings
of gold wire. The inlays of the eyes have not been found.
The carvers of this school proceeded with a boldness which would have horrified
those true and congenital workers in stone, the contemporary Egyptians. The arms are
cut free from the body, even the legs are sometimes freed and intended to carry the
weight of the body without the support of a back pillar. Breakages were frequent, and
many statues were repaired in antiquity. Nor were the legs and arms only liable to crack
or snap off, though those are the commonest fractures. The sculptors attempted to pre­
vent them either by leaving stone between the legs, or by making a back pillar, or even
(as in the figures of our god and goddess from Tell Asmar) by giving the ankles a pre­
posterous depth and thickness (Plate 13). This blemish may be called a minor one, but
a number of other works are undeniably failures, grotesque and ugly. The explanation
of all these peculiarities is simple; stone was too rare a material for the Mesopotamians
ever to have become familiar with it in the manner of the Egyptians. In the Nile valley
a strong tradition of stone carving could be developed in the workshops, so that a very
high level of craftsmanship was maintained, and even uninspired works were almost
always adequate.
The Mesopotamian style of sculpture which we have described is also represented by
works in metal. Remarkable figures were cast in copper as early as the Second Early
Dynastic Period. Of the most ambitious one so far known a mere trace remains: at Tell
Agrab we found a well-shaped foot which must have belonged to a nearly life-size
copper statue. It may be, of course, that the statue was of some other material with only
the face, the hands, and the feet cast of copper, or that the body and limbs consisted of
copper sheets hammered over a bitumen core. This method was used for some large
figures of lions found at Al ‘Ubaid, belonging, presumably, to the Third Early Dynastic
Period (see below).
At Khafaje three complete figures of copper were found, of which the largest meas­
ured about thirty inches and the other two (Plate 20b) each about sixteen, inches. Their
heads were provided with a four-armed claw upon which plates with offerings or bowls
of incense were placed before the gods. They resemble, therefore, on the one hand the

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