Page 56 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD

copper rushlights found at Kish (Plate 29c), and , on the other, the small stone figures
from Tell Asmar and Tell Agrab, which bear on their head a vessel or a hollowed-out
turban (Plate 13). In all these cases, where the figures are not statues in the narrow sense,
but temple furniture, they are naked, wearing only a triple girdle. We cannot decide
whether they depict human or mythological beings. Perhaps these naked girdled figures

arc another version of the hero of plate 6, and of the seals of all later ages.29 In the seals
his regular companion is the bull-man (Figure 14) and a fine if incomplete figure of a
bull-man, carved in the early style in green serpentine, has been found at Umma. He
stands upright, and his two horns, like those of the goat in plate 28, would require a
third point to serve as support for bowls with offerings. He resembles in all details the
bull-man commonly occurring on cylinder seals of this and later periods. He is strikingly
tall and slender, ithyphallic and wearing a triple girdle - and must be considered as a
rendering in the round of the same benevolent demon. His horns and his legs below the
knee were cast in metal and attached in sockets cut into the stone. The locks which
descend on either side of his face and his beard were also of metal and riveted to the
stone.30
There are some small pieces of metal work which are very ingenious and elaborate.
One, a double vase, found, and no doubt used, in the Temple at Tell Agrab, has as sup­
port a pair of strictly antithetical wrestlers, on whose heads the vessels seem to be bal­
anced (Plate 20c). From the same site comes the little model of a chariot drawn by four
onagers.31 Even though the surface is badly corroded, some trace of the subtle modelling
survives in the animals, especially their heads. The chariot is as lightly built as is com­
patible with strength. It has no body, the driver stands on two treads above the axle and
has thrown back his kilt to free his legs; for he must grip with his knees a kind of wooden
centrepiece, covered with a fleece, to keep his balance in his springless vehicle. The span
of four is guided by reins fixed to rings in the upper lips of the asses, and by a whip,
now lost (Plate 20a).
When we now review the statuary of the Second Early Dynastic Period as a whole,
the works in stone and in metal appear as equals; neither shows influence of the other.
Tliis is most unusual. At no other tune do we find Mesopotamian sculpture which repre­
sents so outspokenly and exclusively the formal language of the stone-cutter. The con-
trast is not between the actual materials, metal and stone, of course, but rests in the
method of achieving plastic forms. The sculptor liberates the figure he has conceived
from the enclosing block; the metal-worker builds up his wax model by adding ma­
terial to an amorphous core until the form is complete. To individual artists as well as to
nations either one or the other procedure is more congenial; they either proceed per
Jorza di levare or per via di porre, as Michelangelo put it. And the congenial method will
prevail over the other, to the extent that the characteristic forms of the favoured tech­
nique will be imitated in works produced by the other. In Egypt, for instance,
stone
carving was the leading craft, and works in wood and metal did not exploit the poten-
tia ltics peculiar to these materials, but followed the canon of the stone-cutter. In the
Mesopotamia of later times metal seems to have become the leading craft and influences
work in stone. It may be relevant to remember that Mesopotamia is a land where clay

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