Page 60 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD

human, but superhuman. Its close relation with the fertility gods is shown on an Akkad­
ian seal* (Figure 17A), where it puts its forefeet familiarly on the god’s knee, while ^ a man
and woman humbly approach with their offerings. Tammuz is called in a hymn ‘hus­
band of Ishtar the bride ... creating the seed of cattle, head of the stalls ’ but also ‘ leading
goat of the land*. Such phrases, and the image of the seal design, reveal the inadequacy
of the usual colourless phrases that the goat is sacred to Tammuz or symbolizes him, or
that the god is the embodiment of the male principle in nature and manifest in the fer­
tility of the flocks. The works of art reveal how inevitably our abstractions miss the
directness with which the god’s manifestation was experienced, and how the animals
appeared charged with his essence, and hence with the very life of the immortals. In the
emblem on the base of the statue of plate 13, in friezes, on seals, or on vases, beasts and
plants may seem to us mere ornaments, and we must reconstruct the meaning they had
for die Ancients by an intellectual effort. But in the offering-stand of plate 28 the gold
animal thrusting its head among the artificial branches reflects with awe-inspiring direct-
ness the divine power which was once thought to be at rest on the altar.

Engraving and Relief

The vase of plate 32, from Telloh (Lagash), is made of silver and set on a copper stand. It
bears on the neck an inscription of Entemena, king of Lagash, and shows two engraved
friezes, separated by a band with the herring-bone which is likewise common on gold
vases from Ur. But the extreme simplicity of shape is never combined with engraving
at Ur; nor is the engraving there representational. Entemena’s vase is a display piece,
presented to the temple of the god whose emblems are engraved on it. At Lagash he was
called by a purely local name, Ningirsu, but he is none other than the god of the natural
life whom we have met even on monuments of-the Protoliterate Period. The frieze of
calves on the shoulder of the vase resembles (down to the pose of the forelegs) the copper
frieze of the temple of the Mother Goddess Ninhursag at Al ‘Ubaid. At Lagash Nin­
girsu was considered also as the bringer of rain-storms and inundations, and since both
rain and the rise of the waters in the Tigris are sudden and violent, Ningirsu had a violent
warlike character. Hence the predominance of Hons, and of the lion-headed eagle, Im-
dugud, personification of the storm-clouds, in the imagery of Lagash. On the main frieze
of our vase the bird occurs four times; first he grasps a pair of Hons, then two goats, again
a couple of lions, then a pair of oxen. The combination of these creatures circumscribes
the sphere of action of the god: his violence, in war, in rainstorms, in floods; and his
beneficent manifestation in natural life.
It is characteristic of Mesopotamian art that the four groups showing Imdugud with a
pair of animals are not merely set side by side. They are interlocked. The claws of the
ir s clasp the Hons; the lions sink their teeth into the faces of the ruminants, which again
arc held by the claws of the next bird and bitten by the lions of the adjoining group. A
continuous frieze results. It is as if the cylindrical form which dominates sculpture in the
roun , glyptic, and mural decoration in Mesopotamia had so strong
an appeal that
every opportunity to emphasize its characteristics was welcome to the designer. The

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