Page 69 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART ONE: MESOPOTAMIA
strength of the tendency towards decoration for its own sake is shown by the swastika
of lions (Figure i6a) and die circle of four men who each hold their foreman by the
ankle while threatening him with a dagger (Figure i6b).
The stress on plasticity did not destroy linear beauty. In fact the elaboration of tails
and hair tufts in plate 40B shows a new sophistication, if compared with plate 39A. But
the tendency to increase both the mass of the modelled figures and their number became
ultimately incompatible with the established schemes of composition and destroyed
them. The difficulties were twofold. One of them concerned the inscriptions which, in
the past, could be absorbed in the linear design but now appeared as an intrusion between
the modelled figures. A greater difficulty was the unevenness of surface which resulted
from the crossing of such relatively substantial figures (Plate 40A). This might go so far
as to prevent the making of a clean impression; in any ease it was aesthetically in-
acceptablc.
Throughout the Early Dynastic Period the beauty of a seal required a continuous de­
sign of even density. Each hiatus was filled by a subsidiary motif; there were no vertical
breaks at any point. The harmonious spacing of the design cn sured the effect of either
long or short impressions taken from the seal. This principle was basic to the Brocade
Style and was well maintained, even towards the end of the Third Early Dynastic Period,
when crossing figures were piled up in the friezes. But when the figures became more
substantial, the frieze appeared overloaded (Plate 40A). The figures require space and air
- and so we notice at the end of the period an innovation which really consisted in a pull­
ing apart of the interlaced figures, and thereby an introduction of a liiatus between each
struggling group (Plate 40B). The effect is splendid; even vigorous modelling does not
produce heaviness. But the frieze as a whole has lost its coherence; we now see three dis­
tinct groups placed side by side on the seals’ surfaces. The basic principle of Early Dynas­
tic seal design has been sacrificed. Yet once again, as at the end of the Protoliteratc
Period, the disintegration of a prevalent glyptic style becomes the starting-point for a
fresh development at the opening of a new age. There is, however, one difference: the
end of the Early Dynastic Period is in no way an age of decline. And the changes which
we are about to describe amount to a transformation of Mesopotamian art while it was
at the height of its power.

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