Page 72 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE AKKADIAN PERIOD
heads after the manner of the bronze.7 It shows the same firm yet sensitive modelling,
the same lack of the small full curves of the Third Early Dynastic style. Its forms are
more spacious. Technical details, such as the inlaying of eyes and eyebrows, bespeak the
continuity of tradition. And in Akkadian works of lesser quality the affinities with the
older period arc so pronounced that it is sometimes only possible to assign a work to the
Akkadian Period because an inscription names the reign in which it was made.8
The stele of Naramsin (Plate 44) matches the bronze head in beauty, vigour, and
originality.9 The stone is broken at the top and damaged by water below. It is neverthe­
less certain that no other figures occupied the upper portion where the king stands, alone,
under the heavenly bodies in which the gods are manifest. Naramsin himself is deified:10
he wears the horned crown of divinity. He holds his bow in one hand, an arrow in the
other. His battle-axe hangs in the hollow of his left arm. Below him his soldiers climb
the wooded mountain-side. The repetition of their stride renders the relentless character
of their advance more effectively than the massing of figures in the stele of Eannatum
(Plate 34). The antithesis of their ascent appears in the broken remnants of the enemy’s
force on the right, fleeing or imploring pity. Naramsin stands above this agitation with
one foot upon the bodies of the vanquished, near him the unsealed summit of the moun­
tain, above him the great gods.11
From the reign of Sargon fragments of at least two steles survive.12 They lack the
grandeur which the unified composition, the concentration of an event in one signi­
ficant moment, imparts to the stele of Naramsin. Sargon’s steles were, in every respect,
more primitive; in shape they were boulders, as of old (Plate 9A), and the scenes arc
divided into registers which followed the irregular surface of the stone. Sargon is made
rather larger than his soldiers, but does not wear the crown of the gods. He is identified
by an inscription. Another fragment shows a battle scene with birds of prey and dogs
devouring the enemy dead. A third also renders a motif found on the stele of the vul­
tures of Eannatum: the enemy is ‘ caught in a net’, a recurring image of Sumerian poetry
that has here been given plastic expression. But on Eannatum’s stele die god holds the
net; on Sargon s steles it seems to be held by the king, over whose victory divinity pre­
sides. The gods arc not shown as intervening in human affairs, but the king of their elec­
tion acts in the fullness of his power.
The fragments of Sargon s steles stand in a direct line between those of Eannatum and
of Naramsin, but in motifs and composition they are closer to the first. There is no trace
of the unified and truly monumental design which distinguishes the stele of Naramsin.
An earlier treatment of the subject seems, however, to survive in a stele cut in the face
ot the cliffs overhanging the gorge of Darband-i-Gawr in the Qara Dagh.13 The huge
ngure of Naramsin towers over the bodies of his
------enemies. His army is omitted, and the
scene o t le attle is not shown either; it is die gorge itself. The rock carving might be
mi l Slmp1Hflcd Copy of W stele> but is probably earlier because more primitive.
1 C, J.1C roc " rcbcf shows the king in the act of scaling the mountain, the stele makes
ne soldiers ascend while the king stands impassive, the victor in possession of the field.
do ° cxbibits the highest achievement of Akkadian sculpture. We
ow w ict ler the same is true of architecture, since no evidence of importance

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