Page 84 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE ISIN-LARSA PERIOD
north end; but the effect of the piers is here clearly that of a separation between a broad
but shallow cclla and a long antccclla. The next step could be either an adaptation of the
antecella t0 the shape of the cella or the substitution of an open court for the antccella.
Both alternatives appear in figure 19.1 emphasize these details of the plans because far-
reaching conclusions have been based on differences in temple plans. Distinct ethnic
groups have been proclaimed the builders of temples which, however different they may
appear, can now be understood as successive stages in a continuous architectural develop-
ment.21

10 METRES
FEET

Figure 20. The Assur temple E, Assur

The temples and palaces were the only buildings with aesthetic pretensions. The cities,
at tliis as at all other times, consisted of conglomerations of mud-brick houses, placed
along narrow, crooked streets and lanes.22 The lay-out of the individual houses was mostly
determined by the shape of the plot of land available to the builder. In earlier times they
had mostly consisted of a large room, more or less in the centre of an irregular set of
smaller rooms. At Ur, during the period we are discussing, the better houses show a
more spacious plan. In the centre was an open court paved with baked bricks (Figure 21).
It was surrounded by a single row of rooms, one of which served as entrance lobby and
the other as a stair-well. The stairs led to a wooden balcony round the court, and the in­
dividual rooms of the upper floor were entered from this balcony. Exactly similar houses
are in common use in Baghdad to-day. Sometimes a room was set aside to serve as a
house chapel; it was distinguished by a mud-brick altar decorated with miniature but­
tresses and recesses.23 Small shrines, consisting of one or two rooms, were erected here
and there at the corner of a lane or at cross roads. We may well begin our discussion of
the arts of the period with the statues found in these chapels.
They are, on the whole, clumsy figures, made of gypsum and representing a goddess
111 a flounced robe.24 But a statuette like that of plate 57 indicates the ideal which the

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