Page 90 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

HAMMURABI OF BABYLON
There is no reason to doubt that the walls of public buildings were often decorated with
paintings. It so happens that they have only survived in the Protoliterate temple of Al
‘Uqair, and, again, in the palace of the kings of Mari, which Hammurabi destroyed in
his thirtieth year. The fragments recovered fall into two groups: traditional designs known
from seals, and narrative scenes with subjects met sometimes on steles but including,
possibly, original compositions. This last group comprises three types of scene:
(1) Mythological, and of these one fragment survives.41 It shows a bearded figure,
full-faced underneath a kind of vault studded with white circles, either stars or rain­
drops; the latter is suggested by a glazed tile from a middle Assyrian palace.42
(2) War scenes; here, too, only a few fragments of enemy soldiers survive.43
(3) Scenes of offering (Plate 69). A large figure, dressed in a fringed shawl, appears at
the head of two registers of subsidiary figures, wearing similar dresses and, in addition,
the felt caps still used in Syria and northern Iraq. They lead some sacrificial bulls with
gilded or silvered horn tips and crescent pendants tied round their horns.
The liveliness of these three groups of designs contrasts not a little with the hieratic
stiffness of the conventional scenes, remarkable only in the fact that they are executed in
paint. There are two murals of this type, the largest of these measuring over eight feet in
width and six feet in height. It consists for the larger part of a symmetrical framework of
trees, monsters, and interceding goddesses, which encloses a small oblong presentation
scene. It is purely conventional and can be matched on countless seals; it can therefore
only represent a traditional, ritual scene.44 The whole design is surrounded by a border of
running spirals, intruders from the west, and, in particular, from the Aegean 45 It recurs
in a court and in one of the king’s private rooms,46 and also roimd his throne-base.47 It
was about seven feet square, and decorated on top with panels imitating marble, sur­
rounded by a running spiral. But at this time contact with the west did not influence
Mcspotamian art deeply; this happened only when the upheavals which brought about
the downfall of Hammurabi’s Dynasty had broken down the traditional frontiers.
Glyptic art suffered a decline after the Akkadian Period. The piety which pervades
the works of Gudea of Lagash and of the Third Dynasty of Ur is reflected in the seals by
the elimination of all the varied subjects evolved in Sargonid times. They show almost
exclusively the presentation scene’ (Plate 54A; see p. 50 above) with or without an
interceding goddess.48 The uniformity destroyed the raison d'etre of seal designs which
was the impression of an individual distinctive mark; this function was taken over by
the inscription.
The Isin-Larsa Period brought a loss of refinement without any increase in vitality.
The First Dynasty of Babylon returned to the use of seals distinguished by the design
rather than the inscription, by combining the whole or parts of ‘presentation scenes’
with a number of secondary motifs, a method which never resulted in unified com­
positions. Towards the end of the period the number of figures was often reduced and
the mam burden carried once more by the inscription. And this arrangement formed the
basis of Kassite glyptic in subsequent centuries.

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