Page 92 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE ART OF THE KASSITE DYNASTY
dominated by the Mitannians until the middle of the fourteenth century b.c. The Kas-
sites in southern Mesopotamia remained, on the whole, in the Babylon tradition. At Ur
existing temples were restored and rebuilt, and the same was done elsewhere. At the new
capital, Dur Kurigalzu, which was founded twenty miles to the west of what is now
Baghdad,2 a Ziggurat was built within a system of courts surrounded by single rows of
chambers and approached by three stairways. In all these respects the sacred mountain
resem bled that of Ur, but the royal palace, which is as yet incompletely known, shows a
combination of rooms and courts which seem to differ from the usual Mesopotamian
arrangements. Moreover, it appears to have had one court bordered on two sides, and
perhaps surrounded, by an ambulatory with sq uare pillars. Colonnades are rare in Meso-
potamia, but neither those in the Early Dynastic palace at Kish3 nor those of the Isin-
Larsa Period at Mari4 suggest cloisters. A corridor in the palace shows a dado, four feet
high, which portrays a procession of court officials, stiffly and clumsily drawn. This motif

10 METRES
i
20 30 FEET

Figure 23. Plan of the temple of Karaindash, Warka

also seems new, although the scarcity of the evidence prevents us from affirming that it
is so. Finally we must describe a temple built at Warka by the Kassite king Karaindash
(about 1440 b.c.) and dedicated to the Mother Goddess Inanna (Plate 70A and Figure 23).
The long cclla is entered through a door in the main axis, immediately beyond the en­
trance; the bastions at the corners arc another unusual feature of the plan. And the eleva­
tion shows a novel application of an ancient motif: male and female deities bearing the
flowing vase are placed in the recesses which decorate as usual the outside of the temple.
They are part of the architecture, since they are built up of moulded bricks. The robes of
the goddesses fall in the vertical wavy lines already found on Gudea’s basin, and the
statue from Mari (Plate 62). The male gods are chthonic beings; the upper part of their
o ies emerges from the mountain’, here, as usual, marked by a scale pattern. The water
™ c 1 flows from the vases is brought in horizontal streams to the buttresses between the
igures, and from these wells up and descends in a double stream. It falls, below, on two
roun -topped steles, as it seems; perhaps this design once more indicates the earth. It is
certain whether these figures stood all round the building, but the excavator assumed
s to e so, because of a large number of additional fragments.5

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