Page 93 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART ONE: MESOPOTAMIA

The moulded bricks which form figures in relief were not known before Kassite times
and tins innovation was splendidly applied, almost a thousand years later, in the Neo-
Babyloman temples (Plate 122). But the other features of Kassite architecture which
arc
without precedent in southern Mesopotamia point in a general way to the north; and
it may well be that they reflect usages of the Kassite homeland. The long cclla with an
axial entrance through the narrow wall is customary in Assyria in later times; it may be
the result of the process described above by which the ‘bent-axis’ approach became
secondary; it may likewise represent a type of shrine to which the Kassitcs and the
northern elements of the Assyrian population were accustomed.6 The corner buttresses
were known in prehistoric times in Eridu to the south as well as in Tepe Gawra to the
north (Figures 2 and 3); we know they were discontinued in the south. Did they survive
in the north in the periphery of Assyria? And is it an accident that the procession of
officials painted in the Kassite palace at Dur Kurigalzu finds its nearest parallel in the palace
of Sargon of Assyria, at IChorsabad? The cloister of the Kassite palace most closely re­
sembles those of the Hittite temples of eastern Anatolia (Figures 47 and 48). It may well
be that such scattered similarities will prove to be without significance; but they are
worth listing because we may discover that the art of the Kassite period incorporates
traits from the semi-barbaric culture of its homeland somewhere to the north and east
of Mesopotamia.
The recent excavations of Dur Kurigalzu laid bare a number of small works modelled
in clay which are of some merit. Plate 70B shows the head of a man, with a painted mous­
tache, apparently kept short, and a full beard, a fashion known already in Early Dynastic
times in Khafaje, Mari, and Assur (e.g. Plate 23). The flesh is painted red; hair and beard
are black, the eyes are inlaid. The lioness ofwhich we show the head in plate 70c is more
precisely modelled and at the same time more vivid.
Of the stone work of the period, only sculptured boundary stones (kudurrn) survive.
The custom of marking the limits of fields by reliefs naming the gods who vouchsafed
the permanence of the boundary was very old; we have seen the Eannatum boundary
stone, set up at the limits of the field which the ruler of Lagash took again from Umma.
For reasons which we do not know, sculptured boundary stones are exceptionally
numerous during Kassite times.7 They were either covered entirely by the emblems of
the gods invoked to protect the boundary, or they show the image of the ruler who has
made a donation of the fields in question and now guarantees their possession to the
owner (Plate 71). Even in that case divine emblems recall the sanctity of the covenant,
conversely, a royal inscription is often to be found on kudurru which depict only divine
symbols. The stone which we illustrate belongs to the end of the Kassite Period, to t e
reign of Marduk-nadin-akhe (about 1100), shortly before the Assyrians subjugated the

south of Mesopotamia for good.

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