Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/208

i 78 A History of Art in Ciialix-ea and Assyria. puts objects one above another on the field of his relief which, in reality, were laid side by side. We must imagine these corpses spread over the surface of the ground and covered with earth. If the sculptor had introduced the soil aboYe them, the corpses would have been invisible ; so he has left it out. The two figures on the left, who mount an inclined plane l with baskets on their heads, what are they carrying ? Offerings to be placed on the summit of the sepulchre ? or earth to raise the tumulus to a greater height ? We prefer the latter suggestion. When earth or rubbish has to be removed in the modern East, when excavations are made, for instance, the work is set about in the fashion here commemorated ; the action of these two figures seems, moreover, to indicate that the weight they are carrying is greater than a basket full of cakes, fruits, and other things of that kind would account for. If on this fragment we have a representation of the honours paid by the people of Sirtella to companions slain in battle, an- other compartment of the same relief shows us the lot reserved by the hate and vengeance of the victor for the corpses of his enemies (Fig. 94). Birds of prey are tearing them limb from limb on the place where they fell. In their beaks and claws they hold the heads, hands, and arms of dismembered bodies. The savagery of all this suggests a remote epoch, when civilization had done little to soften original brutality. A last fragment belongs to another composition (Fig. 95). It comes from a relief showing either the departure of an army for the field or its triumphal return. Very little is left, but that little is significant ; — a hand holding one of those military standards whose use by the Assyrians we have already noticed (see above, Fig. 46), and the head of a personage, perhaps the king, walking in the procession ; and that is all. The head-covering of the latter individual seems to be a kind of feather crown with a metal 1 Perhaps we should rather give the Chaldsean artist the credit of having produced a not untruthful bird's-eye view. The bodies in the sepulchre are evidently stretched side by side, and they diminish in size from front to back, as their distance from the eye of the spectator increases. The two living men are mounting upon the edge, or wall, of the grave, an edge such as the tomb figured on p. 358 of Vol. I. (Fig. 164) must have had before its lid was put on. In these two figures there is an unmistakable attempt to give the effect of distance in varying their size. A curious detail in this relief is the post with a rope knotted round it that appears in the lower left hand corner. — Ed.