Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/211

Chaldean Sculpture. 181 at the Louvre. All these figures are broken at the junction of the neck with the body. 1 We may put beside them two heads whose proportions are about the same as theirs, which were found, one among the mutilated statues, the other in the ruins of a neigh- bouring building. The material is similar, a very hard and dark igneous rock. The execution corresponds exactly with that of the torsos, to one of which the first named head may perhaps have belonged. M. de Sarzec tells us that these statues were found in the great edifice at Tello, almost all on the soil of the central court. 2 Some are standing, others seated ; 3 we give an example of each type (Plate VI., Figs. 96 and 98). In these effigies we may notice an arrangement that we have more than once encountered in Assyrian reliefs, but which has never, so far as we know, been employed in the arts of any other people. " All these statues, without exception, have their hands folded within each other and placed against their chests, an attitude still used in the East to mark the respectful attention of the servant awaiting his master's orders. If, as we have every reason to believe, these figures were placed in a sacred inclosure, in front of the images of the gods or of the symbols that recalled their power, this attitude of submission and respect became one of religious veneration (Fig. 97)." 4 At Nimroud and Khorsabad this expressive gesture is some- times given to eunuchs in the presence of their masters, sometimes to kings when standing before the effigies of their gods. It is thoroughly well -fitted for those votive statues that proclaim them- selves in their inscriptions to be offerings to the deity. In consecrating an image of himself on the threshold of the sanc- tuary, the king assured the perpetuity of his prayers and acts 1 The great seated statue that occupies the middle of the room is five feet three inches in height, and has no head. One of the standing statues is four feet eight inches high. The one figured in our Plate VI. is only four feet two inches. The small statue called the architect (Fig. 96) is three feet one inch. It will be seen that some of these figures are over, and some under, life-size ; one only, if we allow for the head, will correspond with what we may call the height of a man. 2 Letter from M. de Sarzec read to the Académie des Inscriptions on the 2nd December, 1881 (reprinted in Heuzey, Fouilles de Chaldèe). 3 On the knees of these seated figures we find the scale, the stylus and the plan of a fortified city that we explained on pages 327 and 328 of our first volume. 4 Heuzey, Les Fouilles de Chaldêe, p. 12.