IV Chaldæan Seal-engraving27
Though we do not yet possess more than a limited number of pieces of sculpture and statues, those imposing witnesses of Chaldæan art in the time of Gudea or Hammurabi, we can at least supply this want by the numerous and varied productions of the seal-engraver’s art. The Chaldæans invented the carving of precious stones, and no people ever made a more constant use of those cylinders, cones and seals of every form, on which are seen, engraved in lines fine and deep, the same images which monumental sculpture drew upon the walls of temples and palaces. These stones carved in intaglio, whether hæmatite, porphyry, chalcedony, marbles or onyx of every variety, were worn round the neck, on the finger, on the wrist, or fastened to the garment; they were at the same time prophylactic amulets against sickness or witchcraft, and seals with which impressions were made at the end of public or private documents.
The most ancient of the Chaldæan cylinders reveals to our eyes the very origin of seal-engraving, the first attempts to carve the round, ovoid, or cylindrical gems of the necklaces of the stone age. The burin and the puncheon, handled for the first time, do not yet trace out more than zigzags, lozenges, straight and semicircular lines crossing one another. Soon attempts are made to trace buildings, figures of animals, antelopes feeding (fig. 31), or fish. The joints and swells of the quadrupeds’ bodies are represented by round holes, the limbs by simple strokes.
Soon, with greater mastery over his instruments, the artist—for we may now give him this name—will seek to reproduce on the cylinders the human figure, and then that of the divine beings or the heroes begotten of popular fancy, whose image is to increase the talismanic virtue of the stone. There are monsters standing on their hind-legs, struggling with one another, and giants killing lions or human-faced quadrupeds. M. Menant has remarked that the figures of animals are always represented in profile, while the human figures, with long beards, are in full face even when the body is in profile. There are double-faced genii, quadrupeds with a single head and two bodies. One of the most remarkable cylinders of this primitive epoch is, without contradiction, that of the rich De Clercq collection, the design of which we give here (fig. 32). Men and various animals are here seen: a goat with wavy horns browsing on the leaf of a tree; a rhinoceros, antelopes, bulls, fish, an eagle, and some trees; two demons subduing fantastic animals, scorpions, and palm-trees. We think of the biblical scene of Adam and Eve in the earthly paradise surrounded by all the living beings in creation.
Fresh progress is marked by the appearance of inscriptions at the sides of the figured scenes. Every possessor of a cylinder makes a point of having his name or that of a favourite deity engraved upon it. Accordingly the names of several patesis, who governed Chaldæan towns three or four thousand years before our era, have been found upon cylinders. The cylinder on which M. Oppert read the name of Asrinilu, patesi of Umalnaru (fig. 33), represents an episode in the Chaldæan epic. The hero Izdubar, with curly beard and hair, seizes with each hand by a hind-leg two lions hanging head downwards. The scene is completed by trees, an antelope, a small human figure, a lion-headed scorpion, a human-headed bull. What is here especially striking is the archaism of the cuneiform signs, formed of strokes, which cross one another, but have not yet the form of wedges, which they are to assume later, and also the modelling and suppleness of most of the figures; the instrument is no longer felt through the work.
Chaldæan seal-engraving reaches its apogee with another cylinder of the De Clercq collection, which has the advantage of being dated, at least relatively: it bears the name of Sargani or Sargon the First, king of Agade, about 3800 years before our era. M. Menant mentions it as marking an important stage in the history of art. The picture, which is very simple, is composed of two symmetrical scenes: Izdubar, with one knee on the ground, on the bank of a river, holds with both hands the sacred ampulla, from which a double jet of water escapes, and at which a bull with long striated horns comes to drink.28 Here the artist possesses all the secrets of his art: never, at any epoch, will he be able to reproduce with greater delicacy and truth the powerful muscles of the bull and the giant. And as it must certainly be admitted that monumental sculpture advances as rapidly as seal-engraving, I do not know which should astonish us most—the degree of perfection to which the Chaldæans had carried the plastic arts, or the prodigiously distant epoch to which such monuments transport us.
A cylinder in the museum at New York (fig. 35), which from the characters of the writing seems almost contemporary with that of Sargon the First, is executed with a still greater perfection. The play and graceful suppleness of the muscles of the bull and the lion are rendered with the precision which the direct study of nature brings, and with the ease which betrays an artist who can overcome technical difficulties.
If all Chaldæan cylinders could be classed chronologically and by schools, epochs of perfection or of decadence would no doubt be observed, and also greater activity in some artistic centres than in others, the choice of subjects being modified from town to town and from age to age. In the present state of our knowledge we can only hazard conjectures with regard to this. M. Menant looks upon the cylinders which represent the goddess Istar holding her child upon her knees and receiving the homage of the faithful, as issuing from the workshops of Uruk (Erech); it is the prototype of the divine mother whose worship is to spread even into Greece. At Ur cylinders of very different types, but of a dry execution, which is rather a mark of decadence than of archaism, were manufactured: there are scenes of worship or initiation into mysteries, and sacrifices, among which that of the kid is the most frequent. On certain monuments M. Menant recognises a representation of human sacrifices: the most marked scene of this kind shows us a sacrificer, who, raising his right hand, brandishes a dagger over a kneeling child, whom he seems to prepare to slay, in the presence of a pontiff and of the statue of the god. One of the commonest figures on Chaldæan cylinders is that of the goddess Istar, sometimes decked with rich ornaments, sometimes entirely naked, in full face, with her hands clasping her breasts: this last type, profusely reproduced by the modellers in clay, was perpetuated all over the East up to the time of the Greek and Roman supremacies.