HISTORY
OF
ANCIENT ART

BY
DR. FRANZ VON REBER
DIRECTOR OF THE BAVARIAN ROYAL AND STATE GALLERIES OF PAINTINGS
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY AND POLYTECHNIC OF MUNICH

Revised by the Author

TRANSLATED AND AUGMENTED
BY
JOSEPH THACHER CLARKE

WITH 310 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.

THE application of the historic method to the study of the Fine Arts, begun with imperfect means by Winckelmann one hundred and twenty years ago, has been productive of the best results in our own days. It has introduced order into a subject previously confused, disclosing the natural progress of the arts, and the relations of the arts of the different races by whom they have been successively practised. It has also had the more important result of securing to the fine arts their due place in the history of mankind as the chief record of various stages of civilization, and as the most trustworthy expression of the faith, the sentiments, and the emotions of past ages, and often even of their institutions and modes of life. The recognition of the significance of the fine arts in these respects is, indeed, as yet but partial, and the historical study of art does not hold the place in the scheme of liberal education which it is certain before long to attain. One reason of this fact lies in the circumstance that few of the general historical treatises on the fine arts that have been produced during the last fifty years have been works of sufficient learning or judgment to give them authority as satisfactory sources of instruction. Errors of statement and vague speculations have abounded in them. The subject, moreover, has been confused, especially in Germany, by the intrusion of metaphysics into its domain, in the guise of a professed but spurious science of æsthetics.

Under these conditions, a history of the fine arts that should state correctly what is known concerning their works, and should treat their various manifestations with intelligence and in just proportion, would be of great value to the student. Such, within its limits as a manual and for the period which it covers, is Dr. Reber’s History of Ancient Art. So far as I am aware, there is no compend of information on the subject in any language so trustworthy and so judicious as this. It serves equally well as an introduction to the study and as a treatise to which the advanced student may refer with advantage to refresh his knowledge of the outlines of any part of the field.

The work was originally published in 1871; but so rapid has been the progress of discovery during the last ten years that, in order to bring the book up to the requirements of the present time, a thorough revision of it was needed, together with the addition of much new matter and many new illustrations. This labor of revision and addition has been jointly performed by the author and the translator, the latter having had the advantage of doing the greater part of his work with the immediate assistance of Dr. Reber himself, and of bringing to it fresh resources of his own, the result of original study and investigation. The translator having been absent from the country, engaged in archæological research, during the printing of the volume, the last revision and the correction of the text have been in the hands of Professor William R. Ware, of the School of Mines of Columbia College.

Charles Eliot Norton.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, May, 1882.

In view of the great confusion which results from an irregular orthography of Greek proper names, a return to the original spelling of words not fully Anglicized may need an explanation, but no apology: it is only adopting a system already followed by scholars of the highest standing. The Romans, until the advent of that second classical revival in which the present century is still engaged, served as mediums for all acquaintance with Hellenic civilization. They employed Greek names, with certain alterations agreeable to the Latin tongue, blunting and coarsening the delicate sounds of Greek speech, much in the same manner as they debased the artistic forms of Greek architecture by a mechanical system of design. The clear ον became um, ος was changed to us, ει to e or i, etc. This Latinized nomenclature, like the Roman triglyph and Tuscan capital, was exclusively adopted by the early Renaissance, until, with the increasing knowledge of Greek lands and works of art, names were introduced which do not happen to occur in the writings of Roman authors. These were either changed in accordance with the more or less variable standard in use during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or were adopted in their Greek form without change, the latter method being more and more generally employed. This has gradually led to a partial revision of Greek names and their spelling. Zeus and Hermes, Artemis and Athene, have resumed, as Greek deities, their original titles;—Sunium and Assus have been changed to Sunion and Assos; while other names have only been reformed in part, as in the case of the unfortunate Polycleitos, who at times appears as Polycletos, and at times as Polycleitus. Confusion and misunderstanding cannot but result from this unreasonable triple system of Latinized, Anglicized, and Greek orthography. Peirithoos may be sought in alphabetically classified works of reference under Per and Pir as well as under Peir. Πέργαμον, Pergamon, is written Pergamum, Pergamus, and Pergamos, in the two latter forms being naturally confused with the Cretan Πέργαμος, Pergamos, which, in its turn, is Latinized to Pergamus. In the present book the Greek spelling of Greek names has been adopted in all those cases where the word has not been fully Anglicized; that is to say, changed in pronunciation, when it would sound pedantic to employ its original form, as, for instance, to speak of the well-known Pæstum and Lucian as Poseidonia and Loukianos. The English alphabet provides, however, two letters for the Greek κάππα, and the more familiar c has been employed, as in Corinth, acropolis, etc., except in cases where the true sound is not thereby conveyed,—namely, before e, i, and y,—when the k is substituted. Moreover, the final αι is transformed to æ, according to the universal usage of our tongue.

Joseph Thacher Clarke.

{Page 1}

Fig. I.—The Pyramids of Gizeh.

IT is a curious chance that the most ancient monuments of human civilization should stand upon a land which is one of the youngest geological formations of our earth. The scene of that artistic activity made known to us by the oldest architectural remains of Africa and of the world was not Upper Egypt, where steep primeval cliffs narrow the valley of the Nile, but the alluvion of the river’s delta. It would be difficult to decide whether the impulse of monumental creativeness were here first felt, or whether the mere fact of the preservation of these Egyptian works, secured by the indestructibility of their construction as well as by the unchangeableness of Egyptian art, be sufficient to explain this priority to other nations of antiquity—notably to Mesopotamia. Although no ruins have been found in Chaldæa of earlier date than the twenty-third century B.C., it is not at all impossible that remains of greater antiquity may yet come to light in a country which is by no means thoroughly explored. Nor should we deem the oldest{2} structures now preserved to be necessarily those first erected. The perishable materials of the buildings which stood in the plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, generally sun-dried bricks with asphalt cement, were not calculated to insure long duration, or to prevent their overthrow and obliteration by the continual changes in the course of these rivers, through the silting and swamping of their valleys. Yet, though tradition would incline us to assume that Chaldæan civilization and art were the more ancient, the oldest monuments known exist upon the banks of the Nile.

The changeless blue of the Egyptian sky, the strictly regular return of all the natural phenomena connected with the Nile, that wonderful stream of the land’s life, are entirely in accord with the fixedness of Egyptian civilization in all its branches. Though the high state of advance which we first find in Egyptian art, three thousand years before the Christian era, must necessarily have been preceded by less perfected degrees, it is wholly impossible to perceive such stages of development in any of the monuments known. After Egypt had attained a certain height of civilization, its history, during the thousands of years known to us, shows none of those phases of advance or decline, of development in short, to be observed in Europe during every century, if not during every decade.

The Egyptian completed buildings and statues begun by his remote ancestors without the slightest striving for individual peculiarity. He commenced new works in the same spirit, leaving them for similar execution by his great-grandchildren. Numberless generations thus dragged on without bequeathing a trace of any peculiar character and ability. It is only by the cartouches of the kings in the hieroglyphic inscriptions that it is possible to separate the dynasties, and to group into periods of a thousand years or more, works of art which seem from their style to belong to one and the same age. What gigantic revolutions have affected the civilization of Europe during the fourteen centuries elapsed since the overthrow of the Roman Empire, and how slight are the appreciable changes during the nearly equal number of years of the ancient dynasties of Memphis—the period of the pyramids, or again of the Theban kingdom—from the seventeenth dynasty to the rule of the Ptolemies!{3}

The true age of the monuments of Lower Egypt has not long been known. When Napoleon I. fired the spirits of his troops before the Battle of the Pyramids by the well-known words “Forty centuries look down upon you from the heights of these pyramids,” he must have been aware that, according to the conceptions of the archæological science of the time, he was exaggerating. In fact, however, he was far behind the truth. The pyramids of Abousere, possibly also those of Dashour, are of the third dynasty (3338 to 3124 B.C., according to Lepsius), those of Gizeh of the fourth dynasty of Manetho (3124 to 2840 B.C.). These are structures which have stood for five thousand years. The pyramids of Cochome, referred to as the first dynasty of Manetho, are still older, dating from a time nearly coincident, according to Biblical authority, with the creation of the world itself (3761 B.C.).

It is true we are still so far from chronological certainty that dates often differ astonishingly. Osburn, for instance, places the fourth and fifth dynasties as late as the period between 2228 and 2108 B.C., and notably the two kings of the fourth dynasty, Shofo and Nu-Shofo, about 2170 B.C. The first twelve dynasties of Memphis, dated by Lepsius about 3892 to 2167, and by Osburn as late as 1959 B.C., are now known principally by their monumental tombs. Among these, the sepulchres of the kings are prominent in like manner as the ruler in an absolute and theocratic monarchy is elevated above his subjects.

The enslaved people labored upon the monuments of their masters, often during the entire lifetime of these latter. It may be seen from contemporary wall-paintings that the discipline maintained during the work of construction was not lacking in strictness, but it was certainly not that excessive oppression generally imagined. A body of over one hundred thousand workmen sorely oppressed might, even in Egypt, have been difficult to manage by a hated despot. It was principally during the annual inundations of the Nile that the kings employed and fed the poorer classes, at that time, perhaps, unable otherwise to subsist. During other seasons the rulers could not have taken the tillers of the soil from fields and flocks without great injury to their own interests. It is no mark of a selfish despotism, which builds without reference to the welfare of{4} land and subjects, that the kings removed their enormous sepulchral piles from the vicinity of their residences—from the valuable alluvion of the Nile to the barren edge of the desert. They thus, as Plato recommends, occupied no place with dwellings of the dead where it would be possible for the living to find nourishment. The fertile ground of the valley was not encumbered by the colossal pyramids, which were so numerous in ancient Egypt that Lepsius found the remains of sixty-seven in the forty-eight kilometers alone between Cairo and the Fayoum, on the western bank of the river. Supposing only five score such pyramids, with an average area of one hundred ares each, two elevenths of that of the great pyramid of Gizeh, to have stood in the narrow valley of the Nile, what an enormous loss in the grain production of that most fertile but limited land would so great a reduction of arable surface have caused during the past five thousand years!

The fundamental motive of the pyramid is the funeral mound. A small upheaval above the natural level of the ground results of itself from the earth displaced by the bulk of the buried body. Our present practice of interment clearly illustrates this. Increased dimensions elevate the mound to an independent monument. Many nations, some of a high degree of civilization, have contented themselves with such imposing hills of earth over the grave,—tumuli, which, from the manner of their construction, assumed a conical form. Others placed the mound upon a low cylinder, thus better marking its distinction from accidental natural elevations. The Egyptians and the Mesopotamians rejected the cone entirely, and formed, with plane surfaces upon a square plan, the highly monumental pyramid. Peculiar to the former people are the inclined sides which give to the pyramid its absolute geometrical form, as opposed to the terraced structures of Chaldæa. The sand of the desert ebbed and flowed fifty centuries ago as constantly as in our time, when the sphinx, after being uncovered to its base, has been quickly hidden again to the neck. Rulers, unwilling that their gigantic tombs should be thus submerged, were obliged to secure to them great height, with inclined and unbroken sides, upon which the sand could not lodge.

The typical pyramid of Gizeh, near Cairo—the monument of{5} Cheops (Shofo, Suphis), the first or second king of the fourth dynasty—rises above the broad necropolis of Memphis, by far the largest and one of the most marvellous works of mankind. (Fig. 1.) With a ground-line mean of 232.56 m., the great pyramid attained an altitude of 148.21 m., of which the entire apex is now overthrown, leaving a height of about 138 m.[A] The original intention of the builders was doubtless an absolutely square plan. The greatest difference in the length of the ground-lines of the base is 0.45 m. The angle of the upward inclination of the sides has been found, by measurements at various points, to average 51° 51´ 43´´. The entire pyramid is solidly built of massive blocks, pierced by a few narrow passages which lead to small chambers. (Fig. 2.) Like most of these monuments, the entrance is situated somewhat above the ground; it opens to a passage which descends with a gentle inclination. The shaft is covered with stones leaning against each other, so as to present the great resistance of a gable to the superimposed mass. In passing out of the masonry it is continued into the natural rock under the same angle, 26° 27´. Near the point of separation it meets with another passage, which ascends with an inclination of 26° 6´ to the centre of the structure, sending off a nearly horizontal branch at half-way. All three shafts lead to grave-chambers, the highest being the most important. As the ascent continues above the horizontal branch, its importance is emphasized by the passage being increased from 1.2 or 1.5 m. high to a corridor 8.5 m. in height, roofed by gradually projecting blocks, and having upon its floor a slide to facilitate the transport of the sarcophagus. Thereupon follows a horizontal vestibule, closed most securely by four blocks of granite which fell like portcullises. Only three of these had been let down; the fourth remained in its original position, the lower grooves never having been cut to allow its descent. The upper chamber, of polished granite, but otherwise not ornamented, is 10.48 m. long, 5.24 m. broad, and 5.84 m. high.[B] It is ceiled horizontally with nine colossal lintels of granite,{6} a detail which seemed at first surprising, as other voids of far less width were more firmly covered, either by projecting and gradually approaching stones, as in the ascending corridor; or with blocks leaned together so as to form a gable, as in the other passages, and in the middle chamber, called that of the Queen. Yet it was for the security of this upper chamber that the greatest care proved to have been taken. The weight of the half-height of the pyramid remaining above it was by no means allowed to rest upon its horizontal lintels. There are above them five low relieving spaces separated by four stone ceilings similar to the first; mighty blocks are inclined over all these to a gable triangle. In case of rupture the horizontal beams would of themselves have formed new triangles and prevented direct downward pressure. Cheops certainly did not need to fear the ceiling of his chamber falling in upon him. Ventilation was provided for the room by two narrow air-channels, which, inclining upwards, took the shortest course to the outside.{7}

Fig. 2.—The Great Pyramid of Gizeh. Section North and South, looking West.

The perfectly geometrical form of the pyramids of Gizeh has from early times led to speculations upon their having been erected in conformity with mathematical or astronomical calculations; and endless attempts have been made to discover the fixed proportions which they are supposed to embody, and to determine their symbolical or metrical significance. Too much is often assumed upon the strength of accidental coincidences, generally only approximate; but if such proportions indeed existed, whatever may have been their intention, they are evidently beyond the true province of art.

The second great pyramid, built by the successor of Cheops, Chephren (Sophris), seems not to have been so regular in its interior arrangement. The third, that of Chephren’s successor, Mykerinos (Menkera), is of the most beautiful execution. The unevenness of the ground was so considerable that a substructure of masonry was here necessary. The entire kernel is of rectangular courses of stone, and, with the exception of the exterior casing, is built in the form of steps. This manner of construction was employed in most of the pyramids, but is here particularly noticeable. The casing of granite, highly polished, is still partly intact; the joints of its stones are scarcely perceptible, and are not wider than the thickness of a sheet of paper.

The mechanical excellence of all these pyramids is indeed wonderful; they remain as a marvellous proof of the constructive ability of man in ages far anterior to known periods of the world’s history. Nor are they mere piles of masonry which could have been erected by an enslaved people without the guidance of skilled and thoughtful designers. The arrangement of the passages, of the chambers and their portcullises, of the quarried stone and polished revetment, was admirably adapted to the required ends.

In the third pyramid two corridors have been found, one above the other. The upper, opening within from the first chamber, at some height above the floor, does not reach the exterior surface, but ends suddenly against the unpierced outside casings. This peculiarity is explained by, and in turn gives weight to, the statement that this pyramid, as originally built by Mykerinos, was considerably smaller than it is at present, measuring, according to the end of the unfinished upper corridor, 54.86 m. on the side of the{8} plan, and 42.20 m. in vertical height. Nitocris, the last queen of the sixth dynasty, prepared the pyramid to serve also as her own monument by adding courses of stone which increased these dimensions to 117.29 and 66.75 m. respectively. But as the original entrance, by the prolongation of its inclined line outward, would thereby have opened much too high above the ground, a new corridor beneath the first was rendered necessary. The second chamber, which probably once contained the sarcophagus of the queen, was found entirely plundered. The third and lowest, better protected, had been opened; but in it there still remained in position a magnificent coffer of basalt. The exterior of this sarcophagus was sculptured with lattice-work in imitation of a palace-like structure with portals. Fragments of the wooden coffin, with carved hieroglyphics, once within it, and of the mummy itself, were flung about the room. The sarcophagus, of the greatest value as illustrating the architectural forms of its time, sank in the Mediterranean with the ship which was carrying it away to England. The mummy and the lid of the coffin are in the British Museum. Hieroglyphics upon the latter designate the venerable remains as those of King Menkera, the same Mykerinos whom Herodotos, following traditions of the Egyptian priests, mentions as one of the best rulers of the land. The stone ceiling of the Mykerinos chamber was at first thought to be vaulted, it having the form of a low pointed arch. This peculiarity proved, however, to be due to a hollowing-out of the inclined gable blocks.

Fig. 3.—Section of the Great Pyramid of Saccara.

Fig. 4.—The Pyramid of Meydoun.

Princes and princesses of these early dynasties appear to have been buried in smaller pyramids, like those which stand in groups of three near the first and third great pyramids of Gizeh. Prominent subjects were allowed to take a place in the royal necropolis; but their pyramids were always truncated, in form resembling the Egyptian footstool—the pyramidal point remained the peculiar privilege of the kings. It appears to have been customary to commence all these structures with a few large terraces of masonry, which were not fully developed into the perfectly pyramidal structure until the last stones, the revetments, were put in place. These terraces generally had vertical sides. Occasionally this construction was varied by being formed with sloping sides, which{9} repeated the obtuse ascending angle of the footstool, so that the separate steps, elsewhere with a vertical rise, were here somewhat inclined. It is not certain whether the absolute pyramidal form was always intended to be carried out upon the completion of these latter monuments. The examples of the inclined terraces which have been preserved rather seem to show that various attempts were made to develop architecturally upon the exterior the peculiarity of its inner construction. The arrangement and line of the kernel were more or less strictly adhered to, so that the last course of facing-stones showed the original angle of the interior masonry. The increasing of the terraces by successive courses—coats, as it were—seems to have been generally continued as long as the reign of a Pharaoh would permit. The layers, when inclined, were most numerous at the foot of the pyramid, decreasing in number as they ascend, that the mass might not take the proportions of a tower. This manner of building is displayed by the section of the first pyramid of Saccara (Fig. 3.), which, if the courses had been continued in equal number, would have reached a height of at least one hundred and fifty meters, instead of the 57.91 m. effected by its terrace-like{10} contractions. The pyramid of Meydoun shows that this contraction did not necessarily take place in regular and equal steps. (Fig. 4.) There the layers were added, without decreasing in number, to a considerable height, when the structure was quickly completed by broad and low terraces. Similar to this must have been those pyramids which ended in a platform and served as the mighty pedestals of colossal figures, described by Herodotos as existing in Lake Moeris. A remarkable variation from these forms is finally to be noticed in the stone pyramid of Dashour. (Fig. 5.) Rising at first with steep inclination, 54° 14´, it changes its slant at half-height to reach, with a smaller angle, 42° 59´, a more rapid conclusion. This artistically unfortunate form seems to have been owing to a change of plan during the execution of the work; it was doubtless originally designed to have been finished like the pyramid of Meydoun. It is hardly necessary to seek the origin of the double angle in the analogous obtuse termination of Egyptian obelisks. This pyramid of Dashour is further remarkable on account of its magnificent revetment of polished Mocattam limestone, which is almost entirely preserved.{11}

There is as great a difference in the material as in the form of the pyramids. As early as the third dynasty King Asychis (Asuchra) built a pyramid of what Herodotos terms Nile mud; that is to say, of sun-dried bricks. It is not improbable that the great pyramid of Dashour may be identified with this. Besides this peculiarity of material, it is of unusual construction, not having been immediately built upon the natural ground, but standing on a thick layer of sand, which, enclosed by retaining-walls, forms an excellent foundation.

Fig. 5.—Southern Stone Pyramid of Dashour.

One of the group of pyramids at Abousere is built of rubble-stones, quarried from the high plateau of the desert itself, and roughly cemented with Nile mud. The builder of this irregular masonry held it the more necessary to insure the ceiling of his grave-chamber with the greatest care, and three gables of stones, 10.90 m. long and 3.66 m. thick, provide a resistance as sufficient against the imposed mass as does the sixfold roofing of the King’s Chamber at Gizeh. (Fig. 6.) The exterior layers were carefully constructed of blocks from the quarries of Tourah. Immense dikes, forerunners of our modern causeways, led from these quarries to the buildings at Abousere.{12} Although intended only for the conveyance of materials, they were yet so firmly built that they exist at the present time. Egyptian wall-paintings show in the clearest manner the transportation of colossal monolithic statues along these ways upon sledges, either moved upon rollers or dragged over an oiled slide, as in Fig. 7. The pyramid of Illahoun, like the northern pyramid of Dashour and others, is built of brick; its masonry was additionally strengthened by walls of stone, the thickest being upon the diagonals of the plan. The pyramid of Meydoun is built of alternate horizontal courses of variously quarried stone. The following are the most important pyramids still standing, with their dimensions in meters:

The Nubian pyramids on Mount Barkal and in Meroe, far more numerous than those of Lower Egypt, have lost much of their interest since investigations have shown that the civilization of Egypt and the prototypes of monumental art did not descend from Nubia, as was at first supposed, but arose in the delta and advanced up the stream. Inscriptions prove these pyramids to be some three thousand years younger than those of Memphis, dating them at as recent an epoch as the beginning of the Christian era. They are generally grouped in an extended necropolis, and differ from those of the ancient kingdom by a steeper angle of elevation, by a roundel-moulding upon the angles, and, above all, by much smaller dimensions.

Though the truncated pyramidal form, as has been seen in a{13} number of tombs at Gizeh, was not excluded from the funeral architecture of Egyptian subjects, it was never general. Rock-cut tombs were much more customary. The upright cliffs which border the banks of the Nile led naturally to such a formation, and in their sides are excavated caverns of very different dimensions, from the prevalent small, square chambers, with a narrow entrance high above the level of the valley, to the most extended series of rooms.

Fig. 6.—Section of the Middle Pyramid of Abousere.

These tombs were commonly decorated by mural paintings alone, but occasionally by carved architectural details, which always represent a wooden sheathing of slats or lattice-work. The larger chambers, even of the most primitive period, have the roof supported by square piers.

It is from these piers that the Egyptian columns seem to have originated, dividing from the outset into two classes and developing in different directions.{14}

One class of columns arose from chamfering the corners of the square pier, this support being thus transformed into an eight-sided, and, when the proceeding was repeated, to a sixteen-sided, shaft. The first phase of change, with its octagonal plan, was simple and advantageous—a predominance of vertical line was secured to the support, as well as greater room and ease of passage to the chamber. The second, the sixteen-sided figure, offered but few new advantages; on the contrary, the play of light and shade between the sixteen sides and angles was lost in proportion as the edges became more obtuse and less visible. As the sleek rotundity of an absolutely cylindrical shaft was not desirable, the blunt angles of the sixteen-sided prism, of rather coarse stone, were emphasized to avoid the disagreeable uncertainty which is felt when the plan is undecided between a polygon and a circle. This was effected by channelling the sides, making the arris more prominent and giving a more lively variation of vertical light and shade. The pier thus maintained, in some degree, its prismatic character while approaching the cylinder, and the channelled column arose.

Fig. 7.—Transport of a Colossus. Egyptian Wall-painting.

Fig. 8.—Section and Plan of the Northernmost Rock-cut Tomb at Beni-hassan.

Rock-cut tombs of the twelfth dynasty (2380-2167 B.C., according to Lepsius) situated at Beni-hassan, and part of the necropolis of the ancient Nus, a city early destroyed, show the polygonal pier in the two phases of eight and sixteen sided plan. The most northern of these has the octagonal unchannelled pier in the vestibule, and the sixteen-sided channelled column within. Only fifteen channels are executed on the latter, the sixteenth side being left{15} plane for the reception of a painted row of hieroglyphics. Both exterior and interior shafts have a base like a large flat millstone, which projects far beyond the lower diameter of the column, its edge being bevelled inward. A square abacus plinth is the only medium between shaft and ceiling, the two columns of the vestibule lacking even this. A full entablature did not exist in the interior, as a representative of the outer edge of roof and ceiling there would naturally have been out of place. The northernmost tomb has no distinct entablature carved upon the exterior; but its neighbor (Fig. 9.) shows, cut from the solid rock, a massive horizontal epistyle above the columns, and upon this the projecting edge of the ceiling, which appears to consist of squarely hewn joists. Lattice-work was found represented upon the stone sarcophagus of Mykerinos. Here the model of a wooden ceiling is truthfully imitated upon the rock. As, in the flat coverings of rainless Egypt, roof and ceiling appear one and the same, this entablature has but two members—epistyle and cornice; while the frieze, in Greek architecture the representative of a horizontal ceiling beneath the inclined roof, does not here exist.{16}

This order of architecture, called, because of the similarity of the shaft, the Proto-Doric, was predominant in the ancient kingdom. But at least as early as the twelfth dynasty another class of columns was in use which had been developed in an entirely different manner. The Proto-Doric columns originated from the mathematical duplication of the prismatic sides and angles of the square pier; these second made the same pier their model, but followed its painted ornament, not its architectural form. The primitive designer enriched his work with flowers, striving to preserve the quickly fading natural decoration by an imperishable imitation. Many of the bands of ornament customary in antiquity may be considered as rows or wreaths of leaves and flowers, although often they do not betray their derivation at first sight, because of the original imperfect representation of nature, the subsequent strict conventionalization, and final degeneracy into formalism.

In Egypt, ornamental adaptations of the lotos-flowers of the Nile appear at first in long, frieze-like rows, the blossoms being bound together by the stems in much the same arrangement as similar decorations in Assyria, or the better conventionalized anthemion friezes in Greece. When this horizontal ornament was transferred to the narrow vertical sides of a pier, it was necessary to place the flowers closely together, to lengthen the curled stems and bind them; in short, to form of the wreaths, which had answered for the narrow band, a bouquet better corresponding to the tall, upright space to be filled.

Such a bunch of long-stemmed lotos-buds is shown upon the pillars of the tombs near Sauiet-el-Meytin (Fig. 10.), which, certainly of the ancient kingdom, were probably of the sixth dynasty. This bouquet may have been as customary an ornament for the pier as the garlands of lotos-flowers were for the frieze.{17}

The history of architectural decoration shows that the stone-cutter’s chisel everywhere followed in the footsteps of color. The four sides of the pier bore the same painted flowers; if these were to be sculptured, nothing could be more natural than to carry them from four-sided relief into the full round, where they offered the same face to all points of view, and transformed the painted pier into a column formed like a bunch of lotos-blossoms. This development must have taken place early in the ancient kingdom, for we find the floral column in the same tombs of the twelfth dynasty at Beni-hassan which show the so-called Proto-Doric shaft in its various phases. Form and color so work together in the floral column as to leave no doubt of the fundamental idea having been the bunch of lotos-buds painted upon the sides of the pier. Four stems of rounded profile are engaged, rising from a flat base similar to that of the polygonal column. They are tied together under the buds by fivefold ribbons of different colors. Above these the lotos-flowers spread from the stems, showing between their green leaves the opening buds in narrow slits of white. The flowers of the painted bouquet (Fig. 10.) are spread apart; but in the sculptured column they are necessarily united, forming the capital. Even the little blossoms with short stems, represented upon the painting of Sauiet-el-Meytin, are not neglected, although the calyx itself has become much smaller, owing to technical reasons of the execution.

Beni-hassan proves that the two orders, the channelled polygonal shaft and the lotos-column (Fig. 11.), had been developed as early as the twelfth dynasty; but as columnar architecture was not general in the ancient kingdom, the examples preserved are isolated. The little temple of that age discovered by Mariette Bey near the great sphinx of Gizeh shows no trace of columns, their place being supplied{18} by monolithic piers. The period between the twenty-second and the sixteenth century B.C., during which the Nile-land was occupied by the nomadic Hycsos, the shepherd kings, enemies to all civilization, was not favorable to the further application and development of architectural genius. The columns do not again appear until the advent of the new Theban kingdom with the eighteenth dynasty (1591 B.C., according to Lepsius), when they were extensively employed, especially in temples. It was then that the typical forms of the orders were determined. The Proto-Doric, the channelled polygonal column of the tombs at Beni-hassan, fell into disuse. Its simplicity suited neither the desire for richness of form, peculiar to the later Egyptians, nor the delight in polychromatic ornament, which found only one unchannelled strip at its disposal.

The polygonal shaft received, in certain measure, a new lease of life by the invention of a necessary part, a capital in place of the meagre abacus plinth which had formerly been the insufficient medium of transition between the upright support and the horizontal entablature. The vegetable prototype was deserted, and a female head, or rather a fourfold mask about a cubical kernel, crowned the shaft, being surmounted by an ornament somewhat resembling a chapel. The column thereby became similar to a Hermes, or to a caryatid figure of Janus Quadrifrons, as it were. (Fig. 12.) But the representation of the deity Athor had only a limited application, and seems to have prevented the column from being generally employed.

A far wider field was opened to the floral column, which in its architectural and ornamental development was removed further and further from its original model. The changes were brought about in two ways, the most direct alterations being effected by the sculptor. The four buds and stems of the lotos-columns of Beni-hassan were increased to eight; the latter changed their round cylinders to angular prisms, thus giving up much of the vegetable character. The former straight and stiff shaft, rising directly from the base, was{19} curved near the bottom by a short swelling, which suddenly increased the diameter. This entasis was surrounded by a row of leaves, again characterizing the ascending bundle as stems. Leaves were also added at the foot of the buds, these being out of place and impairing the consequential development expressed in the column of Beni-hassan, though corresponding well enough with the treatment adopted for the similar enlargement at the foot of the shaft. The four little flowers, which were tied in by the bands of the Beni-hassan column, naturally became eight in number with the duplication of the stems and blossoms. They were before much diminished in size, but here became an entirely unorganic, rectangular ornament. The binding ribbons of the neck retained their original variegated colors; but the painting of the capital itself put aside every likeness to the natural colors of the flower. (Fig. 13 a.)

An entirely picturesque transformation also affected the lotos-column, and led to the second phase of its development. The stone shaft was cut cylindrically, the memberings being omitted and all reminiscences of stem and bud being abandoned. The wreaths of leaves remained at the lower end of the shaft and of the capital, as did also the binding ribbons with the little flowers, which were still more broadened and distorted. The rest of the column gave space for painted, or rather coilanaglyphic, representations of devotional acts, for the cartouches of the kings and for hieroglyphic inscriptions (Fig. 13 b.) The capital, which had before consisted of four and of eight buds, became consolidated to a single one; the binding ribbon of the neck was retained without a function. It was the more natural to open the single bud to the calyx of a flower, a graceful and satisfactory solution of the problem which retained its sway henceforth in Egypt much as the Corinthian capital, so nearly related in form to this Egyptian calyx, predominated over other Roman varieties. The{20} shaft and the ribbons remained, as in the painted column of the Memnonium. (Fig. 13 b.) So also did the row of leaves at the base of the capital; the little flowers were entirely omitted, and the upper part of the calyx was thickly covered with royal seals painted between upright ornaments, so small that their line does not affect the composition of the whole. (Fig. 14.) A discord resulted from the retention of the abacus plinth of the former bud capital in its original proportions, a defect which in some degree defeated the æsthetic advantages of the boldly projecting calyx as a medium between the vertical support and the horizontal mass above it.

The calyx capital attained no typical and established form in Egyptian architecture, even as the Corinthian capital received no formal development in the Hellenic art which originated it. The decoration of the calyx continued to offer a wide field for the inventive talent of the Egyptian architect, which was here employed with most fortunate results. The ruined buildings, especially of later periods, show hundreds of different capitals, from the simplest upright forms of the papyrus to elaborately turned and rolled leaves; these floral ornaments being almost always composed and conventionalized with admirable taste.

A decided advance was made by separating the upper edge of the calyx, with notches, into four large petals, although the decoration did not have sufficient influence to affect the column as a whole. The most satisfactory among the varieties of the floral column, and that most thoroughly carried out, was certainly the palm; the capital{21} of which was characterized as a crown of leaves, and the shaft, by an imitation of the bark, as a palm-stem. The tall leaves rendered a greater height of the palm capital necessary; thus increased, it most closely approached the Corinthian in beauty of outline. The division of the great calyx into eight lobes was another result of this decoration. As the palm capital was frequently placed among others, especially by the Egyptians of later periods, it naturally had the effect upon the varieties to be brought into harmony with it of lowering the necking of their shafts in the same measure as had been necessary for itself. (Fig. 15.)

The slender proportions prevalent during the time of the Ptolemies caused the abacus plinth upon the calyx to be heightened to a cube, and even increased to twice the height of the capital itself, in which case it was ornamented by the heads of Athor and Typhon, or by the entire dwarfed figure of the latter. In rare cases, piers take the place of columns in the temple courts, and are masked by statues of Osiris or of Typhon. (Fig. 16.) These figures have of themselves no constructive function as supports, and are not to be classed with the caryatides and telamones of Greece.

The great variety of form in the column and capital is not shared by the entablature. This consists, as seen at the tombs of Beni-hassan, of two members. The lower stretches from pier to pier, or from column to column, as a connecting epistyle. The upper, representing the horizontal ceiling, reposes thereupon, and is crowned by the universal cornice-moulding—a boldly projecting Egyptian scotia. Between these two members there is a continuous roundlet, often characterized, by its ornament of an encircling ribbon, as a bundle of reeds. The cornice is sometimes marked by rows of reed-leaves{22} bent forward at the top, the epistyle covered with hieroglyphics. In later times, the decoration of the entablature became more florid, repetitions of the uræos serpent appearing as a cornice ornament.

The columns of the new kingdom had, meanwhile, been given up in the rock-cut tombs, where they first occurred. Yet the cavern sepulchres themselves remained so much in vogue that they even served the kings of the Theban dynasties in place of pyramids. Their tendency was rather to burrow deeply into the cliff than to create large sepulchral chambers, where the support of columns would have been necessary. The principal intention of the excavators—to make the royal burial-place as inaccessible as possible—was adverse to any monumental development of the interior. The decoration was restricted to paintings upon the long and repeatedly closed corridors, and sufficed only to rank these above the bare channels of the pyramids. The formation of the earth on the border of the desert offered no ground for the exterior architectural treatment of these graves, and a simple portal is generally all that designates the entrance to the shafts which were the sepulchres of the Theban dynasties. The plan of that at Biban-el-Moluc is given in Fig. 17.

Fig. 15.—Capitals from Edfou.

The temples of the new kingdom with their numerous halls and courts offered, on the other hand, most ample scope for the application of columnar architecture. These extended series of{23} strangely enclosed rooms and courts, though richly decorated with paintings, would have seemed bare within and without if the column had not entered into their composition, and if the building had not been expanded and ornamented by its help. With the floral orders, the temple interior became an architectural organism truly deserving of study and admiration.

With exception of that portion of the structure which stood before the chief portal, and cannot be considered as an integral part of the building, every Egyptian temple was divided into three principal parts, contained within an oblong enclosure: namely, the court, the hall of columns, and the holy of holies—a series of cellas. (Fig. 18.) Long rows of sphinxes generally stand facing the avenue which leads to the entrance of the temple, and prepare for the sacred silence within. The doorway is flanked by two enormous towers, so-called pylons, formed like steep truncated pyramids. The walls of these masses of masonry, ornamented with coilanaglyphic paintings, show slots upon the front for the reception of the high flag-poles which are represented upon contemporary wall-decorations. The towers are crowned with the scotia cornice, the roundlet of which is continued down the angles. Within they are pierced by stairways and small chambers, scantily lighted by narrow slits in the wall. It is probable that the summits of these pylons, without doubt the highest standpoints in the valley of the Nile, served as observatories for the Egyptian astronomers and astrologers; a practical use was thus added to the original purpose of monumental decorative gate-ways. Two or four colossal sitting figures were generally placed before the pylons, and sometimes also two obelisks, bearing the dedicatory inscriptions of the temple.

The obelisks are among the most curious and characteristic structures of Egypt. They are very comparable to the pyramids,{24} and perhaps may even be regarded as small pyramids placed as an apex upon a tall shaft. Few deviate from this type; one of the obelisks of Carnac, crowned by a profile like a pointed arch, and the obelisk of Medinet-el-Fayoum with rounded end, are exceptions. The obelisks are monolithic. In consideration of the difficulty of procuring so large a block from the granite quarries, of transporting its enormous weight and erecting its tall mass, this peculiarity added greatly to the imposing effect of the monument. The delight of the later Roman emperors in the possession of obelisks caused many of these to be transported to Rome, where they still form prominent ornaments of the city. Most of those remaining in Egypt lie overthrown, and often deeply buried under the accumulating earth of centuries. The two before the Temple of Luxor were both erect until 1831, in which year one of them was removed to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The removal during 1877-78 of an obelisk, and its erection in London, show what difficulties must have attended the quarrying, carving, transport, and elevation of these gigantic monuments in primitive times.[C]

The chief portal of the temple, flanked by the two pylons, opens upon the great peristyle court. The colonnades are upon two or three of its sides, seldom towards the entrance. In the most elaborate instances, as the Temple of Luxor, the court is bordered with double rows of supports—columns alternating with piers—before which stand the{25} above-mentioned figures of Osiris. Sometimes this peristyle court is duplicated, as in the great Memnonium of Ramses II. and the temples of Medinet-Abou and Luxor, the two spaces being separated either by smaller second pylons (Medinet-Abou), by a simple wall pierced by a gate (Memnonium), or by a narrow colonnade between them (Luxor). In such cases the architectural treatment of the courts differs, the second usually being more richly provided with columns and piers than the first. Smaller temples are often so built against these courts that they can be entered only from within them (Fig. 20.), while they project, with the greater part of their plan, beyond the chief enclosure.

Fig. 18.—Southern Temple of Carnac.

Fig. 19.—Temple of Edfou.

The second chief division of the building—the hall of columns, the hypostyle—is entered from the court, either directly or through new pylons. This space, generally not so deep as the outer peristyle, is entirely covered, the stone ceiling being upheld by close-standing columns, the number of which varies greatly according to the dimensions of the building. In the southern Temple of Carnac, the plan of which (Fig. 18.) may be regarded as typical of the usual Egyptian arrangement, eight columns are sufficient, while the dimensions of the hypostyle hall of Medinet-Abou render twenty-four necessary—a number increased to thirty-two in Luxor, forty-eight in the Memnonium of Ramses II., and to a maximum of one hundred and thirty-four in the Great Temple of Carnac. Smaller halls may have received their light through the portal. The upper half of the intercolumniations of the court colonnades was also occasionally left open, as shown by Fig. 19.; but, with the enormous dimensions of the hypostyle and the close ranges of shafts so frequent, a more perfect system of illumination was necessary. The light of day was procured for the hall by an eminently satisfactory arrangement,{26} which gives the key to the true manner of lighting any enclosed space from above—the clerestory—so effectively developed in later ages. The two rows of columns nearest the longitudinal axis were made half as high again as their neighbors, thus lifting their entablature and ceiling well above that of the remaining space. These two ceilings on different levels were connected by piers placed upon the next range of shorter columns, which supported the edge of the higher covering. The light entered between these piers, their openings being but little impeded by stone tracery. The central aisle was thus brilliantly lighted, and, under the cloudless sky, rays and reflections could find their way into the most remote corners of the forest of columns. As shown by Fig. 21., the larger central columns were distinguished by the broad-spreading calyx capital from the others, which retained the simpler forms of the folded bud. The effect of such a hall, especially of the great hypostyle of Carnac, must have been magnificently rich and imposing. The dimensions of the chief columns were in this instance gigantic. They were{27} 22.86 m. high. Their calyx capitals were 6.10 m. in diameter, the epistyle beams 6.70 by 1.83 by 1.22 m. The entire hall was 91.44 m. in length. Walls and columns were thickly covered with carved and painted decorations, which were kept well subordinated to the grand forms of the architecture, and were so blended by the varying light and shade that a rich and sober effect was produced by the somewhat gaudy colors.

One example, the Temple of Soleb, shows this second division of the building also repeated: that such a duplication was less common than that of the courts is explained by the far greater requirements of its construction. The last of the three chief temple divisions was reached from the hypostyle hall, either by a simple gateway or by a third pylon portal. The Egyptian priests performed their mystic rites and guarded the sacred animals in a{28} series of chambers, the innermost of which—the real temple cella—was exceedingly small in proportion to the entire building, being sometimes even cut from a single stone.

As the temple served the priesthood for a dwelling, a cloister-like arrangement of this third space was necessary. The long-accepted supposition that even the royal palaces were included in the temple enclosure has recently been questioned, although the hieratic character of the monarchy, and the strict religious ritual by which the life of the king in his function of high-priest was governed, even to the smallest particulars, would render this of itself not improbable. The plan of the Great Temple of Carnac shows the dwelling of the priests, with its halls and smaller rooms, separated by a court from the places of worship.

Fig. 21.—Section of the Hypostyle Hall, Great Temple of Carnac.

Fig. 22.—Chapel upon the Platform of the Temple of Dendera.

Magnificently as the temple architecture of the Egyptians had developed since the eighteenth dynasty, its advance had mainly affected the interior. The temples of every other people were built with more or less reference to an imposing exterior effect, but those of Egypt generally remained the fortress-like enclosures which had become typical in the earliest ages of the land’s history. The peripteral plan, indeed, occurs in several small cellas of the ancient kingdom, but it was exceptional, and did not arrive at any systematic development. It has been seen that Egyptian architecture, though it chanced upon the channelled shaft of the Proto-Doric column, was apparently unable to utilize this motive, the great importance of which{29} was not recognized in the land of the Nile. The peripteral temple plan is a similar advance, which, not fitted for the requirements and tendencies of Egyptian architecture, lay dormant for centuries. The unbroken fortress-like walls of the temple were not pierced and resolved into the surrounding pteroma until the sceptre of Egypt had been swayed during three centuries by the semi-Hellenic Ptolemies. These rulers, warned by the example of Cambyses, were wise enough not to interfere with their Egyptian subjects in their most sensitive point of religious conceptions, rendered sacred by the traditions of thousands of years. But they did not hesitate to reintroduce into the land the exterior splendor of the peripteral plan, by that time so fully developed in Greece. The free and cheerful religious rites of the Greeks, performed before the temple, and not within it, agreed, as did the natural character of the people, with the peripteral temple, which was opened outwardly by its pteroma. It was otherwise with the mysterious and sombre precision of the Egyptian ritual, which demanded absolute seclusion. Though the peripteral temple plan was in some measure brought into vogue by the Ptolemies, it was, in Egypt, deprived of its chief characteristic—the freely opened intercolumniation. The Romans, in their desire similarly to combine columnar architecture with entire enclosure, merely decorated{30} exterior walls with engaged shafts and pilasters, giving up the columns as supporting members of independent function, and using them only as a suggestive ornament. This merely decorative treatment, rare in Greece, was not adopted in Egypt until the latest times. The Egyptian preferred to place a screen-like wall, half the height of the columns, in each opening; this hid all the interior from view, even when the building was of small dimensions, as in Fig. 22., and permitted the access of light and air through the upper half of the intercolumniation. The one used as an entrance was also closed by a door-frame of greater height than the side screens. Upon the corners of the peripteral building inclined piers were often retained, as a reminiscence of the original enclosure wall as well as for greater constructional security. This is shown by the Temple of Philæ. (Fig. 23.) That the arrangement of outstanding columns did not entirely supplant the closed surrounding walls is evident from the same plan, where both methods occur side by side in a group of buildings of the same date.

There were parts of the narrow valley of the Nile where the cliffs of the desert so advanced upon the river as to leave absolutely no room for the erection of temples occupying so much ground. The inhabitants here had recourse to grotto temples; that is to say, they transferred the principal rooms of the sanctuary to an excavation in the cliff. When the space between rock and stream permitted it, the courts and pylons were built, and only the hypostyle hall and the holy of holies, reduced to the minimum necessary for the performance of the rites, were cut from the rock. This is the case in El-Cab, Redesie, Silsilis, and Girsheh. The last of these, the largest, had a court with Osiris piers upon the sides and with four columns upon the front, which seems never to have been flanked by pylons. Its largest excavated space, apparently corresponding to a second{31} court, is also decorated upon the longer sides with Osiris piers. Thereupon follows a narrow hall, which but inadequately represents the hypostyle; and, finally, as the holy of holies, a small chamber with an altar.

Fig. 24.—Façade of the Rock-cut Temple of Abou-Simbel.

Far more important than these are the grotto temples of Abou-Simbel, in the vicinity of the second cataract, where the portals are also cut wholly from the rock. The larger of the two even attempts to approach, as well as is possible, the enormous pylons of the great Theban temples. (Fig. 24.) To this end the gentle inclination of the cliff was cut away to the talus angle of the Egyptian walls and pylons, and the cornice above, of roundlet and scotia, was worked from the rock. Four such colossal sitting figures, as are often placed before the pylons, were also cut from the cliff—an effective ornament and an economy of labor thus being secured. The representation of the portal between two pylons was given up; the whole front formed one wall in which the entrance-door was cut without further decoration. The empty space above the opening was filled by a high-relief, carved within an oblong{32} niche. (Fig. 24.) The entrance, which has now been cleared of the sand, leads in natural order to a space corresponding to the court of the free-standing temples; it is somewhat similar to that of Girsheh, which was also erected by Ramses II., though more imposing and of better proportions. (Fig. 25.) A following room, the ceiling of which is supported by four piers, suggests the temple hypostyle, here much dwindled in extent from the difficulty of its excavation as well as from the general restriction of this space in Nubian monuments compared with those of Central Egypt. The innermost chambers of the holy of holies are not only as small as those of the free-standing temples, but are reduced in number.

Fig. 25.—Hall of the Rock-cut Temple of Abou-Simbel.

The second rock-cut temple of Abou-Simbel, situated near the one described, is of smaller dimensions. It has upright colossal statues upon the front, which, instead of being cut in the round, have more the effect of reliefs from the fact that they stand in niches, a difference arising from the greater steepness of the cliff at{33} this point. The treatment appears rational in consideration of the smaller amount of material thereby removed, though the unmonumental effect of the reliefs, which lean with the inclination of the wall, is an unfortunate result of this economy. The first hall, analogous to the temple court, has its ceiling supported by six piers, which are decorated upon the side towards the central aisle by Athor masks. Three entrances lead from this hall into a narrow space, here entirely at variance with the character of a hypostyle, and through this into the holy of holies. Notwithstanding the contraction of the two inner departments, the three principal divisions of the free-standing buildings can be recognized in all rock-cut temples.

Fig. 26.—Interior of a House. Egyptian Wall-painting.

The existing ruins allow a comparatively clear understanding of the religious architecture of Egypt, in which class the monumental tombs must be reckoned as well as the various forms of temples; but we are left almost entirely uninstructed as to the nature of the private dwellings. The plan of the cloisters within the great temple of Carnac (compare Fig. 20.) is indeed clear, though, being{34} only a portion of a larger scheme, it had no individual or exterior expression. The manner in which these spaces were roofed and lighted is not evident.

The so-called royal pavilion of Medinet-Abou is a complete puzzle in its development of plan and assumed connection with other structures; it can only be held to prove that some private buildings were of several stories. Other peculiarities here noticeable are windows framed by lintels and jambs of enormous blocks, and rounded battlements above a projecting cornice.

Egyptian sculptures and wall-paintings often represent the interiors of well-to-do private houses and of palaces; they show the plans of dwellings and adjoining vegetable-gardens so well that the very products of the latter can be distinguished; but, though these plans designate the separate rooms and their entrances, it is still impossible to comprehend the general arrangement of a normal house, or its exterior appearance. The views of the interiors, with their slim columns and narrow entablatures, with a system of perspective which shows things above one another instead of behind one another, with their evident misrepresentations and constructive impossibilities, must have stood in very much the same relation to the Egyptian reality as the fictitious architecture of the Pompeian wall-decorations does to the buildings of the Greeks and Romans. The architectural details introduced by the painter served only as a frame for the figures or for the contents of the store-rooms which he represented.

It may be concluded that, when private dwellings were more pretentious than the single room necessary to provide the most imperative shelter, columns were not excluded from them; and, from the absence of any remains of these supports, it is probable they were of wood. The ruins and rubbish of sun-dried bricks, which compose the overthrown cities hitherto excavated, show that the great majority of dwellings were no more than low hovels.

Even palaces seldom went beyond a series of small chambers, and thus did not present an important architectural problem. This is illustrated by the gigantic labyrinth, famed in so many fables of antiquity, and somewhat known by the excavations of Lepsius in the Fayoum. (Fig. 27.) A great number of small chambers are here{35} grouped in three rectangular wings around an oblong space, which was probably divided into several courts. The walls remaining do not show that geometrical regularity of arrangement described by Herodotos, Strabo, Diodoros, and Pliny, but a really labyrinthic aggregate of small chambers, the destination of which is not clear. The pyramid which closes the fourth side of the square is alone of monumental importance. It seems possible that, instead of one or more palaces, we have here the remains of some city. It is certainly wrong to connect the work with the Dodecarchia (twenty-sixth dynasty, 685 to 525 B.C.): the twelve pretenders would hardly have united to erect a common monument. In the list of Manetho, Amenophis III., the sixth king of the twelfth dynasty, is mentioned as the founder, a notice corroborated by inscriptions discovered on the site.

Fig. 27.—Labyrinth of the Fayoum.

That the private buildings were so unimportant in comparison with the religious architecture of Egypt is explained by the excessive{36} subjugation of the people to a monastic ritual, and by the favorable character of the Egyptian climate. It is necessity that prompts invention, and Egypt, with its ever-cloudless sky and constant temperature, required no protection against the inclemency of the weather; the climate did not force man to spend his days within doors, nor did it destroy the lightest shelter. In the absence of rain, the most primitive horizontal ceiling was sufficient. According to the religious conceptions of the Egyptian, it was more important for him to prepare a permanent house for his death-sleep—he had more at heart the protection of his corpse than of his living body. Thus thousands of graves have been preserved, while science cannot find a single dwelling remaining to betray even the general character of Egyptian domestic architecture. To these considerations it must be added that the dwellings stood in the valley of the Nile, and have been subjected to annual inundations which have formed a considerable alluvial deposit, while the graves were almost without exception situated upon the changeless cliffs that border on the desert.

The architecture of Egypt was practised in a manner to show almost no historical development—with the sculpture this is the case in still greater degree. The most ancient carved remains, which with reasonable security may be assigned to the fifth dynasty, show the formal system, retained during the subsequent twenty centuries, as already perfected. Even at that early date the network of lines, which the Egyptian sculptors (more as mechanics than as artists) followed down to the time of the Ptolemies, was already calculated and introduced as a canon.

Besides figures of the gods, the sculpture of Egypt is rich in the images of kings, queens, and prominent subjects; and in such portraits the observation of the living model, of the peculiarities of character which lead to the differences of exterior appearance, would seem to be a natural consequence. But as the individual disappeared in the mass of the Egyptian people, so the appreciation of individuality was almost wholly lacking in the Egyptian artist. Sculptors and painters worked without the least desire for pre-eminence in ability and distinction, without thought of perpetuating their names, and the work they produced expressed these{37} faults. As Brunn truly remarks, we can look upon whole rows of Egyptian sculptures without a question ever arising in our minds as to the authorship of this or that work, without observing that one is superior to the others, or that any were much above manufactures. The work became what the artist felt himself personally to be—a mere link in a monotonous chain. The result of this is that the statues generally represent an entirely abstract human being—not an absolute ideal, for that can hardly be said to exist in any art, but a type of the Egyptian race, well understood and unalterably repeated. As soon as the art had to a certain degree mastered the normal appearance of the human body, it contented itself therewith and came to a standstill. The peculiarities in the living model or in the attributed characters of the deities were rarely considered by the artist, who only distinguished by attributes what should be otherwise expressed; he did not attempt to show the effect of the mind upon the outer being, and thus to give to sculpture its true importance.

Egyptian Profile.       Fig. 28.       Greek Profile.

The description of single Egyptian works is consequently almost the same as the consideration of the entire sculpture and painting of the land—the more so as the artist not only employed generally one and the same conventional figure, but in position and movement mainly alternated between two types. The statues are, with a few exceptions, either sitting or in an act between standing and stepping, which does not appear to be an advance, because the feet are too near together; both soles being flat upon the ground, the centre of gravity falls between the two legs, almost more upon the one behind than upon the one before. A figure seems to move only when the body, advanced before the centre of its two supports, throws the greatest part of its weight upon the forward leg, and thus relieves the hinder foot, which, with uplifted heel, touches the ground with the toes, in readiness to be removed. Both sitting and standing statues have the arms pressed closely to the body—the former with bent elbows and hands resting flat upon the knees, the latter with arms hanging straightly and stiffly, the hands holding the so-called Nile key; or folded upon the breast, the hands grasping attributes, crook and plough or whip. Individual action is in every case excluded. If the formation of the body be more closely examined, the following peculiarities are remarkable: The head, as the{38} comparison of it with a Greek type at Fig. 28. shows, deviates so greatly from the normal oval that it could almost be drawn within a square, the principal line of the face being about parallel to the back of the head, as is the flat outline of the top of the skull to the line from the chin to the neck. The general directions of the eye, the mouth, and the ear are not perpendicular to the sides of the parallelogram, inclining too markedly upward; the comparatively large ear is placed half as high again from the throat as it should be. These deviations are in some measure explained by the peculiarities of race characteristic of the Orientals, and especially of the Egyptians—by the different formation of the skull and position of the eye. The forehead is almost straight, being on a line with the upper lip; and, as it recedes from the nose, does not project at all. It is rendered still more unimportant by the curved ridge of the brows lacking decision, and the eye itself wanting in depth. The eye has remained in the rough condition of a primitive imitation of nature—thick strips surround it in place of lids, and continue, the upper overlapping the under, beyond its exterior angle towards the ear. The gently curved, round, broad nose projects but little over the upper lip, which, instead of preparing the close of the oval towards the chin, is pushed forward like the lower lip, upward and outward. The closed, sensually broad lips are sharply outlined. The{39} corners of the mouth, slightly drawn upward, give, with the similar inclination of the angles of the eyes, a certain expression of smiling sarcasm not intended by the designer, and consequently cold and stiff. The chin is flat and pointed in profile, the line from it to the short and thin neck almost straight.

Such is the type that was retained through thousands of years, so unchangeably that even the sexes are scarcely to be distinguished by the heads. Male figures often have a kind of chin beard, cut at right angles, and bound on with ribbons which can sometimes be distinctly traced. The heads, and through them the whole figures, are characterized by head-dresses, referable to one fundamental form—the pshent, a high cap like a tiara; but they have been so modified from their prototype that the Description de l’Égypte, pl. 115, shows thirty distinct varieties.

The deities are frequently recognizable by the heads of animals—of a lion, ram, cow, ape, jackal, crocodile, hawk, or ibis, as the case may be. The worship of nature, peculiar to Egypt, found a better expression in these symbols than in the monotonous representations of man, in marked contrast to the incorporation of Hellenic myths, where, in the monstrous conjunction of human and animal forms, the human head was rarely given up, it being more generally placed upon the body of an animal.

The figure, as accepted by the Egyptian designer, was, to the smallest details, drawn according to a network of lines. Diodorus states it to have had 21¼ units in height, the unit being probably the length of the nose. The shoulders are drawn upward, and, like the flat breast, are broad; the hips, on the contrary, are narrow and weakly modelled: they are girded with a cloth which appears{40} carefully folded and adjusted, but, with all its tightness, does not fit the forms of the body. When upon sitting figures, this cloth often stands out as stiffly and straightly as if carved of wood, giving no indication of the true nature of its material. The lean arms are muscular, dry, and hard; the hands are rendered clumsy by the equally thick and almost equally long fingers. The legs are not powerful, and rather slim, indicating great elasticity, and, like all other parts of the body, the ability to endure great exertion. The knees are sharp and drawn with anatomical understanding; the feet are narrow and long, as are also the toes, which, lying in their entire length upon the ground, do not greatly differ in dimensions and form. In female figures the breasts are fully developed, the nipples being formed like a rosette; a closely fitting gown reaches from the broad neck-ornament, common with both sexes, to the ankles, but, being represented without reference to the material and without the most necessary folds, appears so elastic that its existence is only surely to be perceived at the borders.

The most ancient sculptures and the later works of Nubia are somewhat heavy and full, those of the best period (the time of Ramses) more slim and elastic. After the fifth century B.C. the figures become better modelled, and a certain influence of Greek sculpture is betrayed. But the ancient type remained in the chief characteristics unchanged until the end of the Ptolemaic dynasties, and even to the later ages of the Roman Empire. Those works of Greek and Roman sculptors, so popular during the age of Hadrian, which borrowed the costume and position of Egyptian{41} statues while having nothing else in common with Egyptian art (such, for instance, as the numerous figures of Antinous to be found in almost all the larger museums), must not be classed with the truly national works executed in Egypt and for that country.

The monotony of Egyptian sculpture was not without some exceptions. Less pretentious works, where the necessity of canonic idealization seems not to have been so imperative—as in the well-fed form of the so-called schoolmaster in the museum of Boulac (Fig. 30.), which shows not only in the head, but in the entire body, an undeniable portrait—make it questionable whether the conventionalized representations may not be more owing to the restraint of religious authority and tradition, to the hieratic laws which exercised so complete a sway over the life of the country in every respect, than to any absolute incapability of the Egyptian artist for individual characterization.

Fig. 31.—Lion of Reddish Granite. (British Museum.)

Egyptian sculpture, thus under the ban of religious conservatism, always dealt more successfully with the forms of animals than with human beings and deities. In hunting scenes there is wonderful spirit and character in the drawing of the dogs, and of the animals which they attack. The artist attained an elastic and life-like force in the representation of all animal forms, even when these were compelled into monstrous combinations with human members. The most common of the latter are the androsphinxes, which differ from the Greek sphinx in being male—having the head and breast of a man and the body of a crouching lion. At times the human head is supplanted by that of a ram or hawk. Rams were also{42} treated as sphinxes, especially before the temples of Ammon and Kneph. The most important androsphinx is the well-known colossus of Gizeh with the head of Thothmes IV. The heads of the sphinxes seem usually to have been portraits of kings. This gigantic guardian of the necropolis of Memphis, the most enormous monumental figure of the world, with space between the outstretched front legs for a chapel there built, is now again buried to the neck by the shifting sand of the pyramid plateau after having been excavated with great labor. Its face alone is 12.2 m. long. But it is in cases where the entire lion is represented without deformation that Egyptian sculpture attains its greatest perfection. (Fig. 31.)

A great majority of the Egyptian works of sculpture were cut with marvellous patience in the hardest materials, in variously colored granite, diorite, syenite, and basalt. Limestone and alabaster were rarely employed for colossal or life-size statues, but were used more frequently for works of smaller dimensions; these were also burned in clay with a surface of blue or green glazing, or were cut in more valuable stones, such as agate, jasper, carnelian, and lapis-lazuli. Enamelled clay idols were manufactured in great numbers; modern museums contain hundreds of these little figures of perfectly similar form. The so-called scarabæus is also very common—beetle-shaped bodies of clay, or of the above-named stones—with incised figures or hieroglyphics upon their lower surface. Such amulets were perforated and worn as beads, and were placed loosely in the coffins with the mummies.

The artistic manufacture of colored glass was extensive. Fine metal-work was less common, although ornaments of enamelled gold, silver, and copper of high artistic value have occasionally been found. Wood-carving was practised upon the mummy-coffins. Although the valley of the Nile did not produce large pieces of a satisfactory material, this lack was supplied by gluing together layers of palm or sycamore wood, and hiding the defects of this process by a painted priming of stucco. The coffins themselves are in so far works of sculpture as they represent upon the cover the form of the swathed body placed within them, and even show the face as exposed.

The sculpture of reliefs was less developed and less correct than{43} of the round. As the relief was always very low, and could not express the greater projections, the artist’s desire to represent the human body clearly and completely led to an unfortunate conflict between the profile and front view of the figure. While mostly drawn in profile, and showing particularly the head and legs in side view, which is the more favorable for representation in low-relief, the shoulders and breast are developed in the other direction, and are seen as from in front. It is only in this position that both arms are visible—an important consideration to the artist, whose object was solely to represent some action or attributes. It was also felt as a difficulty that in a relief of the side view the visible shoulder should project farther than any other part of the body, the breadth of the breast and arms being more than double that of the head. The primitive designer, to avoid these objections, resorted to a forced and clumsy torsion of the body, which may be noticed in the childhood of almost every art—in the Assyrian as well as in the most ancient Greek. The head, with exception of the eye, which was represented as in front, was taken in profile; shoulders and breast from in front, but arms and hands, as well as hips, legs, and feet, in profile again. The lower the relief, the less could the surface be modelled, and this led to a sharp demarcation of the outline, which exaggerated the peculiar leanness of the Egyptian race to a hard angularity.

Fig. 32.—Sculptural Work. Egyptian Wall-painting.

The relief is a transitional stage between sculpture and painting; it works upon a more or less flat surface, seeks its chief effect in outline,{44} and lends itself readily to the heightening of color. The most common Egyptian relief, which has been termed coilanaglyphic, being hollowed out, stands even nearer to painting than to sculpture. In real reliefs the surface is so cut away as to leave the figures embossed; but here the forms do not rise above the background, and the original plane remains untouched: the sculptor contented himself with firmly incising the outlines, and slightly rounding the forms of the body within them. This incised outline is clearly seen only by sharp side light, but it has the advantage of protecting the borders of the figures and thus securing the indestructibility of the representation. In other respects the coilanaglyphics are nothing else than paintings, the space within the carved outlines being colored in the same manner as are all Egyptian wall decorations. The limits of the latter art were thus greatly extended, for all temples were covered with such colored coilanaglyphics, while the stuccoed sides of rock-cut tombs and of brick masonry were richly ornamented by paintings.

The number of ancient painted decorations which have been preserved is very great, notwithstanding their age and the perishable nature of all pigments exposed to air and light. The subjects represented and often repeated are, for the greater part, religious scenes, which share the monotony of the strict Egyptian ritual, though often allowing an interesting insight into the customs of interment, the transport of mummies by the processional boat, the sacred dances and sacrifices. Representations of profane scenes are more varied and are exceedingly interesting; the technicalities of Egyptian art are shown by the cutting of a monolithic palm-column, the polishing of a granite chapel, the painting of walls, the writing of hieroglyphics upon tablets and papyrus, the carving and painting of sphinxes and statues (Fig. 32.), the transport of a colossal figure upon a sledge (Fig. 7.), the making of bricks and walling of brick masonry, the interior of houses (Fig. 26.), even the plans of dwellings{45} and gardens. Besides numerous tools and the products of manufacturing trades, there may be recognized upon these paintings weavers, rope-makers, the preparers of paper and of linen cloth, ship-builders, carpenters with hand-saw and auger, and the cutters of bows and lances (Fig. 33.), who employ adzes quite similar to those still in use. Commerce on land and sea is represented by wares, unpacked or in bales, by scales, various kinds of wagons and trading vessels, etc., all shown in the clearest manner possible. Ploughs, sowing and harvesting, the gathering of figs and grapes, the pressing of oil and wine, illustrate the condition of agriculture; while the especial ability of the Egyptians for animal representations is exercised in the hunting scenes of lions, tigers, buffaloes, jackals, and gazelles; by the snaring of birds and fishes in nets, as well as by the admirably characterized figures of apes, porcupines, etc. There are also historical paintings, great battle scenes, the storming of cities, and the triumph of the returning victors, who bring with them booty and prisoners, the nationality of whom is often readily distinguishable by peculiarities of physiognomy and costume. (Fig. 34.) The Egyptian kings appear of superhuman size, either fighting from splendid war-chariots, or striding forward to sacrifice their kneeling enemies, a dozen of whom, seized at once by the hair, are decapitated at a blow.

Fig. 34.—Prisoners of Different Nationalities. Egyptian Wall-painting.

Extended and varied as these Egyptian representations were, and instructive as that which through their agency has been preserved now is, it yet must be confessed that the painting was more a conventional picture-writing than an art. The seven colors used{46}—red, blue, brown, yellow, green, black, and white—are, as a rule, applied simply, without mixture or variation, and without much reference to the appearance of nature. At least, it is very rarely that any striving after natural effect is to be noticed; that, for instance, the skin of a negress appears bluish-gray through a partially transparent white drapery, or that the typical red-brown complexion of an Egyptian, under similar conditions, is of a broken yellow. Within the sharply drawn outlines the colors are flat and without any modification by light and shade, upon the changing effects of which all pictorial illusion is based. This illusion is the fundamental principle of painting, the aim of which is to render the appearance of objects. It being here entirely lacking, we cannot properly speak of an art of painting in Egypt, or, indeed, in antiquity at all, before the time of Polygnotos. Egyptian paintings are entirely of the nature of ornament; the representation of human beings is conventionalized in the same manner as are floral ornaments,—while imitated to a certain degree from nature, it is simplified according to the requirements of decorative laws. The actions shown are all without truth and life. The beauty of decoration demands a certain harmony in the choice of colors, which is there unfettered; in Egyptian paintings this is sought and attained at the cost of truth to nature. It was not distasteful to the Egyptian to see the same figure repeated a dozen times in absolute similarity, for an ornament can always bear repetition.

To these considerations must be added a marked peculiarity of Egyptian painting. Although the art had been restricted to the portrayal of merely exterior actions, even this end could hardly have been attained without the complement of a written explanation, which was here so adjoined as to harmonize with the figures in composition and even in color. This conjunction is far more intimate than is that of picture and text in an illustrated chronicle: the hieroglyphic writing and the painting are closely allied in character. It was only a step from the one to the other, and their limits are sometimes hardly distinguishable, especially in the stucco paintings of the mummy-coffins and the pen and brush drawings upon papyrus manuscripts, where the carelessness of the execution increases the similarity. The hieroglyphic inscriptions might even be considered{47} as the extreme consequence of the hieratically conventionalized pictures.

The painting of Egypt existed unchanged for a period of more than two thousand years, with a stability unequalled in the other civilizations of the world. It was perhaps not quite so extensively employed in the ancient kingdom as in later times: paintings can be dated as far back as the third dynasty (3338 to 3124 B.C., according to Lepsius), but they were restricted to interior decoration. The walls of the pyramids were unadorned by color. After the practice of art had been greatly limited by the invasion of the Hycsos (from the thirteenth to the seventeenth dynasty, 2136 to 1591 B.C.), it arose with new vigor at the advent of the modern kingdom, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when the architecture which flourished at Thebes offered a wide field for painted decorations. From that time the walls lost their bareness, and richly colored ornaments were employed even upon the exterior, enlivening the dead and heavy character of Egyptian building and somewhat supplying the deficiency of its exterior development.

The art of Egypt attained its greatest elaboration—not, indeed, without some loss of national character—in the time of Alexander and the Ptolemies (332 to 30 B.C.), when Hellenic influence broke through the sombre massiveness of the unmembered walls and applied the brilliant decoration of colored columns to the exterior.

But, delightful as the island of Philæ appears because of these changes, it yet marks the commencing decline of Egyptian art, with the negation of the serious and mystical peculiarities of the land. The excellence of Egyptian technical processes could only delay the utter exhaustion and extinction of their art until the time of the later Roman empire.{48}

Fig. 35.—Assyrian Shrines. Relief from Corsabad.

THE traditional culture of the land of the Euphrates and Tigris is not younger than that of the Nile. Though the third dynasty (commencing, according to Berosos, with the twenty-third century B.C.) is the first of which we have monumental remains, it cannot be denied that long before that time an important people had inhabited the country, a nation very different from the nomadic hordes which then, as to-day, roved through the neighboring deserts. Several races of antiquity were conscious that the most primitive people of civilization had lived in the land of the two streams. The Jews considered that to have been their original home. The Patriarch Abraham had emigrated from Chaldæan Ur to Canaan. The Greek legend of Deucalion points to the history of Mesopotamia in the same manner as does the Jewish myth of the Deluge; the oldest Greek knowledge of astronomy, astrology, and the calculation of time seems to have been derived from the same source. The tale of the division of the nations in Babel, and their spreading over the face of the earth from that point, is certainly based upon the existence of a most ancient centre of civilization upon the banks of the Euphrates.

Fig. 36.—Temple of Mugheir (Ur).

The land offered no materials for monuments which, like those of Egypt, could stand uninjured through thousands of years. The narrow valley of the Nile is enclosed by the cliffs of the desert border, which seemed directly to encourage, by the excellence of the{49} building-stone there procured, the erection of immense and indestructible works. The plain of Mesopotamia, on the other hand, spread far beyond the courses of the two streams, losing itself in deserts without any line of eminences as a demarcation. The remote mountains offered no quarries at all comparable to those of Egypt. The soil was of good clay for the manufacture of bricks, but fuel was lacking with which to burn and harden them. The inhabitants of the land were generally obliged to content themselves with drying the clay in the sun, making up by the great thickness of the masonry for the firmness lacking to the material. They further strengthened the massive walls with a facing, or with buttress-like piers of burnt brick, or solidified the interior with alternate courses of this harder substance. The bitumen which still flows at Hit, on the Euphrates, north of Bagdad at the southern border of the higher alluvial terrace of Assyria, was an excellent substance for cementing the bricks; in more important works it was used alternately with lime-mortar: in common buildings, or in the interior of the thickest walls, clay kneaded with straw answered the purpose of a cement.{50}

It is natural that little should now remain of such structures. They could only survive the thousands of years that have elapsed since their building, when an immense thickness secured at least the kernel of the wall, or when the ruins of other buildings early covered and protected them. The remains of ancient Chaldæa are generally nothing more than formless heaps of rubbish, many of which have not yet been opened. Taylor, Loftus, and their predecessors, Ainsworth, Chesney, and Layard, discovered the ruins of over thirty cities in the lower half of the Mesopotamian plain. Of these, Mugheir (the ancient Ur), Warka (Erech), Niffer (Nipur), and Abou-Sharein offered the most important remains of great age; while the ruins of Sura, Tel Sifr, Calvadha, and Ackercuf are mainly of the later Chaldæan period.

Fig. 37.—Ruins of Warka.

Fig. 38.—Patterned Wall. Warka.

Recognizable among the rubbish-hills of Mugheir are the remains of a terrace which consisted of two oblong steps, the lowest measuring 60.35 by 40.54 m. in length and breadth, and about 12 m. in height, standing upon a platform raised 6 m. above the surrounding country. The greater part of this is overthrown and buried beneath its own material. The kernel of the solid structure is of sun-dried bricks; the facing, which is divided by buttresses, being of burnt brick cemented with bitumen. The whole is perforated by numerous small air-channels. The second step is only about half preserved, and that which it must once have supported has entirely disappeared. A remarkable inscription, repeated upon the four corners of the upper terrace, explained the purpose of the structure and the time of its erection. According to Sir H. Rawlinson’s interpretation of the cuneiform legend, this was dedicated to the deity Sin (Hurki) as a temple, and was first founded by King Urukh (about 2230 B.C.). The name of the spot is given as Ur, a city known from Biblical tradition. The inscriptions were not, however, contemporaneous with the foundation of the building, for, after giving a long line of kings, they at last name Nabonetos, the last King of Babylon, as the restorer of the temple—a fact which is further attested by the bricks themselves, those of the lower terrace having the name of Urukh, those of the upper of Nabonetos. The temple remains of Warka and of Abou-Sharein unite with these ruins of Mugheir to show that the Chaldæan temple consisted of a{51} simple and massive terrace of few steps, crowned, without doubt, by a chapel, which must be supposed richly decorated with colors and gold ornaments from the fragments of agate, alabaster, and fine marbles, of gold-plating and gilded nails, found in Abou-Sharein, and from the blue enamelled clay tiles of Mugheir. The sides of the great steps were either plainly buttressed or treated with projections,{52} as is the case with the terrace wall of a palace at Warka, shown by Fig. 37. There was here a complicated system of reeded projections and stepped incisions—cylinders and prisms which cannot be called pilasters, as they were without capitals, and probably also without base-mouldings. Another ruin of Warka (Fig. 38) has a colored wall-facing, made by driving conical pegs of terra-cotta about 0.1 m. long into the clay, so that the red, black, and whitish base surfaces form different patterns. This ruin is further interesting as giving some insight into the private architecture of the Chaldæans. Rooms were there found separated from one another by walls fully as thick as the enclosed spaces themselves were broad—a clumsy heaviness which shows what massive masonry the poor crumbling material necessitated. The existing remains suggest so strongly the arrangement of the later Assyrian palaces that there can be but little doubt that they, in some degree, served as a model for these latter; although the palace wall, with its revetment of alabaster, might be erected with less thickness. No trace of window-like openings can be observed in the ruins of Warka or in those of Abou-Sharein.

The principle of the arch, though not extensively employed, was well understood and occasionally introduced in Assyria. From a small grave-chamber discovered at Mugheir, we may conclude that it was not known in the ancient Chaldæan period. The roofing was then effected by a gradual projection of the horizontal courses of bricks until the opposite sides nearly touched each other at the top of the gable thus formed. (Fig. 39.) It may perhaps be assumed that this manner of covering by the so-called false arch and vault was only employed for very narrow spaces, while larger rooms were more naturally ceiled by wooden beams. The ruins of{53} Warka, though they do not give a very clear understanding of the fortifications of ancient Chaldæa, at least show that the city walls were not necessarily square, as had been concluded from the testimony of ancient writers, but, as in this case, followed the irregular outline of the city.

The political history of Chaldæa was from the earliest times greatly disturbed by internal divisions. At first the city Nipur, celebrated for its worship of Bel, appears to have been the most important place, at least of Southern Chaldæa. To this followed Ur or Hur, the city worshipping Hurki or Sin, then Nisin or Carrac, and, finally, Larsa, the present Senkereh. Upper Chaldæan Babylon, originally Ca-dimirra, does not seem to have become the only capital until the age of King Cammurabi, about 1500 B.C. A hundred years later Northern Mesopotamia, Assyria, began to gain predominance, and in the thirteenth century B.C. Babylon was conquered (for the first time?) by Tiglathi-Nin, a son of King Salmaneser of Assyria. Chaldæa soon regained its independence, but only to fall again into the power of the conqueror Tiglath-Pileser, and to remain for five centuries subjugated to Nineveh. The attempts to throw off this yoke of Assyrian authority were in vain; even the uprising under the bold Merodach-Baladan, 731 B.C., was not of long duration, and finally led to the depopulation and total destruction of the prominent Chaldæan cities by Sennacherib. The Assyrian Esar-haddon rebuilt Babylon; but it did not recover its ancient importance until the Satrap Nabopolassar revolted from his allegiance, and, with the help of the Medes, made an end of the kingdom of Nineveh; and until his son Nebuchadnezzar, after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., reduced even distant Egypt to vassalage, thus taking into possession the full heritage of the Assyrian empire in both south and west.

Fig. 40.—Bors-Nimrud. Temple-terrace of Borsippa.

Fig. 41.—Plan and Elevation of the Temple at Borsippa.
(From Oppert’s Measurements.)

Though the subjugation of the land by Assyria had not been without effect upon the civilization of Chaldæa, the general character of Babylonian art remained much the same through all these political changes. The last king, Nabonetos, could complete the temple of Ur, which Urukh had founded seventeen centuries before, as though there had been no interruption in the work. The terraced ruins show that there was no great difference in the architectural{54} treatment of ages so removed. Other city ruins show such an intermixture of ancient Chaldæan and Babylonian walls that their date can be determined only by inscriptions or by stamps upon the bricks. The earlier remains are predominant in Mugheir, Warka, and Abou-Sharein; but the later capital of the country, Babylon, the city of Nebuchadnezzar, is known almost exclusively by the imposing structures of the modern kingdom. Greek antiquity, up to the time of Alexander, was acquainted with this city of wonders only by fables. Even the explicit description of Herodotos is in great degree mythical, especially his astonishing account of the city walls: 480 stadia (96.557 m.) in length, 200 ells (100 m.) high, and 50 ells (25 m.) broad. The ruins have also proved the account of the famed hundred gates of the city walls, and the square network of straight streets which ran from these, to be hyperbolical. Such immense masses of masonry would, as Layard has maintained, certainly have left heaps of rubbish; and, in fact, the ruins of a much smaller city enclosure have been traced. The{55} irregular orientation of the palace plan is also incompatible with the conception that the city was divided up into squares with the regularity of a chess-board. The traditional account that the enormous terraced temple of Bel was built on the borders of the stream opposite the palace structures is certainly incorrect; for, while these latter are still represented by extensive brick ruins, there is not a trace upon the other bank, the supposed site, of massive terraces which could not possibly have so entirely disappeared. Nor could the stream have swept away so colossal a building; for a little north of Hillah, in the immediate vicinity of the spot where Herodotos describes the temple of Bel, there have been found the remains of a small Mylitta temple, which would have offered almost no resistance to an inundation. Yet Herodotos undoubtedly related, besides his fables, much that was correct about Babylon. His account of the temple of Bel seems only questionable in so far as the site is concerned; the rest of his description agrees perfectly with ruins which have been found about eleven kilometers westward, and are known by the name Bors-Nimrud. (Fig. 40.) The temple thus could not have belonged to the city proper of Babylon; and inscriptions mention the place as Borsippa, spoken of by Greek writers as a separate town, which could at best be regarded as a distant suburb of the extended Babylon. The immense hill of rubbish standing entirely isolated in the desert has a lower circumference of 685 m. This dimension agrees tolerably well with the six stadia given by Herodotos as the measure of the first step of the terraced pyramid. The regularly diminished seven steps, the “towers” of Herodotos, 7.5 m. high, reaching altogether a total altitude of 75 m., rose from a square substructure with a side of two stadia (180 m.) and a height of 22.5 m. The diagonals of these different terraces were not directly above one another, the steps being 9 m. broad in front and only 3.9 m. broad behind, while the sides were equal—6.3 m. This peculiarity of the ruin agrees with the flights of stairs described by Herodotos, which, notwithstanding the analogy of the palace temple of Kisr-Sargon, may here naturally be supposed to have been upon the front, where the terraces were sufficiently broad for this purpose. Fig. 41 is an attempt to restore the chief lines of the structure by means of the dimensions given by Oppert.{56} Upon the summit of this terraced pyramid stood the necessarily small temple, which, according to Herodotos, contained a spacious couch and a golden table, but no statue of the deity. The sides of the terraces are directed to the cardinal points of the compass, as was the case also with the ancient Chaldæan temple of Ur; and, as at Ur, inscribed cylinders were here walled in at the angles. These{57} relate that Nebuchadnezzar had magnificently completed the structure—“the temple-pyramid of the seven spheres, the wonder of Borsippa,” begun by a former king. Rawlinson and Oppert have concluded, from the remains of glazed bricks of different colors, that each of the seven terraces was dedicated to one of the seven planets of the ancients, and was characterized by its color—the upper, gold; the second, silver; the next, red, blue, yellow, white; and the lowest, black—according to the hues assigned to the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. The lowest terrace has a panelled architectural treatment similar to that noticed in the ruins at Warka and the palace temple at Kisr-Sargon. It is probable that these high terraces in the flat plains of Mesopotamia were elevations which served the Chaldæan astronomers for their celebrated observatories, as the pylons of temples upon the banks of the Nile were similarly used by the Egyptian priests. As Strabo speaks especially of an astronomical school at Borsippa, there can be little doubt that it was in some way connected with the terraced pyramid of the seven spheres.

The ruins of Hillah, Casr, Mudjelibeh, and Jumjuma give even less information concerning the palace buildings than the hill of Bors-Nimrud does concerning the form of the Chaldæan temple. These masses of masonry have for centuries served as quarries, and, as far distant as Bagdad, bricks, bearing the stamp of Nebuchadnezzar, betray that the material has been transported from the ruins of Babylon. Though the supply is by no means exhausted, this excavation has rendered much unrecognizable, and has so greatly increased the destruction that Layard held it impossible to discover a clew to the plan of the palace structure in the confusion of its overthrown and rifled rubbish. Oppert assumes the hill of Jumjuma, or Amran-ibn-Ali, as it is called from the Mohammedan chapel now standing upon it, to be the remains of the celebrated Hanging Gardens known as those of Semiramis, the wonder of the ancient world. But, plausible as his supposition is, it will hardly be possible to prove by existing remains the correctness of the description given by Diodoros of the Hanging Gardens, in itself more probable than the report followed by Strabo. Diodoros speaks of the Gardens as a terraced structure, the side of the square plan being about{58} 120 m. in length, with separate steps which ascended from the land side, while upon the banks of the river a steep wall formed the back of the highest terrace, measuring 15 m. vertically, and closing the gardens towards the water. The steps were constructed by the help of thirteen thick parallel walls, each being higher than the one next below it. They left between them twelve narrow corridors, the ceilings of which, like those over Assyrian canals, were probably vaulted, and were then covered with rushes and bitumen, burnt brick pavements and lead sheathing, so as to bear the stairways which connected the different terraces, the reservoirs for cascades and fountains, and the imposed garden—earth with large trees, etc. Pumping works in the highest of these covered corridors supplied the garden with the necessary water from the Euphrates.

The ruined terraces of Mudjelibeh (Babil), avoided by the Arabs as the scene of the punishment of the fallen angels, are so completely overthrown that it is not possible to determine whether the remains are those of a temple or of a palace. It is probable that they had some connection with the great pyramidal tomb of Belus, a structure which may be assumed to have been much like the stepped pyramid of Nimrud to be described below. The monument of Mudjelibeh was destroyed as early as the time of Xerxes II. It has since served as a quarry for the neighboring cities Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and has been demolished to the lowest terrace.

The enormous river embankments and dikes which protected Lower Mesopotamia from flood and drought, though now only to be traced by inconsiderable remains, are of the greatest importance and interest. The neglect of these invaluable works, and of the sluices and irrigating canals in connection with them, has reduced to a deserted and pestilential swamp that most fertile land known to Herodotos—where once a harvest of two and three hundredfold was returned to the tiller of the soil. Though there are vestiges of some ancient bridges in the land, it is not possible to decide whether the account given by Diodoros of the great tunnel constructed by Semiramis be true or fabulous.

There seems to have been no reason for the erection of such tall edifices in the vastly extended Babylon as the three and four storied houses described by Herodotos, and no analogy to such a{59} peculiarity exists in the great modern cities of the Orient. It must be remembered in this connection that the crumbling bricks to which the Mesopotamians were restricted would, in such high buildings, have demanded clumsily massive substructures and lower-story walls.

Though the ruins of Babylon have only recently been thoroughly examined, their existence has long been known. Benjamin of Tudela speaks of Bors-Nimrud as the Biblical Tower of Babel, and this local tradition has been handed down to the present day. The palace ruins of the great city have always been readily recognizable, and the one has been called Babel, the other Casr (palace), from time immemorial.

Fig. 42.—Plan of Babylon. (According to Rich.)

It is otherwise with the second great centre of Mesopotamia—Nineveh, the famed capital of the kingdom of Assyria, in the upper land of the great streams. As early as the beginning of this century, Carsten Niebuhr expressed the conviction that the remains of the overthrown city were to be sought among the hills of rubbish which lie opposite the present Mosul, beyond the Tigris; but the energetic Rich, who devoted so much time and labor to the barren ruins of Babylon, paid no attention to the site. Nineveh had{60} entirely disappeared, and was only traditionally known from the Book of Jonah and from the legend of Sardanapalos. It was during two visits to Mosul, in the years 1840 and 1842, that the eminent English traveller and statesman Sir A. H. Layard conceived the plan of undertaking investigations in the vicinity. He expressed his convictions at the time to the French consul, M. P. E. Botta, and in 1843 that gentleman commenced the excavation of the hill Coyundjic, which lay next to Mosul. The natives, becoming aware of the nature of the search, directed his attention to the hill of Corsabad, situated at a distance of about twenty-five kilometers from Mosul; the excavations were removed thither, and carried on with most gratifying results. A few days’ digging laid bare a number of walls reveted with huge slabs of alabaster. The wonderful sculptures in relief upon these excited redoubled activity, and soon entire chambers of the palace structure were freed from the overthrown rubbish which had covered it for well-nigh three thousand years. The French government purchased the entire village of Corsabad: in M. V. Place was provided a worthy successor to M. Botta. The inscriptions discovered have proved the ruins to be those of a palace founded by Sargon about 710 B.C. in the city Kisr-Sargon or Dur-Sargina.

In the year 1845, Layard obtained, through Sir Stratford Canning, then ambassador to Turkey, the necessary means for the English government to take part in the promising undertaking. He at first directed his attention to Nimrud, a hill of ruins about a day’s journey south of Mosul, the great size of which promised the existence of important remains. An immense terrace platform was there found to have supported a number of palaces, several of which were excavated, the more valuable sculptures and other objects of interest being transported to the British Museum. At Nimrud were discovered the most ancient and the most modern of Assyrian buildings known—namely, the northwestern palace, temple, and tower built by Assur-nazi-pal shortly after 885 B.C., as well as the Temple of Assur-ebil-ili, presumably the last Assyrian king, dating to about 610 B.C. Besides these, there were the southeastern and central palaces built by Shalmaneser II. after 860, the latter having been restored by Tiglath-pileser II., from 745 to 727, as Sargon rebuilt{61} the northwestern palace after 722; and, finally, there was the southwestern palace of Esar-haddon, from 681 to 668 B.C. The city itself (Calah) corresponded in grandeur and extent with the palace terrace. It was founded by Shalmaneser, and long rivalled Nineveh, especially after its reconstruction by Assur-nazi-pal.

Fig. 43.—Plan of Nineveh.

It is now beyond a doubt that the chief capital of the country is buried beneath the hills of Coyundjic and Nebbi-Jonas, the latter so called from a Mohammedan chapel to the prophet Jonah which traditionally marks the site of Nineveh. Both these mounds of ruins were examined by Layard. In the southwestern palace of Coyundjic, built by Assur-bani-pal, from 668 to 626 B.C., was discovered the most extensive among these dwellings of Oriental despots. The most elaborate of Assyrian palaces was the northern one of this site, built by Assur-bani-pal about 640 B.C., a monarch who devoted certain chambers of the southwestern palace, originally erected by his grandfather, to the reception of inscribed clay tablets—an inexhaustible wealth for the study of Assyrian history, of which hardly a third part seems to have been recovered intact.{62} In Nebbi-Jonas were found traces of the palaces of Vulnirari III., from 812 to 783; of Sennacherib, from 705 to 681; and of Esar-haddon, from 681 to 668 B.C. The line of the city walls, still recognizable among the hills of rubbish, is shown by the plan at Fig. 43. These fortifications could hardly have enclosed the entire city, and it is probable that only the inner town, with the palaces and public buildings, was thus protected, and that the dwelling-houses of the many inhabitants formed suburbs which extended far around the enclosed centre, gradually losing themselves in gardens and groves of date-trees, as is the case with modern capitals of the East. The comparatively small walls of Babylon, at variance with the report given by Herodotos, lead to the same conclusion in regard to that city.

The ruins of Calah-Shergat, situated about 100 kilometers down the stream from Nineveh, are identified with Assur, the oldest capital of the land, which maintained its pre-eminence until Nineveh, in the fourteenth century B.C., became the great centre of power. Reson is thought to be recognized in the ruins of Selamiyeh, lying between Nimrud and Nineveh, and Erbil in Arbola. These sites have not been sufficiently examined to be of direct importance in the history of art.

Fig. 44.—Palace of Kisr-Sargon, Corsabad.

Fig. 45.—Ornamented Pavement from the Northern Palace of Coyundjic.

It is plain from the ruins already mentioned that the dwellings of the kings took the most prominent place among the creations of Assyrian architecture. The despotic element had in Mesopotamia the same superiority as the hierarchy in Egypt: in the former country the palace was as much in the foreground as was the temple in the latter. In ancient Chaldæa the two elements, and consequently the two classes of monuments, were more equally represented. Still, in most points of view, the relation of Chaldæan and Assyrian architecture is very close, and the differences arose chiefly from the superior material at the builders’ disposal in Upper Mesopotamia. The terraces of Assyria, like those of Chaldæa, were solidly constructed of sun-dried bricks and stamped earth, but the neighboring mountains provided stone for the complete revetment of these masses with quarried blocks. Carefully hewn slabs existed upon the terrace platform of Sargon’s palace, and upon the substructure of the pyramid of Nimrud, while there was rough Cyclopean stone-work employed in the construction of the city walls at Kisr-Sargon. The{63} facing of brightly glazed tiles and stucco-paintings, universal in Chaldæa, is restricted upon Assyrian masonry of the same brick materials to the upper part of the wall, the lower half being sheathed and protected by sculptured slabs of alabaster. The appearance of the whole gained greatly by this change, the revetment of reliefs in place of the painted figures giving a more imposing and durable character to the walls. The palace architecture of Assyria is best exemplified by the plan of the royal dwelling of Kisr-Sargon (Fig. 44), the isolated position and clear disposition of which are adapted to show the general character of these structures. The platform{64} terrace consisted of two divisions, the broader (P) being inside the limits of the city fortifications, while the remainder (T) projected beyond them. A double flight of steps (A) led to the chief portal (B), ornamented by gigantic winged human-headed bulls, which here not only stood on the sides of the passage itself, as at all principal entrances, but laterally upon the front walls, within and without. These figures are among the most characteristic creations of Assyrian art; they will be treated more in detail in the following consideration of the sculpture of the country. The triple gateway opened into the first and largest enclosed court (C). Upon the left of this, one narrow passage led to the chambers of the harem, which were ranged around six smaller courts (D to H). Upon the right of the first enclosure were the household offices (J), with eight courts and numerous halls, magazines, kitchens, cellars, stables, etc. The side opposite the chief entrance was formed by the private apartments of the monarch (M) and by the great hall of the palace—a group of chambers not presenting its chief front to the first court (C), with which it was connected only by subordinate entrances—but to{65} a second enclosure of almost equal extent (K), which may be regarded as the chief open space of the royal dwelling. An inclined ascent (R) led to the right wing of the inner terrace, by which the king, approaching in a chariot or borne by attendants in a sedan-chair, could enter his seraglio without passing the first court (C) or the entrance to the household offices (J). The encroaching line of the city wall (P) made it impossible for the portal to the second court (S) to be arranged in the central axis of that enclosure; but strict symmetry of plan was not adopted even when there were no such obstacles. The inner apartments of the king were entered by a magnificent triple gateway (L) from the court of the seraglio; these were, in certain measure, regularly planned, being so grouped around a smaller court (M) that oblong halls, as long as this was square, were upon three of its sides. The hall upon the south opens into a number of intricate chambers, probably used as baths, sleeping-apartments, and rooms for the immediate body-guards of the king and for the temporary families of the harem. Upon the north a wing was added to the building, projecting almost to the outer border of the terrace, and dividing this (T) into a northern and a western court. The addition was the most richly ornamented portion of the entire palace; it was probably here that the halls of reception were placed. The walls of other parts of the seraglio were reveted upon their lower part with sculptured slabs of alabaster; but this treatment was not elsewhere so freely applied, nor was it as richly decorated as in this northwestern wing. In the first hall, which is 35 m. long and 10 m. broad, the walls are ornamented with continuous scenes representing, as in a procession, the homage and punishment of prisoners-of-war. In other rooms and in smaller courts these reliefs, divided by a band of cuneiform inscriptions, are of smaller dimensions and less pretentious execution, though of marked interest as forming, with their copious inscriptions, chronicles of historical events.

The spacious terrace at the west has in its centre an oblong hall (N), generally supposed to be the temple or chapel of the palace, but which may with more probability be considered as a hall of state. The scanty remains of this structure make a sure determination of its purpose impossible. They consist chiefly of the foundations{66} of solid unburnt brick masonry, faced with slabs of black basalt. The cornice of this substructure is of gray limestone, in form much resembling the characteristic scotia of Egyptian architecture. (Fig. 46.)

A small terraced pyramid (O) at the southwest is a more remarkable structure. Four of its steps, with their facing of white, black, orange, and blue enamelled tiles, are still remaining. These lead, from analogy with the pyramid of Borsippa, to the assumption of three further steps, tiled with the red, silver, and gold assigned to the remaining planets. The vertical panelling of the sides is somewhat similar to that of the remains at Warka; it is not here restricted to the walls of the lower terrace, like that upon the ruins of Mugheir and Borsippa. The square platform at the top of the terraces, the side of which could have measured little more than 10 m., received either an altar or a small cella, not longer than 6 m. Ascent to the top of the pyramid was provided by an inclined plane, which wound from step to step in a rectangular spiral. The destination of the pyramid as the palace chapel seems reasonably certain, from its similarity to other terraced temples of Assyria.

The palaces hitherto discovered show the greatest freedom of detailed arrangement. The variations among the plans may be illustrated by a comparison of those of the northwestern palace of Nimrud (Fig. 47), the palace of Esarhaddon (Fig. 49), and of that of Sennacherib at Coyundjic. The methods of construction adopted for their erection are more similar. All have walls built of burnt or unburnt brick and of stamped clay; those of the larger chambers are reveted in their lower half with slabs of alabaster or with brightly enamelled tiles, and ornamented by paintings upon stucco above. All the principal halls are so narrow in proportion to their length as to resemble corridors—a peculiarity arising from technical difficulties of ceiling.

Fig. 47.—Plan of the Northwestern Palace of Nimrud.

The manner of lighting and roofing adopted in Assyrian palaces is not directly evident from the existing remains; none of the walls, the highest of which reaches 9 m. above the ground, showing{67} traces of any window-like openings. Some authorities assume that all the light of the interior was admitted through the doors. That this may, in some instances, have been barely possible is evident from the plan of Sargon’s palace at Corsabad (Fig. 44), where the principal chambers were entered directly from the open courts, or, in exceptional instances, were preceded by narrow ante-rooms which could not greatly have interfered with the light. But it is plain from the plan of the northwestern Palace of Nimrud (Fig. 47) that twelve chambers in such unfavorable positions as those shown upon its eastern side could not have received the slightest light through the two narrow passages leading from the confined court. It is futile to deny the necessity of light and air for the dwellings of man; and theories which suppose these enormous spaces left in darkness, or unventilated and lighted artificially, are certainly untenable. Other scholars are of the opinion that light and air were procured through horizontal openings in the ceiling and roof; but this imperfect and unpractical arrangement is particularly ill adapted for inhabited rooms, and is rendered extremely improbable by the{68} fact that upon the pavements there did not exist the slightest arrangement for leading off the water which must have fallen upon them had the roof been an inefficient shelter. The floors were rarely of stone slabs, like the carved fragments shown in Fig. 45, and in other places the sun-dried bricks would have been rapidly reduced to mud by the furious rain-storms of Mesopotamia.

The present condition of the ruins, the walls of which nowhere rise to the full height of the chambers, does not, however, exclude the possibility of openings for light having existed just beneath the ceiling. The form of such orifices cannot surely be determined; high windows could not have existed, and there must have been low openings in the top of the wall, separated by piers, between which stood small columns, as is evident from a relief of Coyundjic, given in Fig. 48 to serve as an argument for this manner of illumination. Light and air could thus have been freely admitted, without inconvenience to the dwellers within. The high position of the apertures, immediately under the somewhat projecting roof, prevented the entrance of rain, and shut off the interior from the view of those without, just as this same manner of lighting to-day protects the harems of the East. The small shafts, which were introduced as supports between these windows, appear to have been the only representatives of columnar architecture in the Assyrian palace. If columns had been used, in their customary function, as upholders of the roof,—as members which bore an important entablature,—some traces of these would certainly have been preserved; their material could hardly have been more perishable than the sun-dried brick of the walls. The entire arrangement of plan shows that their assistance was not relied upon. The chambers were disproportionately narrow, plainly to render it possible to cover them without the introduction of intermediate supports.{69} The beauty and fitness of the corridor-like spaces were so sacrificed to this narrowness that its universal appearance can be regarded only as a constructive necessity. It is well illustrated by the cramped principal hall of the palace of Esar-haddon at Nimrud (Fig. 49), where a greater width than that permitted by the span of ceiling timbers was only to be obtained by the erection of a division wall to provide a subsidiary support for the beams. So helpless a make-shift, destroying the unity and grandeur of the hall, could have been adopted only in entire ignorance of the opening and supporting element of the column, apparently never recognized in Assyria.

Fig. 49.—Plan of the Palace of Esar-haddon at Nimrud.

Fig. 50.—Various Forms of Capitals and Bases, from Assyrian Reliefs.

The form of the small columns, which stood in the openings allowed for light in the upper walls, can be approximately determined from the representations upon reliefs. The shafts were cylindrical, and probably without flutings; they had a roundlet, or at least a projecting fillet, at either end. The base consisted solely of a high tore, sometimes notched upon the top, or placed upon the back of a striding lion. (Fig. 50.) The most common form of the capitals was a peculiar conjunction of two spiral scrolls, similar to a doubled Ionic capital, with an echinos-like roundlet beneath and a stepped abacus above. It is hardly to be doubted that this was the prototype of the Ionic capital, although it cannot be determined from the reliefs whether a lateral roll corresponded to the volute of the front, or whether the helix was repeated upon all four sides, as is{70} the case with the capitals of Persian columns. The small scale of the representations upon reliefs, and their careless execution, do not permit a sure understanding of any part of the capitals. A table (Fig. 51) upon a relief of Coyundjic better determines the form of the volutes; it has distinct spirals in place of the rosettes, wrongly shown by Layard’s drawing.[D] There is reason to suppose that the double helix was not the primitive and normal form of the Assyrian capital, but was rather an abbreviation of the leaved calyx so frequently met with in Phœnicia, Palestine, and Cyprus, and that the rolled ends of the leaves, shown by two of the examples in Fig. 50, originally suggested the volutes of the capital and the various spiral forms occurring upon carved Assyrian furniture, as in Fig. 81. The question will be considered more at length in the section upon Syrian architecture.{71}

The columns of Assyria were employed only in this subordinate position, and the dimensions and shape of larger enclosed spaces were dependent upon the limited span of the wooden ceiling beams. Assyrian palaces were, in these respects, unable to fulfil the demands of a monumental architecture. It can only be surmised how roof and ceiling were constructed in detail. The beams were naturally so placed as to require the least possible length to span the clear width; the sinking in the middle, to which the elastic trunks of palm-trees so much inclined, and the accumulation of water in the hollow thereby formed, were thus avoided as well as might be. The constructive details of the roof-platform are not surely known; it is probable that a layer of clay and earth was placed upon the beams, being rolled down compactly after every rain. The exterior representation of roof and ceiling, the wall entablature, may have consisted of a painted wooden sheathing, bearing ornaments of the character displayed by the pavement. (Fig. 45.) It was divided, like the Egyptian entablature, into two parts; in neither case was there a marked distinction between roof and ceiling. The imitations of building-fronts upon reliefs make it probable that stepped battlements rose above the main cornice.

Fig. 52.—Mouth of a Channel under the
Northwestern Palace, Nimrud.             Fig. 53.—Channel under the Southeastern Palace, Nimrud.

The fundamental principles of vaulted construction, as of columnar architecture, were known in Assyria, but neither the column nor the arch was worthily recognized and developed into an important feature capable of exercising an influence upon the extent or form of the enclosed spaces. The palace terraces were pierced by narrow vaulted channels, still to be traced among the ruins. This was the case with the most ancient structure of Assyria, the northwestern palace of Nimrud. (Fig. 52.) Though it cannot be proved that the Assyrians were the original inventors of the arch of wedge-shaped stones, there are certainly no earlier instances of this manner of building known than those of that{72} country. Round arch barrel-vaults were not exclusively used for such channels; an ogive appears upon the same terrace of Nimrud, in the somewhat later southeastern palace. (Fig. 53.) Though the key-stone of the latter is undeveloped, the vault is yet built upon the principle of the Gothic pointed arch. It is not impossible that this form may have descended in uninterrupted tradition from Mesopotamia to the Arabs, being brought by them to Europe, where, effecting a change in the round Romanesque arch, it exercised a decisive influence in the development of mediæval manners of building. The bricks of these vaulted Assyrian channels are carefully moulded to the more or less marked wedge-form determined by the size of the arch—a greater refinement than is practised by modern masons, who use only rectangular bricks, effecting the curve by the wedge-shape of the mortar-joint. Yet, perfected as vaulted construction appears in these channels, its application seems to have been almost restricted to them; Assyrian builders hesitated to apply vaulted ceilings to spaces of much greater span than gates and window apertures. Reliefs show arched portals alternating with{73} horizontally covered openings; and in the fortification walls of Kisr-Sargon, the city adjoining the palace-ruins of Corsabad, traces of a barrel-vaulted entrance have been discovered where the arch, of 4.5 m. clear, rested upon the backs of the winged monsters referred to as the guardians of all important gateways. A vaulted corridor, considerably less in span, will be noticed at the temple pyramid of Nimrud. Among the numerous palace chambers remaining, only a few narrow cells show traces of vaults; the opinion of some recent investigators, that the customary horizontal ceilings of smaller rooms were surmounted by cupolas of beaten earth, does not appear plausible.

Fig. 54.—Restoration of an Assyrian Palace.

From the chief points gained by this consideration, it is evident that the restoration given in Fig. 54, a variation of the reconstruction by Layard and Fergusson, cannot greatly misrepresent the once existing structures. The Assyrian palace was, upon the whole, a more satisfactory building than the Egyptian temple. The outlines and masses of its composition were grand; it was richly ornamented, perhaps even overladen, with sculptured and colored decoration.{74} The massive and unpierced walls of the lower half bore a kind of open loggia, consisting of light columns between powerful piers which were fully capable of upholding the ceiling. The entire edifice being elevated upon a terrace, upper stories were not necessary to secure an imposing height. The existence of one lower story alone is indicated by the ruins; no large staircases, or other means of ascent to an upper floor, were provided. The apparent duplication of the stories of houses upon reliefs is owing to a fault of perspective common to the primitive representations of all nations: things are shown as above and upon, instead of behind and beyond, one another. The ground-chambers, of which sixty-eight have been counted in the Palace of Sennacherib at Coyundjic, and over two hundred in the Palace of Sargon, were surely ample in number and extent.

Fig. 55.—Terraced Pyramid. Relief from Coyundjic.

Fig. 57.—Relief from the Northern Palace of Coyundjic.

Though the royal dwellings of Assyria chiefly attract attention in considering the architecture of the country, there are also many remains of sacred buildings in the lands of the Upper Tigris. But we are acquainted only with those places of worship which stood in immediate connection with the palaces, no traces of edifices for general and popular worship having been discovered up to the present time. Even were we without knowledge of the ruins, it would be natural to suppose the temples of Assyria similar to those of Mesopotamia; that is to say, pyramidal terraces, with high lower stories.{75} (Compare Fig. 41.) A relief from Coyundjic, the upper portion of which is unfortunately destroyed, confirms this view, showing a terraced structure of three or four steps situated upon a natural elevation. The lower terrace is decorated, like Chaldæan works of the kind, with pilasters in low-relief; before it are pylon towers. (Fig. 55.) This specifically Mesopotamian type is to be recognized in the most prominent ruins of Assyrian sacred architecture—namely, in the terraced pyramid which occupied one corner of the great palace platform of Nimrud. It is also to be observed in the more fragmentary remains at Kileh-Shergat, which time has buried beneath shapeless hills of rubbish, without entirely obliterating the original disposition. The ruins at this site have not been thoroughly investigated; those at Nimrud showed the lower part of the pyramid at least to have been solidly built of bricks, reveted with a wall of quarried stones. (Fig. 56.) In the height of the main palace terrace was a shaft, the purpose of which is uncertain, as it was without entrance, and empty; it is interesting in architectural{76} respects from the admirably executed barrel-vault of brick masonry which formed its ceiling. The ruin, for the greater part destroyed, offered beyond this corridor but few peculiarities. The stone revetment has been almost entirely carried away, and every trace of the temple cella which must have surmounted these terraces, as it did those of Chaldæa, has disappeared. The better-preserved but much smaller terraced temple of the palace at Kisr-Sargon has already been mentioned. Two interesting reliefs show the general form of such cellas, though in these instances the structures represented are not raised upon artificial elevations. (Figs. 35 and 57.) They are small temples in antis, rectangular buildings, three sides of which are formed by walls; while, in the open fourth, two columns support the entablature and roof. In one case the ends of the walls upon each side of the columns are undecorated; in the other the pilasters, though without a base, are crowned with a member similar to the capitals of the columns. The simple entablature projects in an oblique line; it is terminated by stepped battlements, in which the Mesopotamian type of the terraced pyramid is repeated in outline and adopted as a merely decorative detail. Such temple cellas were erected not alone upon extensive terraces, but in the plain; perhaps, also, like the similar structures of Phœnicia, in the midst of sacred lakes. The reliefs given in the cuts show the chapels to have stood at the foot of natural elevations, as well as upon them. Another form of sanctuary, with gabled roof and lanceolate acroteria, is represented upon a relief of Corsabad. (Fig. 71.) The building{77} remotely resembles a Hellenic peripteros. Its constructive peculiarities cannot well be understood from the relief, as these considerations were probably not clear to the sculptor himself. It is possible that the architectural form was one foreign to the country,—perhaps the imitation of a temple in Southern Asia Minor. Another variety of these palace chapels appears upon the terrace of Nimrud, the forms there differing but slightly from those of the dwelling-chambers; the sacred cellas are distinguished only by the exclusively mythological character of the reliefs, and by the altars and offerings placed at the entrance. (Fig. 58.) It is possible, however, that these spaces were used as the dwellings of priests rather than as sanctuaries, especially as the two examples known are situated near the base of the great temple of Nimrud, being in this respect admirably adapted to the uses of the sacerdotal officers in the royal household.

Fig. 58.—Entrance to one of the so-called Temples, Nimrud.

The forms of Assyrian altars are illustrated by reliefs. (Figs.{78} 35 and 57.) The rectangular shaft, at times furrowed, rests upon a plinth, and bears a projecting slab, bordered by stepped battlements. A tripod was found before the entrance to the so-called Temple of Nimrud (Fig. 58); and upon reliefs are represented fire-altars, upholding by a single support a basin for burnt sacrifices. These altars and the bronze tables for offerings were not treated as architectural details, but more resembled the chairs and thrones variously represented upon reliefs.

The Assyrian obelisks were of greater importance; though they cannot be compared to the gigantic wonders of Egyptian mechanical skill, they yet represent the typical forms of Assyrian art as characteristically as do the Egyptian shafts the architecture of that land. A small specimen carved in black basalt, 2.1 m. high and 0.6 m. broad at base, was discovered in Nimrud and has been transported to the British Museum. (Fig. 59.) The gently diminished pier is crowned with a terraced pyramid, thus giving the principal monumental form of Mesopotamia, on a small scale, as distinctly as the termination of Egyptian obelisks does the more strictly geometrical pyramid of the Nile land. The steps and part of the shaft are carved with cuneiform inscriptions, and with reliefs which represent an act of homage—the presentation to the king of various gifts, animals, etc.

Fig. 60.—Assyrian Dwellings. Relief from Coyundjic.

Rich as are the results of scientific investigations in regard to the palaces of Assyria, they are deficient in everything concerning the cities, which could have been but mean and insignificant in comparison with the royal dwellings. Only scanty traces of the fortification walls around Coyundjic, Corsabad, and Nimrud have been preserved. From reliefs these appear to have been provided with projecting galleries for defence, with square or circular loop-holes, and with battlements of rectangular or oblique outline. As before mentioned,{79} there have been preserved at Kisr-Sargon (Corsabad) the remains of a round-arched city gate, flanked with winged lions. (A skilful restoration of this is given by Viollet-le-Duc in his Entretiens.) The small hills of rubbish within the city did not tempt the closer investigation of excavators, who found such inexhaustible rewards for their labors at the palace terraces. Private dwellings, which were not, like the chambers of the kings, constructed with hewn and sculptured stones as a revetment of the weak masonry of unburnt bricks, are now in so complete a state of destruction that an understanding of their original form is hardly possible. The known reliefs are not adequate to convey satisfactory information in regard to them. Among the clearest of these is a relief of Coyundjic (Fig. 60), which shows buildings with hemispherical and oval cupolas, much like those still customary in some parts of Syria. The openings for light and air are distinctly indicated in the summit of the vaults. On the other hand, dwellings like that shown in Fig. 61, which often occur in great numbers within the enclosure of fortification walls, are of most perplexing construction, unless assumed to be tents. Some interior views indicate this character, and the surrounding walls might accordingly be considered the fortifications of an encampment. The plan-like illustrations of walled towns, where the houses are repeated in conventionalized forms, give no definite{80} information concerning the peculiarities of Assyrian domestic architecture. (Fig. 62.) They remind us rather of the topographical usage prevalent during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of our era, when, in similar manner, approximate representations of houses and cottages were typically employed to designate a village, a town, or a city, upon maps from which no conception of the nature of the structures could be obtained. But it may be concluded from these views that a majority of the dwellings consisted of a higher and a lower division, each being provided with an independent platform.

Fig. 61.—Tent-like Dwelling. Relief from Coyundjic.

Fig. 62.—Susa. Assyrian Relief from Coyundjic.

The character of Egyptian architecture was essentially influenced by the rich colored ornamentation which covered and enlivened so much of the wall-surface with the coilanaglyphic paintings peculiar to that country. Upon the palace buildings of Mesopotamia painting and sculpture were something more than mere decorative adjuncts to the architectural construction. They may even be said to have predominated. The brick walls of Nineveh, instead of bearing ornamental slabs, were themselves upheld by the richly sculptured revetment. The works of the sculptor and the painter take a more important place in the history of Assyrian art than do those of the architect. This, however, was not the case in the earliest ages of the Chaldæan empire, for monuments like the Temple of the Moon at Ur (Mugheir), and like the remains at Warka, appear to have been almost destitute of carved, if not of painted, ornamentation.{81} The simple treatment of wall-surfaces with glazed and colored tiles, even when laid in the variegated patterns of the Chaldæan buildings, can hardly be spoken of as painting; and in that country no surely attested remains of sculpture have been discovered. Nor could the carving of stone flourish in the later Babylonian period. The remoteness from mountains and quarries of the great cities, and especially of the capital itself, which stood in the midst of an extended alluvion, was too great to allow stone material to be readily procured even for the revetment of walls. Only one fragment of a larger relief was found by Layard among the ruins of Babylon,[E] and this was so entirely similar to the Assyrian sculptures that it would, without further question, have been regarded as the work of Nineveh had not the Babylonian character of the cuneiform inscriptions indicated its origin. A colossal statue of black basalt, representing a lion standing upon a human being, a work known to travellers for over a century, still lies in position, half buried in the earth; it might convey an adequate idea of the sculpture of Babylon were it not so weathered and imperfect as not to be considered worth removal. The most numerous examples of the stone-carving of Southern Mesopotamia—that is to say, of Babylonia—are given by the cylindrical seals of syenite, basalt, agate, carnelian, etc. These stones generally measure about 0.03 m. in length{82} and 0.01 m. in diameter; they are perforated in the line of their axis, to allow of their being strung upon a cord or fixed upon a metal wire, by which, if held as a handle, the seal could be rolled over some soft substance, such as wax, thus leaving the impression of the figures engraved upon it. (Fig. 63.) The great variance between the style of these cylinders and that of Mesopotamian reliefs is mainly due to the totally different technical peculiarities of intaglio and relief-cutting. The seals of Babylonia and Assyria are usually so much alike that they are to be distinguished only by the character of the cuneiform inscriptions, or, in some instances, by the mythological subjects represented. The origin of many of the carved cylinders which lack such indications cannot be determined, the place of their discovery being of slight importance in the case of objects so easily transportable. Numbers of these seals exist in all large European museums, being picked up by the inhabitants of Hillah after torrents of rain have furrowed the earth in which they lie concealed.

Fig. 64.—Wall Decoration of Enamelled Tiles.

The Babylonians made up for this national lack of monumental works of sculpture, due, as has been seen, to the difficulty of obtaining suitable material, by the development of another branch of decorative art. Favored by the clayey earth of the Chaldæan alluvion, they did not content themselves with the manufacture of admirable bricks, or with exact and durable masonry of this material, but developed a glazed decoration of their outer surfaces. The walls of chambers seem generally to have been prepared with a coating of plaster and then painted. Naturally, no traces of this{83} process exist, but passages in the books of the Biblical prophets indicate it to have been customary. Exterior walls, which, on account of climatic influences, could not thus be treated, were ornamented with enamelled and variously colored tiles. Upon the steps of temple terraces this was effected by glazing the outer sides of all the bricks with a single color, but for palace walls entire compositions were so formed that each separate tile was drawn and colored in reference to the entire representation. (Fig. 64.) Remains show the glazing to have been quite thick; the colors, chiefly bright blue, red, dark yellow, white, and black, have been perfectly preserved. A French traveller of the last century relates that a chamber with walls of colored tiles, representing, among other objects, the sun, moon, and a cow, was unearthed from the hill of Mudjelibeh, one of the mounds of ruins formed by the overthrow of the Babylonian palaces. An account given by Diodoros, who describes a great hunting scene upon the innermost city wall, shows how extended this enamel painting must have been. Among many figures the queen, Semiramis, took a prominent part in the action, throwing a spear at a panther from her position on horseback, while the lance of the king transfixed a lion. The general character of the composition can be understood{84} from the analogy of similar scenes represented upon reliefs from Nineveh.

Fig. 65.—Statue of a King, from Nimrud. (British Museum.)

The palace decorations naturally developed in an entirely different manner in Northern Mesopotamia—Assyria. The spurs of neighboring mountains advanced from all sides close upon Nineveh, and good building-stones, notably the most beautiful alabaster, are found in the plain, under the shallow strata of alluvial earth. The flat colored decoration of the walls with glazed bricks was superseded by a carved revetment of lavish richness, which so generally covered the lower half of larger palace chambers with reliefs that an almost inexhaustible material is presented for elucidation of the style by the fragments discovered during the short period of twenty years.{85}

Fig. 68.—Lion from Nimrud. (British Museum.)

Sculpture so concentrated itself upon this decorative field of revetment reliefs that it appears rarely to have ventured the execution of independent works. Statues in the full round are extremely rare, and the few known are nearly as similar to each other as are those of Egypt. The best-preserved figure was found in the so-called temple at the foot of the terraced pyramid of Nimrud, and has been carried to the British Museum. (Fig. 65.) It is about 1 m. in height, hewn from a hard limestone, and represents a king in the garb of a priest. The round head is covered with long thick hair, which, falling somewhat over the forehead, is not parted, but divided into wavy horizontal rows; it ends upon the shoulders in a straight section of closely and regularly arranged spiral curls. The imposing beard is still more conventionalized; beginning in thick curls, it is arranged in alternate courses of rope-like twists and rows of small coils. The ends of the mustache curl into marked spirals. The large eyes, of rather oblique position, are situated too low, and are consequently without expression. Their strap-like lids do not sufficiently protrude, while the thick eyebrows, excessively curved upward and meeting above the bridge of the nose, so interfere with the natural form of the forehead as to give to the face a gloomy and almost bestial expression. The curved Semitic nose is{86} broad and fleshy, as are all the features, which, though not appearing puffy, have a decided tendency to fatness. The well-formed ear is placed lower than is that of Egyptian statues, and is ornamented with large rings. The thick and short neck disappears behind under the full locks of hair; the round shoulders make the back appear broader than the breast, but are more correctly modelled than those of Egyptian figures. The long priestly garment, thickly fringed, covers one of the fleshy arms up to the wrist, and falls without folds or indication of the lower body beneath it, being girded around the stout waist by a twisted sash; it leaves only the toes visible. The right hand holds an instrument formed like an augur’s crook, probably of some sacred significance; the left grasps the sceptre. Arms and hands have broad muscles, blunt, rounded outlines, and the short and thick proportions peculiar to the entire body. With the exception of the face, the sculptor made few absolute misrepresentations of nature, though evidently more skilled in relief-carving, and paying but little attention to the side view. An inscription upon the breast designates the statue as that of King Ashurakbal, the builder of the northwestern palace and of{87} the so-called temple of Nimrud, “the conqueror of the upper valley of the Tigris to Lebanon and the great sea, who brought under his power all the lands, from the rising to the setting of the sun.”

Fig. 69.—Relief from Corsabad. (Louvre.)

Fig. 70.—Fragments of Reliefs from Nimrud. (British Museum.)

The monsters mentioned above form a peculiar transitional step between the full round and relief sculpture. (Figs. 66 and 67.) Winged bulls, or, more rarely, lions, with human heads and animal ears, flanked the larger portals as sacred guardians of the entrance. On the sides of the passage they were executed in relief up to the heads, which were worked almost entirely free, and project, with the royal or divine tiara, from the main block. In the front view, the breast and fore legs, as well as the head, appear in the round. This combination of round and relief carving resulted in two abnormities. In the first place, the animals have five legs, as the side was allowed four, while the front, besides the support which it had in common with the side, demanded another, that it might not appear one-legged. Further, the monsters seem, in the relief, to be striding and advancing, but in the front view to be firmly standing. These cherubims—for thus the commentators of the Bible call such “forms having a human head, the body of a lion or bull, and the wings of an eagle”—are among the most characteristic works of Mesopotamian sculpture. They were imposing symbols of guardian deities; the hair of the head and beard curled tightly, as did that of breast, abdomen, and the end of the tail; the feathers of the powerful wings were almost straight, the legs hard and muscular, the expression of the face severe and majestic. Lions of normal formation, exceptionally occurring in the place of these cherubims, show so masterly an understanding of nature and such wise conventionalization that, with the sphinx-like lions of Egypt (compare Fig. 31), they rank among the most successful representations of animals in any period of sculpture. Prominent among the subjects shown by the reliefs, serving the purposes of mural decoration, is the so-called tree of life, a symbol not adequately explained, a plant form woven in ribbons and anthemions to an ornamental play of lines, before which stand sacrificing figures or winged genii with eagle-heads, holding in the one hand a basket, in the other a species of pine-cone, or in the one a lotos-flower or a scourge, and in the other a gazelle or a small lion. Upon this follow the long{88} processions advancing in homage before the king, which so fittingly covered the walls of the courts. The monarch stands to receive his vizier, who is followed by several warriors. (Fig. 69.) Behind stand eunuchs—one holding a sun-shade, another a fan for flies, a third a handkerchief, a fourth drinking-vessels, a fifth jugs with bottoms formed like the jaws of a lion (used to dip out wine from the large cooling-vessels), a sixth a wine-skin; the two following have a large platter with food and the stand belonging thereto; another comes with two models of cities, perhaps to be explained as dishes; then two with a throne, the next with a table, those following with a bench; others, again, with a magnificent chariot, the tongue of which is carved as a horse’s head and the cross-pieces as the heads of gazelles,{89} while the rich back of the seat is supported by human figures; two helmeted warriors follow this, with a less elaborate war-chariot, and others lead four horses to the scene. A similar representation shows subjects bringing gifts to the king. Some lead horses; numbers of others present flowers and fruits, among which apples, pomegranates, grapes, pineapples, figs, etc., may be distinguished; those following offer cakes, locusts strung upon sticks, hares, birds, and the like. The figures upon these ceremonial reliefs, generally over life-size, are carefully executed to the smallest detail. Little can be said concerning their peculiarities of feature beyond that stated above, in the consideration of the statue of King Ashurakbal. In opposition to the wiry toughness of the Egyptian type, the voluptuous and vigorous fulness of the Assyrian appears distinctly in the full cheeks, the thick eyelids and brows, the widely opened eyes with curved and projecting balls, the energetic aquiline nose, the pouting lips, and the imposing growth of hair and beard, so neglected in Egyptian sculptures. Eunuchs are characterized by a lack of beard; the usual fulness degenerates into mere obesity in all the features, but especially in the heavy and hanging under-jaw, and the weak, fleshy arms, the only parts of the body not hidden by the garments. The fragments illustrated by Fig. 70, when compared with{90} Egyptian heads from reliefs (Fig. 28), will convey an idea of the entire difference of race and artistic style in the lands of the Tigris and of the Nile.

Fig. 71.—Temple. Relief from Corsabad.

In the works of Assyria, as in those of Egypt, the breast is usually presented in front view, for the reasons already set forth, but the attempt to show this part of the body in true profile is more common in the former country; an instance may be observed in the vizier of Fig. 69. The wrists, like the arms, are muscular and stout; the hands broad, coarse, and awkwardly stiff. Bracelets, closing firmly by means of a spiral spring, are placed upon the wrists and above the elbows. The magnificence of these and similar ornaments, which have frequently been copied by modern jewellers, and also the dignity of the swords and other accoutrements, strictly depend upon the rank of the wearer, being graded from the king and vizier to the warrior and eunuch. The most customary garment in time of peace reached from the neck to the ankles, and was often edged with a fringe of tassels and a double or fourfold border of pearls. The underdress is smooth and white, that of the king alone being richly patterned. The overgarment seems to have consisted almost wholly of fringes, leaving the right arm free. The royal mantle was also in this respect an exception, having two sleeves and covering the shoulders, besides being ornamented with rosettes or embroidered with mythological representations. The feet in Assyrian reliefs are long and powerful, more supple and true to nature{91} than the hands, though the toes lie too closely upon the ground. The monarch and his escort have rings upon the great toe of each foot; they wear a kind of sandal which covers only the heel, in wise recognition of the fact that a complete sole disturbs in some measure the natural elastic action of the ball of the foot and the toes. When the underdress is short, as is the case in hunting and warlike costumes, the leg below the knee is correctly but rather stiffly modelled; the muscles protrude like hard bands, without giving to the limb the vigorous force peculiar to Egyptian works. Yet the whole composition, as well as every detail of Assyrian sculpture, displays more direct study of nature than was to be found in Egypt, where the figures were created upon an abstract model,—a canon founded more upon convention than upon observation of life. Instead of remaining behind reality, as did the Egyptian, the Assyrian sculptor went beyond natural truth, exaggerating and coarsening. There the figures were without flesh and blood, ghost-like, as if their slim trunks and extremities were not fitted for earthly nourishment; here the material existence was expressed in the most positive manner. A voluptuous fulness was chosen as a type of the luxurious and contemplative Mesopotamian, in the same way as the elastic leanness of the Egyptian figure characterized the sinewy Fellah, emaciated from scanty nourishment and fatiguing exertion in his dry climate.

Fig. 72.—Relief from Nimrud.

Fig. 73.—Wounded Lioness, from Coyundjic.

More than three quarters of the historical reliefs are warlike scenes, mostly on a small scale, with figures less than half a meter high. Cities are surrounded, set on fire, and plundered; when the fortress is situated upon a height, the besiegers build ramparts of{92} fascines, and, sheltered by these, attack the walls with battering-rams similar to those used by the Romans. The defenders attempt to burn these offensive machines with torches and to cripple them with chains, the latter being warded off from below with hooks and poles. It is also shown how warfare was carried on in the open field, upon wooded mountains, in swamps, and on the marshy banks of rivers, with the aid of lances, slings, and bows. The archers are sometimes protected by a kind of chain mail. It is represented with great clearness and fulness how the defeated enemies seek to save themselves by flight to a swamp, how friends and foes swim rivers supported upon inflated skins, while the king is transported in his chariot upon a ferry-boat. Some battle-fields are covered with the slain, whose severed heads are piled up to form a trophy of victory truly Oriental. At times the male prisoners of war are shown suffering death by torture; they are stripped to the skin and beaten with clubs, or are impaled and flayed alive in great numbers. The tongues and ears of others are cut off; while prisoners of higher rank are dragged by rings through the under-lip before the victorious king, who languidly deigns to blind them with a lance. At the same time, the monarch receives homage from kneeling subjects; players of stringed instruments celebrate his victory, while eunuchs record the amount of booty brought before him. The spoil is shown with great circumstantiality;{93} female captives, holding children by the hand and infants at the breast, advance on foot or are borne upon carts, and all manner of utensils and provisions are carried upon beasts of burden and drays. The captured herds—beeves, sheep, and camels—are given with wonderful truth to nature; like the animal types occurring in the act of homage upon the obelisk of Nimrud already mentioned, they are of masterly characterization—the peculiarities of the lion, antelope, buffalo, rhinoceros, elephant, and ape being carefully observed and admirably rendered. The same understanding of animal forms is shown in the often-repeated hunting scenes: the conception of the wounded beasts is truly wonderful. (Fig. 73.) Besides the capture of gigantic lions and buffaloes, the snaring of small game, hares and birds, is shown. Even the various species of fish can be distinguished in the reliefs, which show net and rod fishing.

Fig. 74.—Transport of Stone. Relief from Coyundjic.

Many industrial occupations are also represented. Trees are felled, the trunks of which are floated upon the river as rafts, or are dragged behind boats, for the building of a royal palace; terraced mounds are heaped up by enslaved laborers with baskets of earth. Larger masses of building-stone, and the cherubims already described, are brought down stream from the quarries by means of rafts, the buoyancy of which is increased by inflated skins bound beneath them. (Fig. 74.) The statues are carried to the terrace platforms by inclined planes, up which they are drawn by hosts of workmen, who pull upon the cordage attached to the sledge, which{94} slides over rollers, and are driven forward by blows from the over-seers. (Fig. 75.)

Fig. 75.—Transport of a Cherubim.

Religious representations are much rarer than in theocratic Egypt. The kings of despotic Mesopotamia arrogated to themselves the supremacy allowed in Egypt to the gods, who in the latter country had been placed by the priests in relation with every human action, and whose ceremonial scenes were so predominant. The typical winged figure described above occurs continually in small reliefs, and even in diminutive ornaments. In rare instances a griffin or a kind of Pegasos is employed in its place upon purely decorative works. The sacred symbol of the tree of life, or that of the great god Ashur—the winged and encircled figure already mentioned—is worshipped by standing or kneeling human beings and by inferior deities. Processions are represented bearing images upon thrones, and the sacrifice of lambs is shown, the animals being slaughtered and burned piecemeal. These purely ceremonial reliefs differ fundamentally from the historical scenes. In the former the figures are over life-size; they are carved with great attention to detail, and are never grouped, but placed at regular distances: in the latter the human beings do not receive the attention devoted to the inanimate objects occurring in the pictured story, and especially to the indications{95} of its locality. The fortifications of besieged towns are mapped out with scrupulous exactness, and are easily understood when it is borne in mind that the effect of distance, from the lack of perspective in this primitive art, is expressed by piling things upon one another which were in reality behind one another. Buildings are shown by reliefs like those given in Figs. 35 and 57, with a more or less successful attempt to clearly illustrate constructive details.

The landscape is conventionalized in a peculiar manner. Fields of grain upon regularly rolling hills are designated by wavy lines; the trees are usually suggestive of the carved toys accompanying the well-known Noah’s ark of our children—this impression being heightened by the trunks radially diverging from the hill, that they may be the more closely grouped together. The childlike art of the Assyrians here expressed a common error of childhood—that more trees can grow upon the increased surface of a hill than upon a plain with an area equal to the base of the hill-cone. At times, when necessary for the characterization of a locality, palms, grape-vines, figs, and other plants are indicated by a detailed imitation of leaves and fruit. Lakes, rivers (Fig. 74), and swamps are carefully drawn in wavy parallel lines with spirally conventionalized ripples; they are bordered with reeds and sedges, and inhabited by aquatic animals easily recognized by the naturalist. The events are represented in a simple and straightforward manner; unimportant figures are diminutive and less carefully carved, while the chief actors in a scene not only tower above their fellow-beings, but even above trees and fortifications. As the only intention of the artist was to represent a locality and an occurrence, he did not hesitate to give a city such proportions that the defenders upon its battlements could never have passed through its gates, and, standing upon the ground, would have overtopped the towers.

These conventionalized types do not appear in the bronzes, sheathings of thin wood-work, bowls, and other vessels, or in the rarer remains of ivory carvings. A number of objects of this kind, discovered during the excavations of Nineveh, are deposited in the British Museum. The better preserved and more easily recognizable among the ivory carvings are of Egyptian style, and even in some instances represent Egyptian religious ceremonies. This is{96} also, in a measure, the case with the bronzes, which are composed of ten parts of copper and one of tin; though a majority of these show thicker and heavier forms, especially in the animals, and strikingly remind one of similar utensils discovered in Phœnicia and Cyprus. These articles must be considered either to have been directly imported, or so slavishly copied from foreign originals that they are at present not surely distinguishable. There can be little doubt that the native place of the bronze vessels was Phœnicia, and not Egypt. The former country, as proved by the repeated allusions of Homer and other early authors, was famed in the pre-historic ages of Greece for the manufacture of metal utensils, and especially for an extended employment of the bronze supplied by the copper-mines of Cyprus and the tin trade with England. When considered in connection with the well-known extent of Phœnician commerce, this derivation of the metal remains found at Nineveh is rendered more than probable.

Fig. 76.—Glazed Terra-cotta, from Nimrud.

The few and unimportant vestiges of Assyrian painting add little material to the history of art. It has already been mentioned that the palace walls were covered with a colored facing, shown by fragments found among the ruins to have been of painted stucco and glazed tiles. It consisted of bands of ornament, rows of rosettes and anthemions, woven strap-work, conventionalized mythical animals, and other forms arranged in set regularity. This treatment was adopted especially for the exterior and for the courts, where imposing ceremonial reliefs with colossal figures covered the lower surface of the wall. Animals the size of life are given in yellow upon a blue ground, such mosaic mural decorations being formed of tiles drawn and colored with reference to their ultimate position. (Fig. 64.) There are also paintings corresponding to the reliefs of alabaster common upon the lower half of important walls. With figures somewhat over 0.2 m. high, they represent scenes which appear to have stood in some relation to the carved ornaments of interior chambers. The most important of the fragments preserved shows a king, who, returning from battle or the hunt, is about to place to his lips a bowl handed him by a servant. (Fig. 76.) The bow which he holds in his left hand rests upon the earth; a sword hangs by his side. A eunuch with bow, quiver,{97} and sword, and a warrior in short dress, with lance and pointed helmet, follow him. The garments are outlined by a broad band of yellow color, somewhat similar in effect to the heavy leading of mediæval stained glass-work, which increases the impression of flat stiffness peculiar to the Assyrian costumes of baggy cloth without folds. The head, arms, and legs are drawn in simple lines. A dark-yellow border separates the green dress from the red background, and the brownish color of the exposed flesh. White is intermingled with yellow in the rosettes, fringes, swords, etc.; the hair, beard, sandals, and the pupils of the eyes are black. Other fragments illustrated by Layard have a green background, yellow flesh, blue garments, horses, fishes, etc., all drawn with a heavy white, or, in rare instances, brown, outline. It would be difficult to determine whether these pigments have preserved their original color, and whether, indeed, some tints are not entirely lost. Chemical analysis has demonstrated that several metallic preparations were known to the Assyrians. The yellow is that preparation of antimony and lead{98} which, under the name of Naples yellow, has been supposed a modern invention; the blue is a combination of copper and lead, also praised as a device of recent date in its application as a flux for glazing. The white is an enamel of oxidized tin, commonly held to have been first employed by the Arabs of Northern Africa in the eighth or ninth Christian century; the red is a suboxide of copper.

In regard to the style of these paintings, little can be added to that already stated in the consideration of Assyrian sculpture. The figures are somewhat more slender, and seem at times to betray a slight Egyptian influence. As in that country, the tones of color within the firm outlines are without modulation, differing only in the hues of the substances they represent. The composition is, perhaps, more picturesque, the figures frequently covering each other with varied position and action. The carved slabs which served as a revetment of the lower wall-surfaces were brought into harmony with the paintings above them by the addition of color to the reliefs. The hair, beard, and the pupils of the eyes were black; some parts of the dress, as the ribbons of the tiara, the sandals, etc., red. There is no doubt that other tints, not now recognizable, were added to the sculptures; but it must not be held that this painting was so brilliant and decided as some restorations represent. If the uniform effect of a completely painted wall-surface had been desired, the carving would largely have been given up. The best ornamental treatment of the architecturally bare surface was given by the marked division of its height. If the light openings of columns and pilasters, just under the ceiling, be assumed to have existed above the high and unpierced wall, as a distinct horizontal member crowning the enclosing mass, we can but admire this combination, in the Assyrian palace, of superposed courses of sculptured, painted, and architectural works.{99}

Fig. 77.—Restoration of the Palace of Darius, Persepolis.

THE fall of Nineveh, instead of being despicable—according to the common legend—from the weakness of Sardanapalus, the last Assyrian king, deserves rather, from the heroic ruin of the monarch with his city, to be compared to the fall of Carthage or of Jerusalem. It removed for some time the centre of Western Asiatic power farther to the east, beyond the Mesopotamian streams: first to mountainous Media, whose inhabitants, through want of culture, were better fitted to destroy than to build, and who, therefore, play almost no part in the history of art. As the short reign of Median greatness passed away, political power tended to the southeast, to Persia, which raised its world-renowned kingdom upon the ruins of the Median, and stretched the boundaries of the new empire far beyond any former compass of Western{100} Asiatic sovereignty. Cyrus, the first historical monarch of Persia, not only conquered all resistance, notably that of Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian dominion, and of the Lydian king Crœsus (by no means remarkable solely on account of his great riches), but carried his victorious arms even to the Ægean Sea; so that Asia, in so far as it was known to Europe, was synonymous with Persia. Cambyses, successor to Cyrus, crushed the oldest power of the world, that of the Pharaohs; and the third Persian king crossed the Bosporos, that he might embody in the colossal Persian empire the eastern lands of Europe and the borders of the Pontos. Persia, by the personal greatness of some of its rulers, by the healthy force of its original inhabitants, as well as by marked good-fortune, thus attained a position in the history of the world hitherto equalled by no other country; and it was by no means wanting in a corresponding monumental expression of this advance.

The chief cities of the land—Susa, Pasargadæ, and Persepolis, for which latter, a name known through Greek historians, we might substitute New Metropolis of the Persians—strove, at least in their royal palaces, to surpass the cities of the Assyrians and Babylonians. Diodoros speaks of Persepolis as “the world-renowned royal fortress,” imposing even to the Greeks. The thousands of years that have passed have yet left remains sufficient for an ideal reconstruction of the whole, and a conception of the artistic ability of the Persians may there be obtained. This is less the case with Susa, more destroyed, and in no wise thoroughly examined. Its site, known by the name Shush, which still clings to the ruins, is revered by Mohammedan pilgrims as that of the tomb of Daniel, in like manner as the location of Nineveh found traditional confirmation among them in the Mohammedan chapel of Jonas. The remains of Pasargadæ, near Murgab, are somewhat better preserved than are those of Susa. Beside its palace terraces, among its other tombs, altars, etc., there rises, nearly intact, one of the most wonderful monuments of the world—the tomb of the great Cyrus. Most important, however, and worthy of chief consideration, is New Pasargadæ, or Persepolis, where the massive palace ruins near Istakr, known under the name of Chehil-Minar (forty columns) or Takt-i-Jemshid (throne of Jemshid), have for centuries been the wonder of travellers.{101}

Fig. 78.—Plan of Persepolis.
A. Grand Stairway. B. Propylæa of Xerxes. C. Cisterns. D, E, F, G. Great Hall of Xerxes. H. Portal between the Palaces and Harem. K. Palace of Darius. L, M, N. Palace of Xerxes. O. Unrecognized Ruins. P. Harem. Q. Portal to the Court of the Harem.

The Persians, of later development than the Mesopotamians, naturally based their art upon the older culture of the people conquered by them. The palaces were similarly placed upon extensive terraces, which, like those in Nimrud, seem to have been afterwards enlarged to make room for several royal dwellings. The palace terrace{102} of Persepolis (Fig. 78) is, as an exception, not isolated, but so placed as to employ a rocky plateau, which, levelled partly by excavation, partly by filling, acquired architectural character by the vertical revetment of its borders: it abutted with one of its oblong sides upon a cliff, this forming a background of richly carved tomb-façades. The casing of the platform beneath the Palace of Kisr-Sargon (Corsabad) consisted of a masonry formed of quite regularly hewn stones. At Persepolis, on the other hand, is employed, in a similar position, a kind of Cyclopean masonry with predominant horizontal lines—a proof that this wall does not necessarily indicate a greater age than does a facing of hewn stone.

In spite of the close relationship of the architecture of Persia to that of Assyria, the ruins still show in many points such a fundamental difference that Mr. Fergusson’s nearly absolute identification of the art of the two nations cannot be accepted, and a higher grade of independent position, at least in architecture, must be granted to the Persians. The Assyrian ruins showed walls and no columns; in Persia, on the contrary, we find columns and no walls. In view of this, it is a daring hypothesis to assume that chance has preserved here only the one, there only the other, constructional member—that the Persian ruins exhibit the skeleton, as it were, the Assyrian the flesh, of one and the same architectural body, the totality of which is only to be understood and explained by the mutual complement, the combination of the two. For such is Mr. Fergusson’s view. The inadmissibility of transferring Persian columns to Assyrian palaces has already been made evident.

The peculiar formation of plan recognized in the ruins of Nineveh, the narrow and corridor-like chambers, required no interior supports. The clumsy disproportion of the long and cramped Assyrian rooms seems rather to have been decided by the lack of such constructive assistance; with it, on the other hand, the Persian palace was enabled to develop freely. The subordinate shafts in the windows of the palaces at Nineveh did not partake of the true nature of a column, they did not serve to enlarge an enclosed space, but were merely decorative substitutes for the piers which elsewhere separated the openings. It is not possible to transfer the characteristic Persian details either to these or to the columns in antis of the{103} Assyrian temple cellas. The sculptured reliefs mentioned above, from which alone the columns of Assyria are known, present an entirely different class of forms. The Persians recognized the full importance of columnar construction in opening and enlarging enclosed spaces as no other nation has done except the Egyptians. It is in this that the artistic advance of the former beyond their Chaldæan and Babylonian predecessors consists.

The columns of Persia were developed with a characteristic conventionalization which, though not entirely without foreign precedents, was upon the whole original, and, at least in the more simple varieties, decidedly artistic; the capital was peculiarly adapted to its functions. But one small fragment has been found of the ancient remains of Pasargadæ, dating, according to inscriptions, to the epoch of Cyrus. It is a base, and is fortunately characteristic and interesting. (Fig. 79.) The tore is similar, upon the one hand, to the plinth-mouldings of Assyrian columns; upon the other, in its detail, to the more recent creation of the Ionic column, which was not without connection with the art of Mesopotamia. The ornamentation consists of shallow horizontal channellings, with sharp arrises like those of the so-called Proto-Doric shafts of Egypt, and is closely allied to the bases of the most ancient examples of the Ionic style. The terrace of Persepolis, with its monuments, built during or after the time of Darius, displays these bases only in the palaces built by that king. The tore there occurring was placed upon two square plinths. The later monuments of Persepolis, which, for the greater part, were built by Xerxes, show the base to have kept pace with the further advance of the shaft, and to have consisted of multiplied and embellished members. The square plinth is supplanted by a beautifully curved calyx, turned downward and ornamented by two rows of leaves—the upper rounded and heart-shaped, the lower lanceolate. To this is sometimes added a wreath of anthemions, which appears to have been taken from Syrian or Phœnician models. The projecting moulding of these more elaborate examples is diminished in size, and has lost the horizontal{104} grooves. The shaft, with thirty-six shallow channels, separated by sharp arrises like those of the primitive base, rises upon the combined tore and plinth to a height of nine times its lower diameter. It is not inconsiderably diminished. The junction between shaft and base is effected, as in the Ionic style, by a gentle curve, ornamented by a small roundlet. The capital shows, instead of the floral form usual in other countries, an animal combination, which, from the analogy of certain gold coins of Western Asia, appears to have been a widely known symbol. It consists of two bull’s heads and shoulders, grown together back to back, with the front legs bent under them in a recumbent position. The head is drawn upward, the elegantly curved neck being ornamented by a rich chaplet. Upon the common back of the two animals lies the chief transverse beam of the ceiling. A description of the peculiar style of carving will be given in the section upon Persian sculpture. It may only be here premised that the general treatment of the animals is quite similar to that noticed in Assyria. The capital is particularly well adapted to receive and support two ceiling timbers crossing above it at right angles; the lower of these shows its section upon the front of the building, and rests upon the back of the bulls; while the epistyle beam upon it, which joins the columns and{105} is seen in its whole length upon the front, is supported by the heads and by the main timber between them. This method of laying the ceiling beams was the reverse of that followed by the architects of other nations. The timbers of the ceiling, which run at right angles, are usually placed upon, and not beneath, the connecting epistyle.

Fig. 81.—Spiral Ornaments upon Chairs. a. From an Assyrian Relief. b. From the Vicinity of Miletos. c. From Xanthos. d, e, f. From Paintings upon Greek Vases.

Fig. 82.—Columns from the Eastern Portico
of the Hall of Xerxes.

Fig. 83.—Rock-cut Tomb of Darius.

In the time of Xerxes, these simple bull capitals appear not to have satisfied the increasing demands of luxurious elegance. Three new members were therefore placed below them, and the entire capital became almost as high as the remainder of the shaft, which was naturally much curtailed by this innovation. (Fig. 80.) The two lower of these new members may perhaps be counted as one—the wreath of falling leaves being regarded as part of the calyx above it. These leaves are very simply treated; they do not curve, and are terminated by a semicircle: between them and the calyx there is a small egg-and-dart moulding; that is to say, a wreath of small leaves entirely bent over. As the derivation of this characteristic member cannot be traced to Syria, the supposition is natural that it was derived from the Hellenic architecture of Asia Minor, which had been fully developed in its principal aspects since the time of Darius. The general form, as well as the detailed decoration of the upright calyx by narrow bundles of lotos-flowers, points so distinctly to an Egyptian model that it must, without further question, be ascribed to the influence of that land, which had been subjugated by the Persian Cambyses. After a repetition of the egg-and-dart moulding, there follows above the calyx a remarkable{106} member of sixteen spiral rolls, as similar to the forms of Assyrian as to those of Ionic capitals. The spirals are so placed around the oblong kernel of the shaft that two touch upon each of its angles—thus standing vertically, and not horizontally. The derivation of the form appears to be owing more to Assyrian-Mesopotamian reminiscences than to any influence of the Greek Ionic style. The remarkable vertical position of the volutes is better explained by subordinate ornaments of the former than by architectural members of the latter land. The decorations upon the legs of thrones and other parts of furniture, shown by reliefs, prove the helix to have been more frequently used by the Assyrians as the vertical ornament of a shaft than as a horizontal coronation—a capital. (Fig. 81.) That the former usage was extensive is shown by the similar occurrence of the form upon Greek examples from Asia Minor. The spiral, with concave or convex fluting, with ribbed and channelled rolls, was originally double; in Persia it was transferred to a four-sided shaft, to serve, not as a coronation, but as a vertical ornament, as one of the three or four distinct members of the complicated capital. The{107} double-headed animals were placed upon it as the termination of the column. In the mythological sculptures of Mesopotamian lands, lions and bulls shared equally the honors of frequent representation; and upon the capitals of Persepolis a horned and double-headed lion was substituted for the double-headed bull. This, however, was not in an important position, and the change is known by only a single example—the eastern portico of the Great Hall of Xerxes. (Fig. 82.) The isolated attempt was the more successful because no other animal forms had been so well conceived and characterized by the Orientals as the lion; that king of beasts, with open mouth and powerful paws, was the favorite subject for decorative treatment down to the latest times of Hellenic art. As the comparatively short fore legs of the lion could not be bent underneath the body, but were necessarily extended from the shoulder, the general outline of the capital was impaired by a long and straight horizontal line just at its junction with the shaft; and on this account the lions, notwithstanding their more majestic heads, could not displace the traditional bulls.{108}

As the entablature was in all probability entirely constructed of wood, and has disappeared without a trace, the restoration of this part of the building is difficult. But the normal forms may yet be determined with greater correctness than is presented in Coste’s restoration (Fig. 82), which is a tasteful combination of the scotia and roundlet cornice common to both Egyptian and Assyrian architecture, with dentils and the leaved ornaments found above all the doors and windows of Persian remains, and with the decorations upon the borders of staircase buttresses. A number of rock-cut tombs appertaining to the early Persian kings, the Achemenidæ, and dating from the time of Darius, represent the façades of royal palaces, and give important information concerning the exterior appearance of such structures. The oldest and best-preserved of these is designated by cuneiform inscriptions as the tomb of Darius. (Fig. 83.) It is especially interesting as illustrating the formation of the entablature. An epistyle, triply stepped, like that of the Ionic style, so that each face slightly projects beyond the one beneath it, is placed above the transverse beam, which lies upon the backs of the double-headed animals forming the capitals of the columns. The multiplication of the faces of the epistyle is explained by the weakness of the timber produced by Mesopotamia and Persia, which, in opposition to the single and massive Doric lintel-block, required the employment of several beams to obtain the desired capability of support. Upon it followed the ornaments known as dentils, representatives of the small and closely lying joists of the horizontal, slightly projecting roof. They are quite similar to the dentils upon the tombs of Beni-hassan, and to those of the still more naïve imitations of wooden houses found in Lycia, which will be considered in the following section.

In Persia, the proportions of the dentils and of the distances between them are still characteristic of the original timbered construction—a truthfulness of imitation which was lost as early as the development of the Ionic style. The nature of the band following above is not clear; it might be natural to suppose in it a representative of such a hollow cornice with leaves as Coste has introduced upon his entablature, were it not that a frieze-relief with ornamental lions is visible upon this member in another tomb, and that a remarkable block of{109} the Palace of Darius at Persepolis bears further testimony against it. One of the corner piers of the front portico of that building has been preserved to such a height that the side bearing of the lintel can be observed. This renders the projection and outline of the entablature certain. It was six times stepped, and may best be reconstructed, as in Fig. 84, by a series of narrow bands, which represent in some measure the layers of the horizontal ceiling and roof. From a comparison with the rock-cut tomb, it is plain that a further cornice, like that over the door and window-frames, was here not possible. If a parapet had been desired for the accessible platform of the roof, it must have taken the form of a light balustrade, not that of a heavy scotia cornice.

The oldest and, because best-preserved, the most intelligible of the royal dwellings upon the terrace of Persepolis is that shown by inscriptions to have been built by Darius. (Fig. 85; and K upon the topographical plan of Persepolis, Fig. 78.) It exhibits a regular and well-considered plan, the oblong form and general disposition of which are somewhat similar to the simpler Greek houses. A flight of steps led from each side to the narrow southeastern front—a double tetrastyle loggia. This was flanked by two moderately large rooms, which, as they could be entered only from the portico and had no connection with the interior, were probably intended for guards or servants. A door, between four windows, opened into the square hall, the ceiling of which was supported by sixteen columns, standing in line with those of the loggia. This space corresponded to the atrium of Greek and Roman houses. Three of its sides, that of the front being excepted, had access to inner rooms—those upon the right and left being small, while, opposite the entrance, they were more spacious, and separated from the hall by a corridor. The walls were enriched by niches as well as by door and window openings. Through{110} one of the chambers upon the left was a lateral entrance, reached by a double flight of steps upon the southwest. Notwithstanding the preservation of the special foundation terrace, of the steps, of the door, window, and niche frames, as well as of some corner piers, the ruin did not at first glance make evident the disposition here described. All the columns of the palace have disappeared. It is uncertain whether this is because the supports of the less pretentious structure were of wood, or whether stone shafts, of the moderate dimensions which must be assigned to them, were carried away during the two thousand years in which the ruins of the palace terrace have served as a quarry for neighboring towns. The square plinths upon which the columns stood have, however, remained in their original position, so that the number and site of the supports may be easily and surely determined. The greater portion of the walls has also disappeared. Some corner piers and the marble frames of doors, windows, and niches, cut from immense monolithic blocks, alone stand erect; but their perfect state of preservation and well-marked position permit the nature of the wall between them to be determined without difficulty. It seems that this was of small quarried stones, or even of brick, thus being easily removed, or, in the latter case, reduced to dust by atmospheric influences; while the massive door and window casings were secure from removal by man and from the injuries of time. Their stepped jambs are decorated upon the inner side with reliefs; the heavy lintels have a scotia cornice, carved with a triple row of leaves and bordered below by an astragal. Of the openings for providing light to the great hall no traces remain. If, as is usually supposed, the windows now recognizable were all that ever existed, the chambers of the palace would have been most gloomy, with the exception{111} of the hall of columns, which had four openings upon the loggia, besides the door. The light of the hall itself must have been dim, for it could not enter directly, the windows and doors being beneath the shade of the deep portico, with its double range of columns; and when still more impeded by the close-standing shafts of the hypostyle, it would have been wholly insufficient for the chambers. It is further to be remarked that several of the inner rooms have no direct communication with the hall, while if they had depended on it for light they would certainly have been provided with window-openings in place of the blind niches. It is evident from the existence of a second story, presently to be discussed, that horizontal apertures in the roof and ceiling could not have existed; this would be even more inadmissible here than in the palace buildings of Nineveh. It is necessary, however, to assume other openings for illumination and ventilation than those now to be observed in the ruins, and windows were most probably arranged in the manner in which the Orientals still secure their dwellings from the view of the outer world while admitting light and air—the manner customary with the Assyrians, as well as with the more ancient Greeks. The apertures were probably upon the exterior walls, just under the ceiling, high above the ground. All traces of architectural members in such a position must necessarily have disappeared when the mass of masonry which supported them was overthrown. It is possible that their form was entirely plain, like that given in the restoration of the Palace of Darius at the head of this section (Fig. 77), and offered no carved details to aid in their recognition.

A comparison of the rock-cut façade upon the tomb of Darius with the palace of that king will aid in the consideration of the upper story. As the tomb represents the palace with but slight variations, even agreeing tolerably well with its proportions, it may be supposed that the monarch copied his dwelling upon the front of his grave, that he might, as it were, inhabit it even after his death. This is not an isolated instance of such a proceeding in the history of architecture. The second story, distinctly recognizable upon the tomb, cannot be regarded as an insignificant decoration, especially as the Palace of Darius at Persepolis seems, from its plan, to{112} have been thus arranged. The limited area covered, exceeded by many a modern private house, renders an enlargement by a second story natural; and this is also made probable by the hypostyle, which occupies a place where an open court, with full upper light, would otherwise have been more suitable. Space for the staircases was provided by the two narrow corridors next the rear chambers. The second story was not, however, extended over the entire ground-plan, but seems to have left the flat roof of the side chambers as an elevated veranda, perhaps sheltered from the sun by canopies, as the talar, a similar though smaller upper structure, stands as a pavilion upon the modern houses of Persia. The walls of the second story could scarcely have been placed elsewhere than upon the otherwise unreasonably thick partition-enclosure of the hypostyle hall. They could not have stood over an intercolumniation, as upon the façade of the rock-cut tomb—for this would have been difficult, if not impossible of construction—but in other respects the upper part of the palace may have been like that representation. Its corner supports, which are a strange combination of scotias and roundlets, ending below in lion’s paws and above in a one-sided lion capital, have, at least, every appearance of being copied from an architectural model, and are similar in their lower half to the legs of the throne given in Fig. 87. The standing figures, which, in double row, support the ceiling, may have been carved in relief or simply painted. That this was a common ornament is evident from its repetition upon the reliefs of gateways, where such typical figures are admirably characterized as representatives of the various nations subjugated by the{113} Persian power, they literally supporting the throne. The entrance and the second-story windows may be supposed to have been upon the side opposite the front, where the veranda was broadest and the staircases led from the lower floor, as otherwise the imitation of the façade upon the rock-cut tomb would have shown windows and doors as well as a staircase, which probably led in double flight to the uppermost roof. That this house-top was flat and accessible is evident from the reliefs considered in this connection (Figs. 83 and 87), one of which represents the royal throne shaded by a canopy, the other one of those fire-altars which, according to Persian custom, was placed upon the highest level of the house. This altar upon the summit of a royal palace is mentioned in the Bible, when Hezekiah, overthrowing the Sabæan worship of the sun, destroyed “the altar which is upon the top of the upper rooms of Ahaz.” In the restoration of the Palace of Darius (Fig. 77), the introduction of the altar with the royal canopy may be considered as more than a mere decoration of the design. This simplest and best-preserved ruin upon the terrace of Persepolis permits a comparatively trustworthy understanding of the elements of Persian palace architecture.

The ruin O of the topographical plan (Fig. 78) shows the remains of a similar structure of about the same dimensions, later, and therefore of less interest, than the Palace of Darius. The Palace of Xerxes (L, M, N) was nearly double this size, being provided with a spacious terrace before its gates, and with a colonnade upon one{114} side, the nature of which cannot readily be explained. On the other hand, it had no large chambers behind the hypostyle, as the rooms upon the right and left seem, by their more spacious proportions, to have rendered these unnecessary. The portico was hexastyle, and the square hall behind it consequently provided with thirty-six columns. Two of the side chambers were so large that their ceilings required the support of four columns.

Of still greater dimensions, more than eight times the area of the Palace of Darius, was the Palace Hall of Xerxes (D, E, F, G) which was preceded by a magnificent double flight of steps. The ceiling of the imposing hypostyle was upheld by thirty-six columns of gigantic size. There are no traces of chambers having been connected with it; three of its sides were provided with hexastyle porticos, which masked and artistically enlivened the dead enclosing-walls. The masonry has disappeared, with the exception of unimportant remains of the portal (G), which Coste has restored as the foundations of pedestals. Although a similar ruin at Susa, examined by Loftus, was also without walls, it is impossible to agree with Coste that these were originally altogether lacking, and that the columns of the central space were unenclosed—that the three portals, provided with separate roofs, were grouped around this without any connection. While we agree with Fergusson in as far as regards the completion of the wall line and the unity of the whole under a common roof, we must yet discredit his further assumption that this building was provided, like the Palace of Darius, with an upper story; all the requisite conditions for this were lacking. The ruin is remarkable from the remains of the colossal columns being in the comparatively best state of preservation. They represent the three orders described above: those of the western portico having the double-headed bull; those of the eastern the double-headed lion, and the others the form of shaft coronation combined of three or four members. The destination of this building was not that of a dwelling, but, without doubt, that of a festive hall for the audiences and ceremonies of the vainest and most magnificent of despotic monarchs. To this end it was fittingly placed next to the entrance-gate of the palace terrace. It is one of the most enormous buildings of the world; the area covered by{115} its plan, about 10,500 sq. m., nearly equals that of the Cathedral of Milan, and surpasses that of the Cologne cathedral by about 2350 sq. m.

Fig. 88.—Propylæa of Xerxes at Persepolis.

The imposing portal next to it, B, proved by inscriptions to have also been erected by Xerxes, remains upright in the grand masses shown by Fig. 88. An adequate explanation of its nature is not possible. It is only clear that its principal disposition, like that of the similar portal, H, of the terrace, was determined by the intersection of passages, the crossing being marked by four columns, while the parallel walls were of sculptured marble blocks. In a former work upon the history of ancient architecture,[F] the author has expressed the supposition that side walls were built in the directions marked by dotted lines upon the topographical plan (Fig. 78), connecting the portal with the ascending staircase. The gate would thus receive the character of a fortification, a termination of the palace terrace, instead of being the useless structure, easily to be circumvented, which it is commonly considered. It is probable that these side walls existed also at the chief portals of the Assyrian palaces, as otherwise the entrances, especially that of the harem,{116} would have been too much exposed. These masses of masonry have disappeared from the ruins of Nineveh, because of the crumbling of the terrace borders, and in Persepolis, where all walls have been overthrown and carried away, their extent is not marked by the more durable door and window frames, which alone remain of the palace enclosures.

The assumption of similar communicating walls in connection with the other portal structures of the palace terrace (H and Q) not only renders to these their full importance, but throws light upon a building of enormous extent (C), the destination of which has hitherto been problematical. This edifice has been called, in lack of a better name, the Hall of a Hundred Columns. It is an extended enclosure of square plan, within which stood columns, traceable by the remains of six of their number. Upon the front was a portico, not decastyle, like the interior, but octastyle; two bases remaining in situ determine its arrangement and dimensions. The columns may be calculated, from their lower diameter, to have been about 7 m. high. The enclosure of the hall, determined in extent by the remains of all the portals and niches, measured 68 m. upon each side. According to general acceptance, the building was restricted to the area now covered by its ruins, and served as a second great hall for ceremonies. Fergusson terms it a coronation hall. But, apart from the fact that the Hall of Xerxes must have been far better fitted by its imposing proportions for such a purpose than this low and broad space, where the forest of columns would have impeded the view, it is hardly possible that two such extensive buildings would have been provided upon the terrace for the same use. But some adequate space is yet to be assigned to that important necessity of Oriental custom, the harem, which tradition particularly asserts to have existed among the Persian palaces. If the ruin is examined in its relation to the other palace structures of Persepolis, it becomes plain that it can be nothing else than the central hall of a similar, but more extended, series of chambers, of which, as is also the case with the ruined remains at O, hypostyle and portico have alone been preserved, while the walls of all the outer rooms have disappeared. Only the doors and windows of any wall upon the terrace now exist; and as the entrances were naturally small{117} and the openings for light high above the ground, in the enclosure of the harem, it is not surprising that this masonry has disappeared in almost its entire extent. Two principal portals, perhaps the only ones of the outermost walls, have been preserved, however, and mark the outline of the building. These are the gateways H and Q of the topographical plan: the first of these even shows some trace of the enclosing wall; it is the entrance from the palaces K, L, M, N, and O; the second probably led to an open court, to which access must have been allowed the fair prisoners. The space between the hypostyle and the exterior wall, indicated upon the plan by dotted lines, must have been occupied by the numerous small rooms which provided dwellings for the three hundred girls of the harem. The low and broad central hall served as a place of assemblage; the great number of its columns and the excessive lowness of the ceiling exclude the idea of its having been used for public ceremonies, but render it particularly fitted for this purpose, the many shafts separating the groups of intimate conversers. The dim twilight of the room was, at these evening assemblies, enlivened by the many-colored lamps of the East. The harem upon the terrace thus received a development analogous to that of the royal dwellings, and its necessarily great extent was provided for in a becoming place. By the assumption that the remains at P are those of the harem, an integral part of the Oriental palace is recognized, and a large tract of the terrace area is occupied, the use of which could not otherwise be designated upon the topographical plan.

The disposition of the terrace under Darius appears to have differed considerably from that under his successors. It is not known whether its extent has since been increased; to establish this point, extensive excavations would be required. It is probable that the northwestern side of the plateau has been built out by adding earth to the natural rock; the buildings upon the southern half appear the more primitive: it is certain, however, that the position of the ascent was changed during the great reconstruction completed by Xerxes, and possibly commenced during the latter part of the reign of Darius. The orientation of the Palace of Darius, which, of all the buildings at Persepolis, alone faces the south, shows the great staircase to have been originally upon the southern end of the terrace.{118} Enormous dowelled blocks of stone assured the stability and preservation of the newer parts of the substructure. The broad and gently rising flights of steps remain in so good a condition that it is even to-day possible to ascend them upon horseback.

Fig. 89.—Altar Pedestals at Pasargadæ.

Among the remaining monuments of Persian architecture there are no temples; it would be vain to seek such structures; the worship of the land did not demand closed rooms, requiring only sacrifice and prayer upon the summits of mountains or artificial elevations. Herodotos relates that the Persians not only scorned temples, but did not erect images of their deities, nor even altars. This last point is certainly incorrect; the worship of fire particularly called for altars, and these are represented upon the ornamented façades of the rock-cut tombs. (Fig. 83.) It is probable that two pedestals, standing near each other upon the palace terrace of Pasargadæ, are ancient Persian. They are cubes, each about 3 m. high; one is terminated by steps, and has upon one side a straight line of ascending stairs; the platform at the summit was sufficiently large to receive an altar, or may perhaps itself have been used as a receptacle for fire and sacrifices. They are similar to the altar upon the upper story of the Palace of Darius, used for religious devotion. The supposition may be ventured that these two altars, in such vicinity, point to the dualism of the Persian worship of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Other large monuments of the land may have had something to do with religious observances; but as they lack any characteristic form, this cannot be proved. Such is the case with the cone of Darabgerd, known as Kella Darab, apparently an imitation of a natural mound. It is surrounded by a circular wall, perforated in eight equidistant places, and rises, in two rings of masonry, to a height of 48 m. A similar structure is the massive tower of Firuz-Abad,{119} a rectangular obelisk 27 m. high, measuring 8.5 m. upon each side of its base. Near it is an enormous platform, with broad buttresses upon the four sides, which are directed to the cardinal points of the compass; the foundation of the mass measures 61 by 78 m. The masonry is of carefully hewn stone, of a workmanship not found in the country after the advent of the Christian era; the swallow-tail dowelling of the blocks is similar to that upon the pavement of the terrace at Persepolis.

Fig. 90.—Tomb of Cyrus.

To the consideration of these structures must be added that of the semi-sacred tombs. Though few other monuments can be traced back to the age of the founder of the Persian sovereignty, the heroic Cyrus, fortune appears to have preserved his tomb almost entirely intact in architectural respects. The description of it by Arrian is not precise, but his account may still be identified with an interesting and evidently ancient Persian monument, now known as Medshed Mader-i-Suleiman, the tomb of the mother of Solomon. Its situation is in Murgab, not distant from the ruins of Pasargadæ, which{120} contain inscriptions with the name of Cyrus, and reliefs commemorating his exploits. The monument consists of a terrace seven times stepped, covering a ground surface of 12.5 by 13.5 m.; it is built of enormous blocks carefully joined, and bears a cella with gabled roof. The simple and gently curved mouldings of the cornice and base of the cella do not betray Greek influence, but it is possible that the form of the roof, rare in the Orient, may be attributed to reminiscences of Hellenic construction observed during the campaigns of Cyrus in Asia Minor. The entrance, described by Arrian as very small, is 0.9 m. broad and 1.2 m. high; the exterior of the cella is 5.2 m. broad and 6.3 m. long; the chamber itself only 3 m. long and 2.1 m. broad and high. There is naturally no longer any trace of the objects once within the interior—the table, coffin, and bier of solid gold; the garments of royal purple. The inscriptions have, unfortunately, also disappeared. The blocks of the chamber floor are swallow-tailed into each other with great exactness; to which circumstance, and to the exact jointing of all the massive masonry, this exceptionally fine state of the building’s preservation is to be ascribed. The whole structure gives the impression of a terraced Chaldæan temple. It is not improbable that the Tomb of Cyrus received this sacred form because the character of a hero of Western Asia was attributed to the king soon after his death. A colonnade appears to have enclosed the sombre pile; several drums of its columns still project above the ground. The accounts of Greek authors refer to buildings erected for the priests to whose care the monument was intrusted; these are believed to have been recognized in the remains of a neighboring caravansary.

The tombs of later Persian kings, which, during the entire dynasty of the Achæmenidæ, were almost alike, are of a totally different nature from that of Cyrus, being cut in and upon the face of the rock. Upon the steep cliff of Naksh-i-Rustam and Persepolis there are seven of these facades, which form an imposing feature of the landscape, whether viewed in the vicinity or from afar. All follow the type of the Tomb of Darius described above, giving a representation of the royal dwelling upon the wall before the grave-chamber. (Fig. 83.) Only the lower half of the door is used as an entrance, the upper part being closed by an imitation of slat-work.{121} It leads to a corridor running parallel to the face of the cliff; in the Tomb of Darius this extends to the left, beyond the breadth of the façade, to three chambers, each of which is arranged for three coffins. All these graves had been plundered when investigated by Coste and Flandin. A rock-cut tomb at Serpul-Zohab is of still simpler disposition; originally it had two columns upon the front, but was not further decorated; the interior consisted of a small chamber, providing only sufficient space for two sarcophagi. It is not certain whether other monuments in the vicinity of Naksh-i-Rustam and of Pasargadæ should be regarded as tombs. They resemble towers; their corners are strengthened by pilasters, and they have oblong niches upon each side, the frames of which are triply stepped. Of the tombs of Persian subjects nothing whatever is known; it may be possible that the people of that nation were accustomed formerly, as at present, to carry down their dead from the highlands to the Necropolis of Chaldæa, where millions of graves still await scientific investigation.

As little is known of Persian domestic architecture. No vestiges of private houses have been found which belong to an historical period earlier than that of the Roman emperors. The habitations of subjects were not to be compared with the magnificent palaces of their despotic rulers, and must have been built of the most destructible materials. We may imagine the Persian house somewhat to have resembled, in disposition of plan, the royal dwellings, though of course greatly simplified by the substitution of an open court for the hypostyle hall, by the omission of terraces, columns, and carvings, and by the reduction of all spaces and dimensions to a minimum.

The Persians developed far less independence in sculpture than in architecture. They showed themselves, in their carvings, to be but meanly endowed scholars of the Assyrians, and gained little by subjecting themselves to the influence of other nations, the spirit of which they did not comprehend or employ towards any possible improvement of Assyrian traditions. The Mesopotamians were, in their artistic development, thrown upon their own resources; they therefore looked earnestly to the fountain-head of nature as the model of their sculptured work; but the Persians, in the wider{122} extent of their kingdom, instead of profiting by the study of nature, so requisite to true progress, depended upon forms and methods inherited from the Assyrians, upon which they engrafted certain peculiarities borrowed from the Egyptians, and also, in still greater measure, from the higher art practised among the Greeks of Asia Minor in the time of Darius and Xerxes. In this adoption of foreign properties, in this mingling of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Hellenic manners of expression, they utterly sacrificed originality and simplicity of style, and made of their sculpture a repulsive hybrid of inharmonious elements. It may well be conceived that with this lifeless imitation the creative impulse languished, and art became more and more limited, until it shrank at last into mere ornamental handiwork. The Persians could the more easily forego the revetment of their walls with carved slabs, after the Assyrian fashion, as their architecture itself, far more than that of Mesopotamia, fulfilled its own aim,—accomplished with its own means what was elsewhere effected by sculpture and painting.

With Persian statues in the full round we have no acquaintance. Several examples remain of colossal monsters in the half round, like those met with in Assyrian sculpture. In conception and in detail, in proportion and in situation, they scarcely differ from those of Assyria: they are only somewhat stiffer; their strap-like sinews and veins, their muscles and hair, are conventionalized almost to pure ornament; they have entirely lost the life-like natural truth of the works of Nineveh. The tendency towards decoration is well expressed in the wings of these monsters. The rectilinear feathers of the models upon the Tigris were in Persia transformed into the graceful but unnatural curves seen also in the griffins of Greek architecture. This Colossus is found in the best state of preservation at the Propylæa of Xerxes near the ascent of the terrace of Persepolis. On the front are perfect bulls, with proportionately small heads; on the back are the cherubim already mentioned, with long-bearded, tiara-crowned human heads. These purely Assyrian monsters of the gateway may perhaps be regarded as trophies from Mesopotamia, which, in the course of time, had become naturalized into the Persian practice of palace architecture.

Fig. 91.—Relief for a Portal of Persepolis. (See Fig. 86.)

If the masonry, probably of brick, had received a richly sculptured{123} stone revetment, like that which covered the Assyrian walls, some remains of this would certainly have been found. It seems, however, that the wall surfaces were ornamented only with paintings. In proportion as carved decoration was diminished, the architectural treatment of the enclosing masses was increased, by doors, windows, and niches, and by the repeatedly stepped epistyle beams and its crowning scotia, richly ornamented with leaves over the lintels. Only the inner surfaces of the door-jambs were used for representations in relief, the subjects being partly mythological, partly ceremonial. The ruins of Pasargadæ show such a mythological figure, in long, close-lying garments without folds, according to the Assyrian tradition, though of somewhat lighter proportion. It has a less pronounced Semitic profile, Egyptianized by long twisted ram’s horns upon the head, and with the irrelevant ornaments of the Nile situla, disks, and uræos-serpents; the greater part of it is so destroyed that only the outline is recognizable. Upon the terrace of Persepolis there is repeated a kingly or divine being lifting a lion into the air while strangling it, such as appears in more vigorous design upon the reliefs of Nineveh; or this figure pierces with a short sword a bull, lion, or griffin standing upright upon its hinder legs. One of these peculiar mythological representations is given in Fig. 91. The head of the male figure, ornamented with a diadem, is distinguished from the Assyrian type only by a longer and less protruding nose, and by some diminution of the luxuriant hair and beard. The exposed limbs, the arms and legs, have more slender proportions; with a softer and somewhat Hellenized swing of the outlines, there is less modelling than was found upon the Tigris. The expression of great muscular power, of striking and healthy energy of action, peculiar to the Assyrians, is lost in Persia. The garments are not sack-like and close-fitting; with the richly patterned treatment of surfaces, there is an attempt, not altogether fortunate, to indicate the folds of drapery and the free flow of cloth. It is possible to recognize in this respect the influence of Asiatic Hellas, falling, indeed, upon rather sterile ground, and received with little understanding. The strapped shoes take from the cramped foot its true form, being curved in the sole even more than is the case with the naked instep. The power, long since acquired by the Greeks, of so raising the hinder foot of{124} a moving figure that only the toes touch the ground, was as far from being possessed by the Persians as was the power of causing the whole body to take part in an action—carrying forward the momentary position. The human being is apparently able neither to turn the animal away from himself, nor, by additional exertion, to give the death-blow. The opposing griffin is similarly petrified; it here appears with eagle’s head and feathered tail, occurring in other representations with lion’s head and scorpion’s tail. Both paws of the fore feet, and one of the eagle’s claws of the hind feet, are in the position of attack; one paw grasps the right arm, as it reaches towards the head of the monster; the other is laid upon the left, which pierces its body with a broad and pointed dagger. At the same time, one of the bird-like hinder legs touches the front knee of the human figure. But nowhere is there the energetic movement{125} of seizing or pressure found upon Assyrian sculptures; there is a posture, but no action; and thus the lion-eagle monster has no frightful power—only something hatefully comical in figure and bearing. Nor has the bull or lion, which occasionally takes the place of the griffin, anything of the Assyrian force; the scene might be considered as a harmless play of the man with the animal, were it not for the sword half buried in the body.

The most accessible subjects for such an art were naturally mere ceremonial representations, where the action, reduced to a minimum, was naturally neither momentary nor energetic. There are the promenades of the king, with staff and lotos-flower in his hands, followed by eunuchs, one third of his size, who carry his handkerchief and sunshade, and cool him with a fan of peacock’s feathers. It is worthy of curious notice that, upon a door at the back of the palace, the sunshade is omitted from the relief, as being of use only in going out. A casual observation of Persian sculpture may be deceptive, and we may seem to recognize quiet dignity in what is mere want of all expression. It is thus with the frequently repeated ceremonial scenes, the architectural employment of which has been mentioned above. (Fig. 87.) The canopied throne appears raised upon an elevation; the king sits with his feet resting upon a footstool, his retinue before him with censers. Three superposed rows of men stand as supporters of the throne, with outstretched arms bearing the platform. The figures are placed in such regular position that the effect is purely ornamental; but are individually interesting, in so far as they are intended to represent, in feature and costume, the different nationalities of the Persian empire. Notwithstanding the celebrated description of the review of the Persian army upon the banks of the Hellespont given by Herodotos, it would be hopeless to attempt to recognize among the figures the types of known tribes. Of a similar kind are the upper parts of the rock-cut reliefs upon the tombs of the Achæmenidæ, the architectural peculiarities of which have already been mentioned. Because of the sacred character of these graves, the kings are not represented enthroned, but standing upon a stepped platform before an altar, over which floats the winged and encircled deity, near the disk of the sun or moon. A consideration of the exterior treatment of the upper story of the{126} palaces would here be in place if it could be shown that the ornamentation was indeed carved.

Persian sculpture received its most extensive application upon the buttresses of the steps placed before every palace. Here are found the ceremonial scenes of the Assyrian courts in a feeble rendering, far removed from the sharp and careful cutting of the details, and the naturalistic modelling of the bodies, peculiar to the works of Mesopotamia. Long processions of men represent different nationalities, characterized by their costumes and by the treatment of hair and beard; by their various feather-caps, hoods, capuchins, pointed hats; short skirts, with wide pantaloons; long garments, with great fulness at the bottom, and sleeves falling in multiplied folds; by the skins of animals worn as mantles; by girdles, sword-belts and swords, bows and quivers; by peculiar sandals, shoes, boots, and the like. These subjects bring to the monarch most manifold gifts—horses, dromedaries, musk-oxen, rams, goats, a wagon, elephants’ tusks, stuffs, garments (among which various kinds of stockings are even distinguishable), swords, double-headed hammers, bracelets for the arms; censers, with vessels for incense; salve, in little bowls, borne upon trays which hang like scales; wine-skins, goblets, globular and flat cake-like loaves of food, carried in the palm of the hand; carved cups and saucers; little bags, etc. Others bear only lotos-flowers and pomegranates. They are slim, narrow-chested figures; the short upper body is given in profile, without anatomical truth in general form or detail; not only without motion, but apparently incapable of it. At times the position of the arms shows, not, indeed, a gesture, but some attempt of varied position; the hands lie upon one another, or touch the mouth, the end of the beard, the hilt of the sword hanging at the side, or the quiver, or are extended so as to rest upon the shoulders of the preceding figure in the procession.

Fig. 92.—Relief from the Stairs of the Palace of Darius.

Lifeless as these appear, they are still superior to the guards, armed with a lance, who march towards each other from opposite sides, in long processions. (Fig. 92.) The heads differ from the Assyrian type only in the pointed chin-beard; the bodies alternate between uniforms of two fixed patterns. One of these is without a shield, in a closely fitting leathern garment, with awkward pantaloons bound{127} at the ankles, and a globular cap of surpassing clumsiness. The other, distinguished by shield and plumes, with a long robe drawn up at the hips, and with wide sleeves hanging in folds, is more tolerable. The elliptical shields, like those of Bœotia, have a round cut upon both sides, in which the lance was probably placed; they are strengthened by a circular plate riveted to the centre. Upon the terrace stairs, in the triangles formed by the ascending steps, are groups of animals—lions seizing bulls from behind. Though the forms are rendered with but little understanding of detail, the entire composition is well fitted to the triangular space allowed it, and thus has a certain decorative and architectural value. The parapet of the staircase terrace is decorated with rows of highly conventionalized lotos-flowers upon leafy stems; in its centre is the winged divinity of the disk between crouching lions. These carvings upon the staircase buttress, though monotonous, were still so rich that they{128} gave to this member much the same distinction as that of the gable in Greek architecture, to which it is somewhat similar in outline, the ascent from each side forming a triangle. The representations upon it are, in their subjects, suited to the palace fronts, where guards were in place, as well as gift-bearing deputies from tributary nations. Though the division of the surface into several horizontal stripes by rows of figures, one over another, is not artistically beautiful, it still has the advantage that the standard of proportion is not infringed upon, as is so often the case when colossal statues are placed before buildings; the disadvantage may perhaps be less when life-sized figures, like these, are dwarfed by being brought into comparison with enormous edifices.

Only one important historical scene is known—the rock-cut relief of Bi-Sueton. A king, followed by guardsmen, sets his foot and bow upon a victim lying backwards on the ground, who stretches up his hands in a beseeching manner, while a procession of nine prisoners approaches, their hands tied behind them, and bound one to the other. Above is the winged deity. The proud bearing of the king, and the stooping of the helpless enemies, show a slightly superior artistic ability. Though Persian sculpture was successful in some rare instances, the conviction must still remain that, in comparison with the art of Assyria, it was not only a dependent imitation, but failed to attain any of the superiorities of its model. That which was borrowed from other lands than Mesopotamia was superficially carried into execution in unimportant details. Strictly speaking, we can hardly acknowledge the existence of the art of sculpture in Persia, as it was without either independent foundation or any progress of its own.

Of Persian painting there are no remains or information. The walls were without doubt plastered and colored. If there had been a revetment of glazed tiles, according to the Mesopotamian practice, some fragments of this almost indestructible material would surely have been found. From analogy of the carvings, it is probable that paintings upon the walls were chiefly ornamental and of subordinate importance. Upon the principal front of the buildings there remained but little space where painted decorations could be employed; the façade of the Tomb of Darius was largely covered{129} with inscriptions. On the other hand, the restoration of the Palace of Darius, at the head of this chapter (Fig. 77), shows that the aid of color was particularly needed upon the other sides, which would have been bare and monotonous without painted ornaments. We may suppose that the Persians felt this need, and that decorative painting was extensively employed; they were led to it by familiarity with the methods of Assyrian art, and with the colored mural decorations universal in Egypt, both which lands they considered their tributary provinces. Though we cannot speak of monumental independence in Persian sculpture and painting—of which, indeed, no ancient Orientals had any conception—the art of the land had at least the superiority that its three branches, in their application, stood in true relations to each other, inasmuch as architecture employed and brought forward the sister arts as secondary, decorative aid; painting and sculpture did not predominate in the excessive degree characteristic of the older nations of the East. The Egyptians, whose architecture, otherwise so richly developed, was chiefly restricted to the interior, made excessive use of painting and coilanaglyphics to enliven the dead masses of exterior walls. The Assyrians needed sculptured revetment and painted stucco to support and hide the weakness of their masonry, and its incapacity for architectural treatment, within and without. Merely decorative art thus gained an undue supremacy in both countries. Among the Persians, on the other hand, architecture attained its full rights by important and harmonious advances, while decorative sculpture and painting withdrew to their proper subordinate positions.{130}

Fig. 93.—Rock-cut Tombs of Myra.

THE primitive tradition which makes the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris the centre of the most advanced culture of the earth is illustrated by the extraordinary expanse of Mesopotamian influence in both time and space. Extending eastwards even to the Ganges, in a westerly direction passing beyond the Adriatic, bounded on the north only by inhospitable Scythia (Siberia), and on the south by the Indian Ocean, its roots, long after the advent of the Christian era, sent forth fresh shoots into Western Asia, recognizable in the monuments of the Sassanidæ and in the works of the world-conquering Arabians. The spring of native civilization was not entirely exhausted, although, after the fall of the Persian empire{131} and the foundation of a Greek Asiatic monarchy by Alexander the Great, Hellenism had expanded itself over Western Asia for five centuries,—first among the luxurious Seleucidæ, who had attached to themselves the Asiatic half of the Macedonian empire, and in later times under the strict military power of the imperial Roman period. Nor could the barbarism of the Parthians wholly obliterate from the land the reminiscences of ancient Persian and Mesopotamian culture. These influences appear again when the Persian Ardshir—boasting a direct descent from the Achæmenidæ, and therefore called Artaxerxes by the Byzantine Greeks—shook off the yoke of the barbaric Parthians in the year 226 after Christ, as his forefather Cyrus, eight centuries previously, had founded his empire upon that of the Medes. Ardshir was the first ruler of a new national Persian dynasty, named after his father, Sassan,—a race under whose sway the land east of the Tigris was raised to a glory and importance which made itself felt even in distant and powerful Rome. One Roman emperor, the unhappy Valerian, was even forced to languish during the last ten years of his life in a Persian prison, the Romans not venturing to free him from the despicable slavery of the Sassanian Shahpur I., who meanwhile took care to hand down to posterity that world-renowned result of Persian bravery and cunning by numerous monuments and rock-carved reliefs, which testify, as a leaf of authentic history, to an event so humiliating to Rome.

The Palace of Ctesiphon,—the Sassanian representative of the Hellenic Seleucia upon the Tigris, a city of the Diadochi which had itself taken the place of the Chaldæan Babylon on the Euphrates,—the dwellings of Sarbistan and Firuz-Abad, with many other buildings and monuments sculptured upon the face of cliffs, give evidence of the artistic ability of the new Persian kingdom, which continued to flourish until the foundation of the Mohammedan power in Mesopotamia, 641 A.D. Much was certainly lost, and the artistic ornamentation of architecture, as illustrated by the columns and pilasters of Sarbistan, which are without capital or base, sank again to the rudeness of the ancient monuments of Chaldæa; but, on the other hand, the constructive gain was not inconsiderable, notably in the greater development of gateways, windows, and niches, as well as in the appearance of immense arches, cylindrical vaults,{132} and cupolas, which received peculiar forms of parabolic lines, though not excluding the round arch. The later Persians had marked influence upon the conquering Arabs, who, with few native traditions, were readily receptive: this is illustrated by the horse-shoe arch, so characteristic of Moorish architecture, which may be traced in the works of the Sassanidæ from the Palace of Ctesiphon to the Monument of Tak-i-Gero. Chronological considerations and the increasing influence of Greek and Roman elements seem, however, to forbid the treatment of Sassanian architecture in this sequence. Indian art is omitted chiefly upon the ground that the best work of the Farther East does not appertain to a history of antiquity at all; the remains antedating the Christian era, such as the columns of Asoka, are too undeveloped and wanting in independence to deserve separate consideration. This would be even less the place for a review of Sassanian sculpture, because in this, in spite of the recurrence of ancient Mesopotamian figures and details, and notwithstanding the national peculiarities observable in the modelling of muscles and draperies, the Hellenic and Roman influences are too great to allow of a proper treatment of the subject apart from the artistic development of Greece and Italy. Sassanian and Indian art, though standing in a certain relation to the civilization of antiquity, may receive a more just historical treatment if considered immediately before the advent of Mohammedan methods of building,—upon the threshold of the Middle Ages.

The chief currents of culture and intellectual development have ever flowed steadily towards the West: such was the course of the wide-spreading artistic influence of Mesopotamia. The valley of the Euphrates and Tigris is divided from the shores of the Mediterranean by desert tracts which did not allow Assyrian traditions, though directed and furthered by the important trade-roads, to take immediate and undisputed possession of the strip of Phœnician coast. Egypt lay too near for this; its influence could not remain unfelt by the seafaring inhabitants of the Syrian lands. Indefinite theories have been prevalent for some time concerning the meeting and blending of the peculiar civilizations of the lands of the Nile and the Tigris, but until recently Phœnicia was the least-known country of the ancient world. The Syrian expedition of the French under{133} the auspices of Napoleon III., like the Egyptian under Napoleon I., presented the possibility of a thorough and systematic exploration of Phœnician remains. The difficulties of prosecuting the investigations were not less than they had been in Chaldæa. “The land,” says Renan, who was commissioned to conduct the explorations, “is now completely deserted. The destruction of the forests has everywhere done its evil work; the soil, year after year carried off by the inhabitants of the villages or washed away by the torrents of winter rain, has disappeared from the native rock; the flow of water from the springs, more and more exhausted, has become too weak to find its way to the sea against the many hinderances; hemmed in by dunes and alluvial formations, it fills the plain with the poisonous exhalations of swamps, so that the once blooming and populous land has become a pestilent desert, where for miles there is scarcely a hut to be seen.”

The remaining monuments are chiefly grouped around the five principal trading towns of the coast,—Ruad (Aradus), Amrith (Marathus), Jebeil (Byblus), Saida (Sidon), and Sur (Tyre),—which follow one another from north to south in the given succession. Still farther to the south are isolated ruins near Gabr-Hiram and Um-el-Auamid. Beyrout, now the most important city of all the original Phœnician territory, has the fewest remains of antiquity; the greater number are at the totally deserted site of Marathus, where the neighboring brook, Nahr-el-Amrith, alone retains a trace of the city’s anciently celebrated name. The city Aradus, frequently mentioned in the Mosaic Scriptures, founded Marathus, its most important colony, as well as Paltus, Balaneia, Carnek, and Enhydra. Of Aradus itself little exists beyond a few enormous blocks of hewn stone; the fanaticism of the present inhabitants of Ruad prevented an adequate examination of the site. All these cities lost their importance in the Roman period, with the ascendency of Antaradus, the mediæval Tortosa.

Fig. 94.—Temple Cella (El-Maabed) of Amrith.

The remains at Amrith are barely sufficient to give a conception of the temple buildings and monumental tombs of the Phœnicians. One fane, in an exceptionally good state of preservation, is still called by the inhabitants El-Maabed (the temple). It consists of a rectangular area, the temenos, 48 m. broad and 55 m. long, sunk into the{134} native rock, so that three of its sides are formed by the perpendicular cut, and reach the height of 5 m. Upon the north, the entrance, the enclosure was completed by a wall, which was also continued around the other three sides, and there heightened the boundary. Two piers, in the southeastern and southwestern corners, standing 3.5 m. from the edge of the rock, and numerous sockets for the ends of the beams, plainly visible in the walls, lead to the supposition that a gallery was carried partially or entirely around the space. The whole sunken area formed the court of a temple, perhaps a sacred lake, as many traces of paved springs in the interior seem to indicate. The small cella, which rises exactly in the centre of the quadrangle, thus became an unapproachable sanctuary. (Fig. 94.) It is formed of only five stones. The socle is hewn from the solid rock, 3 m. high and 5.5 m. square, with traces of a stairway upon the right side. The three-walled cella, open to the north, is 5 m. high; its ceiling is monolithic, while the walls consist of three superposed blocks cut to the plan of the chamber. The roof, chiselled within to the form of a flat-arched vault, juts forward over the opening; its projection may have been supported by light columns of metal, the probable form of which will be considered in connection with the{135} rock-cut reliefs of Mashnaka. Upon the side-walls, which stand 2.34 m. apart, there are two low benches, leaving a ground-space of only 0.8 m. between them. The architectural decoration of this shrine is limited to a cornice of scotia and roundlet; though this appears also in Assyria and Persia, it still gives an Egyptian character to the cella exterior, which in plan and general disposition is very similar to the Mesopotamian chapels represented upon Assyrian reliefs (Figs. 35 and 57), and to such structures as appear to have existed upon the terraced pyramids of Chaldæa. In this cella we possess the oldest and the only Semitic temple known, still in admirable preservation, although the downfall of the crumbling mass is predicted by the authorities who accompanied the Phœnician expedition. Of two similar structures, which stood near the city of Marathus, Renan could discover only overthrown blocks buried in the swamp of Ain-el-Hayat (fountain of the serpents) and hidden by oleander-bushes. They stood at a distance of 10 m., their open sides turned towards each other. The remains of the better-preserved cella show it to have been entirely monolithic. It stood upon a double substructure, of which, strange to say, the lower part is considerably smaller than the upper. It betrays still closer relationship with Egyptian works of the kind by rows of uræos-serpents over the cornice scotia and the winged disk upon the inner ceiling. From their plan, they appear to have had no columnar supports, and resemble, in the careful restoration made by Mr. Thobois, the monolithic cellas of Philæ preserved in Leyden and in the Louvre. Traces of three other sanctuaries, or at least of their temenos enclosure, which is partly cut in the rock and partly built, exist in the vicinity of the Stadion of Amrith, now known as El-Meklaa (the quarry), and designated by Renan, upon insufficient grounds, as itself ancient Phœnician.

Fig. 95.—The Monuments El-Meghazil of Amrith.

The monumental tombs of Amrith are not less important than these places of worship; the ruins known under the name El-Auamid-el-Meghazil (the spindle-columns) are truly majestic. (Fig. 95.) The first rises in three cylindrical steps upon a square platform little elevated above the ground. The lower part, 2.5 m. in height and 5.15 m. in diameter, built of two stones, is ornamented over the corners of the platform with engaged lions, which are among the most prominent{136} works of Phœnician sculpture known, and will be considered at greater length below. Upon this first cylindrical step rests a block 7 m. high, ornamented at the base with delicately curved moulding, and at the summit with dentils and battlements. These latter are found also upon fragments from Jebeil in conjunction with squares and rosettes and a particularly characteristic frieze of straight-lined laurel branches; they show great similarity to Mesopotamian remains. In the circular plan of the structure there is no reminiscence of Egyptian methods of art; an hemispherical termination lends to the whole so marked an individuality that, although its{137} form seems not to have been universal, or even the most common, upon the Syrian coasts, there yet may be recognized in this monument a truly original Phœnician type. In the development of memorial stones a cultured people generally expresses its fundamental artistic conceptions, as is the case with the pyramidal termination of Egyptian obelisks, and with the Assyrian piers terminated by a stepped terrace, in both of which are embodied the lines predominant in the architecture of those nations. A stairway hewn in the rock leads to the subterranean burial chambers; its entrance is at some little distance from the monument, as shown in the section Fig. 95. Only 6 m. removed from this rises a second pile, which, from a certain parallelism of position, seems to belong with it. It is simpler than the first, consisting of a cube measuring 3 m. upon the side, so roughly hewn that it appears a block taken just as it was quarried; upon it is a monolithic cylinder 4 m. high and 3.7 m. in diameter, terminated by a five-sided pyramid of steep inclination. Somewhat removed from these are two similar monuments, of which the better preserved stands upon steps and rises in two cubes, separated by a cornice of wavy outline, the upper block terminating in a four-sided pyramid, now almost entirely overthrown. It is remarkable for the monolithic horizontal covering of the entrance to the grave chambers, which is again a little distant from the base. Of the pyramidal termination of its neighbor, only traces remain. All these monuments were in part cut from the native rock and in part composed of enormous monoliths; a fifth, of considerably greater dimensions, was built of quarried stones. Of this latter, the commanding mausoleum known under the name of Burdj-el-Bezzak (Tower of the Snails), little remains beyond the platform, which measures 11 m. in height and 9 m. in the square plan. The four-sided pyramid, of obtuse inclination, placed upon this elevation, is now entirely overthrown. The blocks, 5 m. long, are hewn only upon the joints, and left with a rough face. A cornice of curved profile ran around the platform; within it are two chambers, each lighted by a small window, the existence of which rendered the otherwise customary grotto beneath the pile superfluous.

Grotto tombs, with a decorated entrance cut upon the rock wall, seem to have been most generally employed in Central Phœnicia.{138} They are exemplified by the numerous remains of this kind at Saida (Sidon) and Jebeil (Byblus). A tomb at the latter place shows a simple but interesting façade; its ornamentation, by the heavy gable and ring-formed acroterium, is strikingly similar to forms occurring in Central Asia Minor (Phrygia). (Fig. 96.) Its flat border and plain five-leaved rosette in the tympanon triangle give no evidence of Hellenic influence. The interior of these tombs is generally a large room, with curved ceiling and niches upon three of its sides, sunk into the rock, one above another, like those of the Catacombs, to hold the rows of coffins. The finest of the sarcophagi of Jebeil is decorated with festoons, wreaths, single leaves and branches, in a naïve style of ornament betraying no knowledge of Greek sculpture. In Southern Phœnicia a monumental development of the sarcophagus seems to have been chiefly favored. The tomb known as that of Hiram (Gabr-hiram), south of Sur (Tyre), is an immense coffer, 3 m. high, with a heavy arched cover, raised upon a plinth built of hewn blocks 4.24 m. long, 2.64 m. broad, and 3 m. high, the upper part of which is formed by a monolithic slab almost one meter in thickness. Not far from this site, at Um-el-Auamid, is a large sarcophagus, 2.40 m. long and 1.24 m. broad, with a gable-shaped lid decorated by clumsy corner acroterias. Against one of its sides stands a small altar, remarkable for the corners of its battlemented termination, which must be similar to the horns of the altar which stood in the tabernacle of Solomon’s Temple.

Of the domestic architecture of Phœnicia can be mentioned only an entirely unornamented house, hewn from the rock, in Amrith, and a portal at Um-el-Auamid, where the middle block of the triple lintel is decorated with the Egyptian disk and uræos-serpents upon either side. The materials employed by the Phœnician architects{139} seem generally to have been the cedars of Lebanon and the various metals of transmarine commerce; it is on this account that the preserved monuments are so few, and their remains so bare of carved decoration.

This explains also the lack of examples illustrating the sculpture and extended industrial art of the country. The Homeric epics constantly point to the Syrian coast as the home of all contemporary skill in metal-work, pottery, and weaving. Stone statues were rare; metal was the favorite material of Phœnician sculpture, although it was but seldom, as in the columns before the Temple of Jerusalem, employed for casting. The usual proceeding of the artificer was to make a core of wood for the work, whether this were to be in relief or in the full round; upon it sheets of metal were secured, and these finally beaten with the hammer to the modelling of the carved wood beneath, thus forming a so-called sphyrelaton. The sculptures of Solomon’s Temple illustrate this process, and, according to the Biblical account, may unhesitatingly be ascribed to Phœnician artists. In some instances the beaten metal was gold, this being the case with the Temple of Jerusalem and with a small temple at Carthage, which contained an image similarly overlaid. Silver was more rarely thus employed, though it is known that from the earliest times the Spanish silver-mines were worked by the Phœnicians. The metal was perhaps more frequently devoted to utensils like the twelve silver vessels discovered upon Cyprus, of which those now in the Louvre show a workmanship nearly akin to that of the before-mentioned Assyrian bronzes. It has been remarked in the section upon Assyria that this style was neither purely Mesopotamian nor Egyptian, but rather a mixture of both, the latter predominating. This points to the Phœnician origin of such works, and these silver vessels of Cyprus lend a striking confirmation to the supposition. The beaten metal was usually a bronze, the copper in its composition being derived from the Phœnician island Cyprus, the tin an article of commerce brought from England. It is natural that the Phœnicians, to whom alone these metals were accessible, should be regarded as the inventors of that amalgamation of ten parts of copper with one of tin known as bronze, of so great importance in casting. Homer’s mention of{140} vessels and utensils from Sidon, and the discovery of Phœnician bronzes in the ruins of Nineveh, prove a most ancient and extended trade in objects formed of that metal.

The carved wooden form covered with sheets of metal, the sphyrelaton, is a peculiarly Phœnician product. Such beaten reliefs were generally of copper, pure, or with a small percentage of tin; gold, silver, and even tin were, however, similarly employed, in conjunction with mosaics of precious stones, ivory, and notably with amber, a substance greatly prized in early antiquity, and brought by the enterprising Phœnicians from the coasts of the North Sea. A certain effect of color was thus obtained. In the decoration of weapons, a ground of metal served instead of the wood as a foundation. This inlaid work was known to the Greeks of the Homeric age. It stood in the same relation to primitive monumental painting as the mosaic of the Byzantines did to the decline of the art, its greatest height of development being reached by the so-called chryselephantine sculpture, where a combination of carving and inlaying was effected with gold and ivory upon a wooden kernel. The throne of Solomon was an example of this, the lions carved upon its arms rendering it the work rather of a sculptor than of an artisan. Carvings entirely of ivory are mentioned by Hezekiah as frequently existing in the sanctuaries of Tyre, and in Nineveh there have been found many fragments, apparently Egyptian, which may, without doubt, be attributed to the Phœnicians. The Biblical prophets speak of great works in Tyre composed of precious stones, and Theophrastos mentions an entire obelisk of emerald as existing in the Temple of Melkarth of that city, which is explained to have been of a colored glass (plasma di smeraldo). Glass itself, assumed to have been invented by the Phœnicians, but common in Egypt before the fifteenth century B.C., appears to have been made only in colored, and generally opaque, masses. The most ancient piece of white transparent glass known is described by Layard as a cup whereupon is cut the name of King Sargon in cuneiform characters—consequently an Assyrian work from the end of the seventh century B.C.

Fig. 97.—From a Relief of Saida.       Fig. 98.—From the Monument El-Meghazil of Amrith.

Phœnician sculpture is almost exclusively represented by metal-work, and, as this was mostly beaten, it is natural that it should assume{141} that peculiar style of conventionalization which, even in works of stone, reminds us of empaistic prototypes,—that is to say, of the characteristic forms and modes of conception originally decided by the properties of beaten metal. This style is shown by the Phœnician leaved ornaments upon architectural details, and is especially striking in the representations of animal forms. Upon a frieze at Saida (Fig. 97), for example, is a remarkable illustration of the Phœnician sphyrelaton, which enables us to understand the form of the bulls upon the brazen laver in the Temple of Jerusalem. The half-lions upon the monument of Amrith, also, although carelessly carved and much weathered, are still more interesting in this regard. (Figs. 95 and 98.) Besides their peculiarities as imitations of empaistic work, especially recognizable in the primitive legs, they show some reminiscences of Egyptian granite forms and of a Mesopotamian conception of animal nature, marked also upon the bull’s-head by the strap-like formation of the sinews. Less direct insight can be gained from other Phœnician sculptures because of their more advanced state of destruction. The rock-cut reliefs of Gineh and of Mashnaka, however, well deserve to be mentioned. The first shows upon one side an animal, apparently a bear, leaping upon a man, while at the right, in a sunken rectangular frame, is an enthroned figure, and in another a man in front{142} view, with two dogs, which are scarcely recognizable. Enough is still preserved to show that the work is not of Egyptian origin, but may more justly be compared to Assyrian sculptures, though without the stiff character of courtly ceremonial peculiar to the works of Nineveh. The two rock-cut reliefs of a mountain-pass near Mashnaka (Fig. 99) are more important to the history of the architecture than to that of the sculpture of Western Asia, because of the remarkable forms of the capitals represented upon them; they will be considered in connection with Solomon’s Temple. The smaller, movable sculptures found in Phœnicia, which were possibly not the work of the country, are of less interest; they usually exhibit decided Egyptian influence. Numerous marble sarcophagi found in Saida are characterized by the confusion of style peculiar to Phœnicia. The covers are imitated from the swathed human forms represented upon the lids of Egyptian mummy-coffins; the heads betray in some measure the influence of Greece, and render it probable that they were executed in the time of the Seleucidæ.

Fig. 99.—Rock-cut Relief of Mashnaka.

As might be expected from the position of the country, lying between Egypt and Chaldæa, and from the national commerce and{143} manufactures, which attracted the products of both countries, the artistic style of Phœnicia was a mixture of Egyptian and Mesopotamian elements. This was, of course, also the case with that of the Jews, who, in their architecture and sculpture, were as dependent upon the Phœnicians as were the primitive Romans upon the Etruscans. The influence of Egypt was felt in Palestine in a greater degree than in Phœnicia, because the Israelites had grown to a people upon the banks of the Nile, and without doubt transplanted many artistic conceptions, as well as methods and details, to the Promised Land. This is noticeable in the tabernacle and in the temple, the latter, as is well known, receiving its general disposition from its relation to that former encampment. The tabernacle (Fig. 100) is in fundamental character a repetition in movable tents of the triple Egyptian temple system of court, hall, and cella. At the time of the emigration of the Jews from their long sojourn in Goshen, they could have been familiar only with Egyptian forms; we cannot mistake if we suppose them, before their intercourse with the Phœnicians, to have supplied all their artistic needs from Egyptian precedents.

Fig. 100.—The Mosaic Tabernacle.

{144}

The simple enclosure of the tabernacle formed a court, with a front of fifty cubits, and twice as long as it was broad. There were twenty-one columns, like tent-poles, upon the sides, and eleven upon the front; those of the corners being counted twice. These supports were five cubits high, ornamented with silver capitals, and standing in sockets of bronze; they must have been entirely similar to the shafts represented upon Egyptian wall-paintings. They appear not to have been joined by cross-bars. White immovable hangings were fastened between them, beneath their capitals, with the exception of the four central intercolumniations of the eastern front, where hung movable curtains of blue, purple, and scarlet linen. The tabernacle itself, b, did not stand in the centre of this enclosure, but nearer the western end, probably so that a square of fifty cubits was left before its entrance, in which space there stood the altar, c, of earth and wooden sheathing for burnt-offerings, five cubits square and three cubits high, and the laver of brass, d. There thus remained upon the three other sides a space of twenty cubits between the tabernacle and the enclosure. This disposition is not expressly affirmed, but may naturally be assumed from the indications presented by the dimensions of the tabernacle, which was thirty cubits long and ten broad. Except in the front, e, where were five columns, it was formed of forty-eight boards overlaid with sheet-gold. These boards, like the poles of the enclosure, were not rammed into the earth, but stood upon double sockets of silver; they were fastened together by tenons and by bars, which were pushed through projecting golden rings. The arrangement of the five columns of the front, also overlaid with gold, is not certain. It is hardly possible that they were placed in antis; for, although the shafts were but thin poles, the six intercolumniations thus formed would have had a width of only one and a half cubits each—too narrow for passage. The two outermost columns may, from this consideration, be assumed to have stood before the ends of the boarded wall, in prostyle arrangement, or close upon this, as indicated in the plan at e; a method of avoiding the narrowing of the space by the two exterior intercolumniations which was adopted in much later times upon the so-called tombs of Absalom and Zachariah, to be considered below, where the forms may have been in some measure decided by{145} reminiscences of these primitive constructions. If the ten cubits of the tabernacle front were divided into four parts instead of six, passage would have been easy.

There is no information concerning the appearance of these shafts. Their sockets of bronze may have been similar to the high bases of Moorish columns, and to those which support the canopy-poles of our churches. If the shafts were neither connected by cross-braces nor rammed into the earth, they must have been provided with a footing even broader than that of either of the instances mentioned, and have resembled the wide-spreading plinths of Egyptian lotos columns. That the columns were disproportionately slim is evident from the consideration that five shafts of normal Egyptian, or Greek Doric, proportions, ten cubits high, would have entirely occupied the narrow front of the tabernacle, and have left no space for the intercolumniations. Mere tent-poles would have been sufficient, as the building was provided with no fixed roof, but was covered, like the tents of Bedouins, with colored linen, cloths of goat-hair, and the skins of rams and seals. As this covering received its chief support from the side walls, a light epistyle of wood was sufficient to unite the summits of the front columns. It cannot be said that there was any entablature, in the proper sense of the word.

The proportions of the tabernacle, three times as long as it was broad, were like those of the Egyptian temple. It was divided into two unequal compartments, the front, f, being twice the depth of the innermost holy of holies, g. The altar for incense, h, one cubit square in plan and two cubits high, probably stood in the centre of the first space; it was of acacia-wood, covered with beaten gold. Like the altar for burnt-sacrifices, its corners were ornamented with “horns,” the nature of which has been variously explained, but which could have been nothing else than corner acroteria, like those upon the monuments, sarcophagi, etc., of Asia Minor, and those of the small altar found at Um-el-Auamid, in Phœnicia. Such acroteria—which do, indeed, somewhat resemble upright horns—were not merely for ornament, but served to hold the golden lattice-work (zer) surrounding the top of the altar, to prevent the scattering of coals. Next to the northern side-wall stood the table for shew-bread,{146} i; in the southwestern corner of the space the seven-armed candlestick, k, was so obliquely placed that, to a person entering, its flames were in a line. The form of the candlestick is known from the representation upon the Arch of Titus, which, though possibly not copied from the original—as Josephus relates that only an imitation was paraded during the triumph of Titus—yet agrees with the main points of the Biblical description. The seven arms consisted of three concentrical semicircles and a vertical staff, all of which ended at the same height. The base was polygonal, and ornamented with sculptures, the support decorated with leaves, the arms represented branches with buds and blossoms, ending in the open calyxes of the flowers which bore the lamps. Its importance, as was the case with all the appurtenances of Jewish worship, was considerably greater in material than in artistic respects; the candlestick was without doubt solid, and was made of a talent of gold—worth more than four hundred pounds sterling. A relief of Thabarieh, probably older than the Christian era, shows its general form; it is given in Fig. 101 as further illustrative of the peculiar metallic style of the Phœnician-Israelitic art of stone-cutting.

The holy of holies, a cubical space of ten cubits on the side, was separated from the larger antechamber by four columns, l, which were also covered with gold, and stood upon silver sockets; they bore a second curtain of four colors. This cella contained the palladium of the people, the ark of the covenant, m, a coffer of acacia-wood, two cubits and a half long and a cubit and a half high, borne upon poles fixed in golden rings. Upon the lid, the so-called mercy-seat, were the figures of two cherubim, monstrous combinations of bulls, lions, eagles, and human bodies; or, at least, of three of these—the body of either the lion or the bull being adopted. Though De Saulcy and Layard do not doubt that these cherubim were perfectly similar to the symbolical monsters before the portals of the palaces of Nineveh,{147} it must not be forgotten that the Jews were, at this period of their wanderings, so completely influenced by Egyptian conceptions of art that peculiarly Assyrian forms could not have existed in the tabernacle. The cherubim must rather have been Egyptian—entirely similar to the sphinxes, which, as has been seen, frequently presented this same combination of human head and breast, with the body of a lion. Neumann considers the cherubim to resemble the animals upon an Assyrian ornament, with sunken head and bent fore-legs; but it is more probable that they were crouched like a sphinx, or were, perhaps, sitting upon their hinder quarters, like the figures of a Phœnician throne of rather later period published by Renan. They were carved in wood and overlaid with thin sheets of gold, as was also the golden calf with which the Israelites in the desert sought to imitate the Egyptian idolatry of animals. This is all that can be said of the Jewish sculpture of the period; the Second Commandment entirely prevented any independent development of art.

The form and arrangement of the tabernacle are in the main clear. This is not the case with the monumental temple which Solomon, according to the plan of his great predecessor, erected to take its place, after King David had recovered, and brought to the plateau of Moriah (at present known as Haram-el-Sherif) the ark of the covenant, which had for some time been held as booty in the hands of enemies. The Biblical accounts enlarge, after the well-known manner of the Jews, principally upon the great cost of the materials, and are thus rather archæological notices than artistic descriptions. As might be expected from writers ignorant of art, the statements are, for the greater part, vague and confused. The conditions of Jewish architecture and sculpture appear radically changed since the time of Moses. Immediately after the exodus, Egyptian conceptions and manners of work were dominant; but, as time advanced without further direct communication between the two countries, these became more and more outgrown, and at last completely changed to a dependency upon the civilization and art of Phœnicia. The Egyptian element, however, by no means disappears, for, as has been seen, it existed in Phœnicia itself, as might be expected from its geographical position between Mesopotamia{148} and Egypt: The Jews were not so far developed from a nomadic people as to be able themselves to create imposing architectural works. These call for centuries of practice in the art of building. The construction of their temple was given over to their northern neighbors, the more readily as Solomon was in friendly alliance with Hiram, King of Tyre. The Tyrian architect Hiram was sent with a great number of assistants to Jerusalem. Stone-cutters of Byblos worked, with the aid of Jews, in the quarries of Jerusalem; the necessary timber was hewn in the Phœnician forests of Lebanon; and upon the Jordan, in the vicinity of Scythopolis, a metal-foundry for the temple ornaments was built under Phœnician direction. An understanding of the activity among these artisans during the time of building may be obtained from a consideration of the number of workmen employed: eighty thousand stone-cutters were assisted by seventy thousand bearers of burdens. This multitude of laborers would not have needed one year to complete the temple, far less the seven years actually employed (1014 to 1007 B.C.), had it not been for the imposing substructure of the rocky plateau,—a mass of masonry which may almost be compared to the Egyptian pyramids; surpassing the remains at Ruad, if not in the colossal size of the blocks, at least in the exactitude of their workmanship. From the numbers said to have labored in Jerusalem at one time, it appears probable that by far the greater part of the immense foundations was built under Solomon, though the supporting vaults of the southeastern corner are known to date from the time of Herod, if not even later. The erection of enormous terraced foundations plays a prominent, and at times even the most important, part in the architecture of all the people of Western Asia.

The temple itself occupied but a very small part of the oblong area, more than 1500 m. in circumference, which was gained by this artificial extension of the rocky plateau. This space was provided with gates upon all four sides, to some of which access was had by arched bridges; it was surrounded by thick walls and double ranges of columns, asserted by Josephus to have been monolithic. This outer court, accessible to all, contained a smaller interior enclosure formed by other colonnades, and probably also by several large halls; four gateways with gilded bronze doors led to the interior, to{149} which every worthy Jew had access. Infidels were debarred from farther advance by a grating almost 1.5 m. high, which enclosed the space corresponding to the outer court of the Mosaic tabernacle. The altar for burnt-offerings had been increased in plan to a square of twenty cubits, and to a height of ten cubits; an inclined ascent of considerable size was necessary to reach the summit. It is believed that the kernel of this altar is the holy rock in the present Mosque of Omar.

The brazen laver (the kijor) had developed into the so-called molten sea,—a basin of ten cubits in diameter, cast in bronze, and supported at a height of five cubits upon the backs of twelve bronze oxen. It may be conceived as very similar to the fountain of the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra. The oxen were so divided in groups of three that they faced the cardinal points of the compass, “and all their hinder parts were inward.” These figures, so purely Phœnician, must have been far more similar to the productions of Assyria than could have been the case with the Mosaic cherubim. Their heads probably resembled that shown above (Fig. 97) upon the relief of Saida, their legs those of the primitive animals upon the monument of Amrith (Fig. 98), or of the lions in the court of the Alhambra. The altar and the molten sea were situated before the front of the temple, the axis of which was turned east and west, at right angles to the general direction of the outer court, which ran north and south.

The entrance to the temple was ornamented by two bronze columns, known as Jachin and Boaz; their height is given in different passages as 18 and 35 cubits, and here begins the confusion caused by the Biblical contradictions which make it so difficult to obtain a reliable understanding of the nature of Solomon’s building. It cannot even be decided whether these columns were in the entrance, as architectural supports, or stood before the gates, without a function,—they being spoken of as in, upon, and before the portico. If they stood in the entrance itself, as supports of its lintel (as assumed by Baehr), it is probable that they did not divide its width into three equal intercolumniations. The diameter of the shafts was four cubits, and such an arrangement would so have occupied the total opening of the portal, only fourteen cubits, that but two cubits would have remained for each of the three passages. It is more probable{150} that they were placed next to the jambs in the manner assumed for the front of the tabernacle. If the columns be supposed to have stood before the portico, without any function of support, like obelisks, all difficulty is avoided. In either case it would be important, for an understanding of the style of Solomon’s Temple and of Phœnician workmanship, to comprehend the long description given of their capitals. It is only clear that these were four or five cubits high, and had the general form of lilies, probably that of a calyx, as if derived from the floral capitals of Egypt. A column discovered in the foundation vaults of the temple exhibits a peculiarly heavy capital of this kind, which is, however, though evidently of primitive outline and proportions, characterized by the acanthus-like carving as a work influenced by the later art of Greece. It is to be observed that the normal Egyptian-bell calyx, without additions, could not be spoken of as having the form of a lily, by which name the curled ends of leaves were usually designated in the Orient. The volutes thus especially referred to must have been similar to those upon the Assyrian capital, and notably to those of the rock-cut relief in the Pass of Mashnaka (Fig. 99), which, situated upon Phœnician territory, offer the most striking analogy. An illustration of the extensive ornamental employment of the helix termination is offered by the decoration of a vase recently discovered in Cyprus (Fig. 102), and by pilaster capitals in the Cesnola collection. (Fig. 107.) It is an anachronism to bring the columns, because of their channelled shafts and some minor peculiarities, into connection with the forms of Persian architecture, which could not have been developed so long before the time of Cyrus. The additions—wreaths of chains, nets of checker-work, hanging pomegranates, etc.—of which the Scriptures render a chaotic account, cannot, in detail, be understood or explained. If the shafts are supposed to have been united{151} by a lattice-work of metal, it is more natural to seek a parallel in the free-standing columns of an Assyrian relief than in the canopies of Persian thrones suggested by Julius Braun. That the chains, net-work, and the pomegranates did not hang upon the capitals themselves has been argued by Vogué, from the analogy of an ancient capital of the Mosque of Haram, and is made evident by Braun’s question, how, indeed, it would be possible to count two hundred pomegranates strung around a capital at such a height above the ground.

Fig. 103.—Hypothetical Plan and Section of Solomon’s Temple.

An important portal stood before the halls of the temple. With a plan of 10 cubits deep and 20 cubits broad, the astonishing height of 120 cubits is attributed to this tower, a number appearing in the Chronicles, and repeated in the Septuagint and by Josephus, so that{152} it cannot be regarded as the mistake of a transcriber. But even if the first measures are arbitrarily assumed to refer only to a small interior space enclosed by walls of enormous thickness, the constructive impracticability of erecting a tower of such height is evident; it appears impossible that the temple could have been preceded by a pile twice as high as the principal building was long, and six times as high as this was broad! We would not venture to present a restoration with such proportions, and must agree with Hirt, Streber, De Saulcy, De Vogué, and others, that the account is a Scriptural exaggeration, passed on from hand to hand. It is hardly to be explained by the suggestions of De Saulcy and Streber. The first of these authorities wishes to reduce the elevation by the supposition that one half of the entire height existed under the earth as a foundation, so that only 60 cubits remained visible above. This is ludicrous; the solid rock beneath the temple rendered such remarkable foundations useless and impossible to execute. Streber, also seeking to uphold the Biblical authority, would have it that the 120 cubits was obtained by adding together the heights of two pylons. But this is no less inadmissible, apart from the extreme improbability of heights having been given in so unwonted a manner; the portal appears, from its narrow width, to have been a single tower, and not divided, like those of Egypt, into two separate pylons. It is at least probable, however, that the structure rose above the main building; like the pylons of Egypt, it must have had a marked talus, and without doubt a cornice of scotia and roundlet, as these forms appear upon the monumental tombs of Siloam (Fig. 104)—the oldest of Palestine—and as this cornice was common in Phœnicia, and appears also in Assyria, upon the temple terrace of Kisr Sargon, and in Persia, over door and window openings. The entrance, 14 cubits broad, was probably diminished as its walls ascended, sloping like the outer angle of the elevation, so that the construction of the lintel presents little difficulty, especially when we consider the enormous stones employed in the restoration of the building by Herod, some of which Josephus relates to have been 5 and 6 cubits broad and thick, and 45 (!) cubits long. Above the lintel the same principle of a relieving triangle seems to have been practised, as may be observed in various parts of Egypt and in Mykenæ:{153} the blocks over the door did not lie directly upon the lintel, but gradually approached from both sides above the jambs, leaving between them a gable-shaped opening, which was closed, in order to spare the beam beneath, by only a slab of marble, as at Mykenæ, or by light, thin masonry. This method of construction is indicated by the mention that a golden candlestick, dedicated by Queen Helena, was so placed over the temple entrance as to be shone upon by the sun; and especially by the reference to a triangle existing over the door which opened into the holy of holies. The first gate had jambs of olive-wood and movable doors of cypress, both overlaid with gold. It led to the larger hall, 20 cubits broad, 40 cubits long, and 30 cubits high; to which adjoined the holy of holies, a cubical space of 20 cubits side. The access to this, permitted in rare instances, was through a richly carved door, overlaid with gold and draped with a magnificent curtain. The separating wall was of gilded cedar. These two halls were surrounded upon all sides, with the exception of the front, by a large number of small chambers, in three stories, lighted from without by three rows of windows. These secondary sacristies were each 5 cubits in height within, and, with their ceilings, must have attained an altitude of 20 cubits. The holy of holies was consequently entirely surrounded, and must have been without windows, and dark. The larger space still rose 10 cubits above this side structure, and in this clerestory its windows, which are especially mentioned, must have found place. The flat roof, or, rather, the terraces upon different heights of which it was composed, mounted from the holy of holies to the portal tower in steps somewhat more than 20, 30, and perhaps 60 cubits high. According to Eupolemo (Eusebius), the covering was of copper sheathing.

The temple bore an upper story, explicitly described by Josephus, as it appeared after Herod’s reconstruction of the building, but which is only once mentioned before his time, with the remark that these upper chambers were overlaid with gold (2 Chron. iii. 9). The height of this second story is evident from Josephus, who gives 60 cubits as the total elevation of the building, while the space beneath it had but 30 cubits in this dimension. In regard to the extent of its plan, it must be assumed that it was not built above the{154} lateral chambers or the holy of holies, as the height of the principal hall was far greater than that of the chambers; this would have made the upper story on entirely different levels, and have required staircases large enough to occupy the whole of the space above the 20 square cubits of the holy of holies; and the height of this chamber would, upon the exterior, have become thrice that of its length and breadth—namely, 60 cubits. Such deformities, impracticable of execution, without purpose, and offending all sense of fitness and beauty, may be rejected when the authorities for them are indefinite and contradictory, or, as is the case with Maimonides (1190 A.D.), are assuredly unauthentic. It is probable that the upper story was built only upon the ceiling of the larger hall; and that it was not formed of the massive materials employed for the walls of the lower temple, but, as is indicated by the statement that these upper chambers were overlaid with gold, was built lightly of wood. Such a manner of construction would have permitted a passage to be left around it in the width of the hall ceiling, thus uniting the suitability and the æsthetic advantages of a terraced form, and agreeing with Mesopotamian and Persian analogies. The suggestion may even be ventured that it was by a misunderstanding connected with these upper chambers that the fabulous height of 120 cubits was originally assigned to the portal tower, which, perhaps, was regarded as twice the height of the principal hall; if the elevation of the lower hall and the upper-story had been taken together, if 60 cubits had been doubled in the place of 30, this would account for the 120 cubits taking the place of the more probable 60.

The lower walls of the temple were built of hewn blocks of white marble. The remarkable statement that a layer of cypress or cedar beams always followed upon one of stone cannot be explained otherwise than as a reference to the interior revetment of the masonry with wood. The wall of the court, where the beams are said to have followed three courses of stone, must be considered as of triple thickness, its quarried blocks being hidden by a sheathing, like that of the temple. The statement that the ceiling joists of the smaller surrounding chambers were not sunk into the stone wall itself, but were borne upon the beams, now becomes intelligible; they rested upon the studding of the wooden revetment. The entire{155} interior of the temple, exclusive of the passage through the portico, is particularly asserted to have been provided with this sheathing. The partition between the holy of holies and the principal hall was probably altogether of wood, as here only the two revetments were visible. Upon these walls were sculptured ornaments overlaid with beaten gold. This wood-carving, with its surface of sheet-metal, here took the place of the sculptured and painted decoration upon the walls of Nineveh; it is in this point that the chief difference between the mural treatment of Upper Mesopotamia and Phœnicia appears to have consisted. Quarries of alabaster were common in Assyria; Mount Lebanon, on the other hand, provided the most beautiful wood for carving, and Phœnician commerce procured the metals for the characteristic beaten work—the sphyrelaton.

The few notices preserved concerning the decorations of Solomon’s Temple prove them to have been similar, in both subject and design, to those of Nineveh; they represented cherubim, palms (the so-called tree of life), and floral wreaths. It was only in the cherubim and in the oxen bearing the molten sea that the exercise of sculpture in the full round was at all permitted, and these subjects did not greatly encourage the artistic study of nature. The cherubim stood in the holy of holies as guardians of the ark of the covenant. They were independent colossal figures, carved of olive-wood and overlaid with beaten gold. They were no longer, as in the Mosaic tabernacle, upon the lid of the ark—the mercy-seat—in a recumbent or sitting position, but stood at either side of the holy coffer, and were without doubt greatly different in style from their predecessors. In the consideration of the cherubim of the tabernacle, the similarity of these works to Assyrian parallels was denied, for the Israelites, immediately after the exodus, were naturally acquainted alone with the artistic traditions of Egypt; but this was by no means the case in the time of Solomon, when we have to deal with Phœnician styles,—that is to say, with a combination of various manners of artistic conception and expression. The cherubim of Solomon may fairly be assumed to have in the main resembled the monstrous guardians of Assyrian palaces; the chief deviation from the cherubim of Nineveh was that their wings were not folded closely,{156} but were outstretched as if for flight, so that the tips of their feathers touched together over the ark of the sanctuary, and extended to the side walls of the holy of holies, measuring ten cubits in entire span. The ark of the covenant itself and the other vessels of the temple were either overlaid with gold or were of the solid metal. The altar of incense, the shew-bread table, and the seven-armed candlestick remained as they had been in the tabernacle; to them were added, besides many less important utensils, ten further lamp-holders of gold. As the beaten metal not only extended over all the carved walls of wooden sheathing, but even covered the horizontal ceiling, the eye saw nothing but gold—a decoration which the many-flamed candlesticks must have rendered particularly brilliant, but which was eminently barbaric, as the metal was probably not enlivened by colored enamels. It is in questionable taste, even in the most prominent members of an architectural composition, to outbid the artistic expression of a work by employing for it a material of too striking intrinsic value; but it is wholly condemnable to paralyze the concentrating effect, which is always attained by the moderate use of a very bright and valuable material, by its universal employment, and thus to lose the precious character of the centre through the attempted magnificence of the whole.

As is well known, Solomon’s Temple was destroyed at the command of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, in 587 B.C. The attempt to rebuild it was not entirely successful until Cyrus ended the Babylonian exile, and not only permitted the building to proceed, but even returned the sacred utensils, which had been carried off as booty, and kept in the Temple of Bel. This reconstruction, named, after the ruler, Zerubbabel, was not completed until after forty-six years, when, under Darius, all the difficulties in the way of its prosecution were overcome. There is reason for supposing that the influence of Persia made itself felt upon the style of the new work, but nothing of importance to the history of art is directly known concerning it. The magnificent restoration of Herod, commenced in 16 or 15 B.C., was executed in ten years, to be destroyed within a century by Titus, so that, literally, not one stone remained upon the other. The remodelled temple is not important to the history of Phœnician-Israelitic art; though the original plan and{157} arrangement were in the main preserved, its style became a debasement of the Greek and Roman orders. The gigantic platform, the site of the building with which so many remarkable events are connected, will always continue to be of peculiar interest in the history of the world’s development.

The description of Solomon’s palace given by the Scriptures is too vague to convey any adequate conception of it. It was a building extended by columns and provided with an upper story: the shafts were of cedar-wood; their form is not mentioned. The walls were of stone, hewn rectangularly, as might be expected from the similar masonry of the temple. The cedar beams of the ceiling must be supposed, agreeably to Solomon’s preference for costly materials, to have been overlaid with gold. There is nothing in these descriptions to suggest Persian arrangement or details, which did not develop from Assyrian methods of building until four centuries later. As the Phœnician architecture of this epoch can be compared to that of no younger land than Mesopotamia, and as the plans of the known Assyrian palaces are provided with no halls of columns, it is natural to seek for the origin of the hypostyle disposition in Egyptian elements, which, in other respects, take so important a place in the development of Israelitic art. Buildings of wood overlaid with metal are, on the other hand, peculiarly characteristic of the Syrian coast.

All this magnificence has totally disappeared, and it would be natural to expect that, as in other parts of Western Asia, the rock-cut tombs in the vicinity of Jerusalem, preserved by their indestructibility, would give the most direct and trustworthy information concerning the Phœnician-Israelitic style. But the more ancient of these monuments—those erected before the time of the Seleucidæ—are of such extreme simplicity that, from lack of detail, they convey no understanding of Phœnician columns and entablatures, nor, indeed, of any characteristic architectural forms. A simple stairway leads to the smaller grotto graves, which, excavated in the cliff, were once closed by slabs of stones. Their plan is generally square, the ceiling cut to the form of a flat barrel-vault. In the larger family sepulchres the burial-chambers are grouped around an antechamber, the bodies in them being placed upon stone benches or pushed into{158} coffin-like niches. When the entrance is at all architecturally characterized upon the exterior, which is of comparatively rare occurrence, it displays the heavy Egyptian scotia and roundlet (Fig. 104), or a simple framing with a gable and a ridge acroterium of double volutes, like the rock-cut tombs of Phrygia. (Fig. 105.) Where there is carved foliage in the gables and friezes, as upon the so-called tombs of the judges and kings, these are the conventional traces of a later period, though these ornaments frequently retain in design and execution the peculiar dry angularity characteristic of the imitation of beaten metal which is so universal in Phœnicia.

Fig. 104.—Rock-cut Tomb of Siloam.       Fig. 105.—Rock-cut Tomb of Hinnom.

The influence of Greece and Rome is distinctly betrayed in the so-called Tomb of Jacob, the pretended sepulchres of the kings, and the tombs attributed, without reason, to Absalom and Zachariah. These monuments, some of which have been cut entirely from the native rock, are ornamented by Doric friezes with Roman disks in the metopes, and by Doric and Ionic columns and engaged shafts, which reproduced the debased forms which characterize the treatment of Greek architecture under the Romans. Yet in all this there are still traces of national peculiarities. At times vegetable ornaments, grapes and grape-leaves, pomegranates, ivy, laurel, and acorns fill the tympanon and the frieze, interrupted by the triglyphs. The{159} general form of the two last-named tombs is peculiar. That of Zachariah is a cube of a little over 5 m. on the side; that of Absalom of almost 7 m. They are ornamented by pilasters and debased Ionic engaged shafts, and have heavy cornices of the Egyptian roundlet and scotia, to which is added, upon the Tomb of Absalom, a late Doric frieze. The former is concluded by a pyramid, 3.6 m. high, cut also from the native rock, a termination which gives to the general form a certain similarity to the Tomb of Amrith known as the Snail-tower. The latter supports upon the cube a smaller and much lower mass of masonry, built of quarried stones, and bearing upon a doubly stepped cylindrical base a cone of concave outline, which terminates, at a height of 13.5 m. above the ground, in a clumsy, tulip-like flower. The entrance to the burial-chamber cut in the rock substructure of Absalom’s tomb has been broken in above the scotia cornice; the traces of nails upon the walls of the small space point to the customary sheathing of metal. Notwithstanding such isolated reminiscences of indigenous—that is to say, Phœnician—manners of building, it is impossible to agree with several noted authorities in recognizing, in the Doric and Ionic details which appear combined with them, predecessors and models of the Hellenic development of these styles. Such prototypes should least be sought among a people who, possessing no art of their own, did but borrow from their neighbors. And, moreover, these forms appear by no means to be primitive attempts, but clearly exhibit the lifelessness and debasement of the latest period of Greek architectural history. These monuments may safely be ascribed to the last two centuries B.C. Although the Corinthian order almost entirely superseded the older styles in Italy during the time of the Cæsars, these provincial Doric and Ionic forms may still be assumed to date rather from the later than from the earlier half of this period.

Fig. 106.—Tomb at Paphos in Cyprus.

Palestine, in the history of art, may be regarded as a domain of Phœnicia, and the same thing may be said of Cyprus and of Carthage. All the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, lying as it did between the great powers of civilization in the valley of the Nile and the plain of the Euphrates and Tigris, seemed destined by nature, as we have seen, to combine the artistic peculiarities of Egypt and Assyria. Cyprus, in a somewhat similar position, shared the{160} Phœnician civilization and was also exposed to the influence of the Greeks, especially to that of the Dorians, who had founded colonies upon the southern islands of the Ægean, and who early possessed a stronghold in Crete. It is therefore not surprising that upon the rock-cut tombs of Cyprus the Doric style of architecture was not restricted to the late and debased forms found upon the tombs near Jerusalem, but may occasionally be met with in a very primitive state of development. An instance of this is offered by a tomb near Paphos. (Fig. 106.) In general, the position of the island exposed it more to the influence of Egypt than of Mesopotamia; it is not evident in how marked a degree this was felt. Of the chief Phœnician sanctuary upon Cyprus—the Temple of Astarte at Paphos—there exist only insufficient representations upon coins and upon an engraved gem of the Museo Pio-Clementino. These prove no more than that, within a circular enclosure of lattice-work, there stood a tall structure towering above low side-buildings, which were supported, like porticos, upon columns. Two Egyptian shafts appear to have been placed before the entrance, without function as supports, and, like Jachin and Boaz, without strictly architectural purpose. Still less is known of the temples of Amathus and Golgoi. It is hardly probable that the remains of a building discovered by General Cesnola in the village of Atienu, near the present port of Larnaka (the Biblical Chitim and Greek Kition) are those of the{161} world-famed Temple of Aphrodite at Golgoi. The structure seems rather to have been a treasure-house, in some way connected with the great temple, which once contained, with the votive statues there discovered, other objects belonging to the temenos. The oblong plan with irregular entrances, the bareness of its walls, and especially the carelessly arranged pedestals which filled the space within, seem to point to its original destination as that of a magazine. The only objects of architectural interest discovered in these remains are the columns which flank the doors, in a position corresponding to that of the columns of the Mosaic tabernacle. The bases, found in position, are channelled like those of Persia. The shafts and capitals are not preserved. The form of the latter may perhaps be surmised from a comparison of fragments in the Cesnola collection (Fig. 107), analogous to the capitals of Mashnaka, to the double spirals of Assyrian architecture, and to the descriptions given of the lily-capitals of Solomon’s Temple.

Fig. 107.—Cyprian Pilaster Capitals.

Cesnola’s discoveries upon Cyprus are more important in sculptural than in architectural respects, and are worthy to rank with those of Botta, Layard, and Schliemann. The chief works are limestone statues of various sizes. To these are added, from the investigations of other ruins, doubtless of tombs, a great number of minor articles: terra-cotta figures, vases and lamps, and various objects of glass, metal, etc. These works are easily divided into two great groups, each of peculiar style, with which the inscriptions that have{162} been discovered agree in general character and in relative number. Among the eighty-five inscriptions found up to 1870, thirty-three are Greek, twenty Phœnician, and thirty-two Cyprian. The styles of Phœnician and Cyprian sculpture resemble each other far more closely than did the languages of those countries, so that in the comparative rarity of examples it is difficult to distinguish the origin of these works. They show a kind of compromise between Egyptian, Syrian (Assyrian), and early Greek methods—a combination agreeing with the geographical position of the island, and with the descent and history of its inhabitants. All Cyprian sculpture shows, in so far as it is not influenced by a reflection of the later Greek and Roman forms, the Phœnician style which has been described as developed from beaten metal-work; this is evident even in the stone carvings. (Figs. 108 and 109.)

The destruction of Carthage is as famous for its completeness as that of Jerusalem, which, indeed, it resembled in other respects, and it is natural that but few traces of this magnificent Queen of the Sea should have been preserved. Recent French and English investigations under Bente and Davis describe the considerable remains of the fortification walls of the Byrsa, built of colossal blocks of tufa. Their great thickness, 10 m., permitted the formation of semicircular chambers in three superposed stories, which, being accessible from within, served as casemates and magazines. The numerous rock-cut tombs are, as in Phœnicia, provided with steps from above, and form an oblong crypt, about which the deep niches for the reception of bodies are grouped.{163}

The remains of barbaric temples upon Malta and the neighboring islands are of subordinate importance, if indeed they are to be mentioned at all, in the consideration of Phœnician art. The double temple upon Gozo is the most important of them. It consists of two adjoining spaces, each concluded by a semicircular apse, having upon both sides similar niches, so that the entire enclosure appears as a combination of apses around an oblong. The pavement is partly of rectangular blocks, so stepped as to show an interior division; but the Cyclopean masonry of the walls is so rough that, in its entire lack of ornamental treatment, the structure has but little interest for the history of art, and permits no conclusions concerning Phœnician architecture, which elsewhere produced such incomparable masonry of hewn stones.

The funeral monuments of the remaining Punic lands, of the Balearic Isles, and notably of Sardinia, though of greater artistic value, are fully as uncertain in their origin. Their form is at times like that of the monuments of Amrith; yet they may very possibly be of Etruscan derivation, for, apart from their resemblance to the tombs of Etruria, they are almost exclusively upon the eastern coast of Sardinia, the side turned towards Italy, while the Phœnicians would more naturally have come in contact with the western part of the island.

The most advanced outpost of the extended civilization of Phœnicia was Asia Minor. Under the dominion of the Seleucidæ and of the Romans, the influence of Greek art was so felt upon the Syrian coast, and even as far as the banks of the Tigris, that purely national works of architecture and sculpture are comparatively rare. But this influence was doubly great in the land of which, from the earliest times, the Ionians had possessed the seaboard, and where they had founded a number of flourishing cities which had attained to a degree of prosperity and culture not less than that of{164} their relatives upon the peninsula of the Peloponnesos. Yet, although Ionian art bore some of its finest fruit upon Asiatic soil, and from roots which may partly be traced back to Mesopotamia, this can be historically treated only in connection with the civilization of Greece and its common origin and development. Hellenic Asia Minor and the countries under its influence—that is to say, the coasts and islands of the Ægean, Propontis and Pontus—cannot be separately considered. All the sculpture of these regions must therefore be reserved for a later page; but there are a few architectural monuments of the southern coast and of the interior which require our present attention as being peculiarly national. Yet even in these territories, divided according to their ancient population into Lycia, Phrygia, and Lydia, all the monumental architecture was greatly affected by the long Asiatic sway of the Diadochi, and by the military power of Rome. The temples and public edifices gave up their national peculiarities for manners of building characteristic of Greece and Rome. It was only in the tombs that original conceptions retained a stubborn hold. These, when cut in the rock, became imitations of the dwellings of the country. Types of house construction were represented which had been determined by the climatic necessities and by different building materials of each province. By their massive simplicity and by the popular consideration that a changeless dwelling best suited the quiet repose of the dead, the rock-cut tombs retained their primitive peculiarities without sensible alteration, being exposed only to unimportant modifications. Little reference was made in them to the advance of artistic or constructional methods from age to age. Though we have to deal exclusively with the tombs of the country, they allow{165} us to draw conclusions concerning the appearance of other buildings, whether temples or dwellings, which they had taken as their models.

Fig. 112.—Rock-cut Tomb at Myra.

Next to the Phœnician coast, and opposite Phœnician Cyprus, lies Lycia, embracing the greater part of the southern sea-line of Asia Minor. It calls for chief consideration because of its almost numberless tombs, some of which are admirably preserved, and because of their instructive variety. Entire cliffs, like the Necropolis of Myra, shown in Fig. 93 at the head of this section, are literally covered with such monumental façades, picturesquely grouped according to the natural configuration of the rock. The greater number are excavated grottoes, the fronts of which are careful imitations of timbered houses. They might be called log-house tombs if other than the roof beams were of unsquared trunks. The interstices between the framing, when not remaining open as an entrance, are closed by panels. The individuality of these monuments is as marked as could have been possible among the dwellings of Lycian mountaineers, whose wealth was not great, and whose architectural demands did not much vary. An exact imitation of the ingenious carpentry is cut in the rock down to the smallest detail: the stiles of the panelling, the round unhewn timbers of the roof, the clamping and dovetailing of the beams, and the primitive tree-nails with which these are secured are shown with the greatest distinctness. The appearance of the whole, when intact, must have resembled a petrified village. These groups of tombs are among the most curious and striking remains of antiquity. The attempt was made by several races of early civilization to prepare a funeral-chamber which should resemble as closely as possible the dwellings inhabited during{166} life; but this intention was not elsewhere so thoroughly carried out, and never resulted in so piquant a contradiction to the material in which it was executed. The native rock was made completely to deny its nature, and to present the image of a distinctively wooden construction. Upon abrupt cliffs this was usually restricted to a façade, which at times was very simple, but quite characteristic, as in a tomb at Antiphellos (Fig. 110), where the wooden framing underneath the flat projecting roof forms two windows, left open as entrances to the cavern. A somewhat more complicated example is shown by another tomb of this site (Fig. 111), which is especially remarkable on account of the carefully imitated coping of the cross-beams. In this case only one of the door and window panels is open, and a gabled roof appears, which seems to have been{167} customary in Asia Minor, and to some degree in Phœnicia. The framing of an interior or of side walls is also shown by the stone imitation, as in the case of a fine example at Myra (Fig. 112), which seems to illustrate the utmost limit of the style. But here the contradiction between the form and the material is so glaring that the curious elegance of the result does not redeem it. The repeating of wooden constructions in stone without any modification—which is at first sight, and in less extent, pleasing and piquant—has here become disagreeably obtrusive. This is still more striking upon the rarer monumental sarcophagi at Phellos and Myra, where the block-house is carved in the full round from the native rock. These works represent the wooden model upon all four sides, so completely and conscientiously that it would be possible, by their aid, to reconstruct the dwelling-house of a Lycian mountaineer in wood—to repeat from such a petrified copy the original, though its frail materials perished more than twenty centuries ago. It is curious how greatly the present huts of the country resemble their antique predecessors.

Near these tombs, in some instances even connected with them, though usually independent, stand upright monuments of the nature of obelisks, but with an upper member characteristic of Lycia. In place of the pyramidal point of Egypt, or of the hemispherical or stepped termination of Phœnicia and Assyria, there is here a cornice of projecting slabs, upon which rests a small but comparatively high block. The most important example is that known as the Monument of the Harpies (Fig. 113), now in considerable part transported to the Lycian Hall of the British Museum. It consisted of a gigantic monolith bearing a small burial-chamber, the enclosing slabs of which were ornamented by the famous reliefs, so important in the history of Greek sculpture.

The third group of Lycian sepulchral monuments, the smaller sarcophagi, is the most numerous, forming at times an extended{168} necropolis. Though the majority are not free from Hellenic influences, they yet generally maintain the peculiar national characteristics, being imitations of wooden constructions somewhat similar to the rock-cut tombs. The lid in some instances appears to be of slat-work, and, instead of the semicircular gable common in Phœnicia, presents a pointed arch. The cornice dentils distinctly betray their derivation from the projecting ceiling beams, which, upon the block-house tombs, had still preserved the round form of unhewn timbers. A tomb at Antiphellos (Fig. 114) has a channel cut upon the summit of the lid, probably to serve as a socket for the ridge-crestings. The heads of lions and other projecting ornaments upon the sides enrich the architectural treatment. The monument cannot be spoken of as a sarcophagus, in the true sense of the word, for its lid was not movable, the body being introduced from the front, where window-like openings were provided for the purpose.

A fourth class of Lycian rock-cut tombs, those with a façade resembling a small temple-front, is of particular interest to the history of architecture. Many among these display the influence of a late Hellenic period, yet some preserve such primitive forms as to make it certain that Lycia took a prominent part in the development of the Ionic style—that the southern coast of Asia Minor was an important station, marking the advance of artistic culture from Mesopotamia to the Ægean Sea. These tombs generally represent the front of a temple in antis—that is to say, of a portico with two columns between the advanced side walls. The predominant Ionic forms are singularly primitive in the capital and entablature, the greater number{169} of the examples showing no trace of the decline of the style, or of the Roman type, so easily recognizable by the formal character of the details. These differ greatly, and seem to show the experiments of an early period of development, which may still have been contemporaneous with a far higher advance of the style upon the more northern coasts of the Ægean Sea and Sporades, being influenced in a different degree by the same Western Asiatic motives. The important combination which characterizes the perfection of Ionic architecture—the conjunction of the volute with the Doric echinos beneath it—does not appear upon these capitals; the spiral has not a graceful curve, and the contraction of the side rolls of the volute is lacking; the abacus is badly profiled, and the shafts are often joined without a curve to the clumsy bases. (Compare Fig. 116.) As was always the case among the Orientals, who knew of no independent gable and roof formation above the ceiling, the entablature consisted of only two members,—the epistyle, uniting the columns, and the terminating cornice. The triple division of the entablature, of so marked importance in the perfected style, was not known; even the two members here occurring were not sharply defined, and the dentils of the cornice were fully developed at a time when their original constructive significance had not yet been forgotten in their decorative application. The gable acroteria are clumsy knops, similar to the circular ridge ornaments and the horn-like corner pieces of Phœnician monuments. In short, we may trace in the rock-cut tombs of Lycia, if not a Proto-Ionic style, yet a distinct parallel development of the most{170} primitive Ionic forms. These did not exclude the influence of Greece, after the full perfection of the style had been attained, but rather prepared its way. An example of such later semi-Hellenic work may be observed in the magnificent monument of Xanthos, built in the middle of the fourth century B.C. as a trophy after the capture of Telmissos by the Xanthians. This also has been in part transported to the British Museum. This structure was not cut from the solid rock, but was built of quarried stones. It shows the full development of Ionic forms. Upon a comparatively high substructure there stood a cella surrounded by columns—of a peripteral arrangement rare in Lycia, where all the tombs which represent temples seem to show that the national places of worship, like those of Assyria and Phœnicia, were restricted to a portico in antis, the evolution of the peripteros being an improvement of the Greeks. The naïve originality observable in the Ionic does not exist in the more isolated Doric forms, although a few very archaic monuments of the latter style are known. Their existence is explained by the vicinity of Crete, that southern outpost of early Doric culture, as well as by the neighboring Doric colonies which flourished upon the southwestern extremity of Asia Minor.

Fig. 116.—Details of Columns from Telmissos, Myra, and Antiphellos.

Fig. 117.—So-called Tomb of Midas.

Lycia appears to have had but little influence upon the other countries of the seaboard, which were almost entirely Hellenized;{171} nor did its influence penetrate as far into the interior country as Phrygia, where the civilization of the Greeks was introduced only by way of the Ægean and Pontic coasts. There were neither frequented ports nor navigable streams to open the way. The tracklessness of wooded mountains restricted the commercial and intellectual horizon of the Phrygians, who, as a nomadic people, were contented with the slightest artistic exertion. In the same way as the Lycian carved his wooden hut upon the face of the cliff, that he might retain after his death the beloved dwelling of his life, the Phrygian ornamented the front of his grotto graves by a representation of his movable house, the nomadic tent. Only the cloth of the tent, with its woven pattern, was shown; its constructive ribs, not visible upon the exterior of the original, were omitted from the imitation. The most important of these tomb frontispieces, between Kiutahija and Sivrihissar upon the Saquaria, which are attributed to Phrygian kings, is called by the Turks Yasili-Kaia (the inscribed stone). (Fig. 117.) It is known as the Tomb of Midas from the one legible word, Midai, occurring in an unintelligible inscription. Upon the face of the cliff there is cut a square surface, 11 m. broad and about 9 m. high, terminated above by a low gable,{172} which, with the acroterium, adds 3 m. to the height of the whole. The triangle is framed by a light lattice-work in low relief, and crowned with two volutes, similar to the circular ridge decorations of Phœnician tombs. The tympanon is not carved, but probably, with the entire front, was painted. The extensive rectangular surface beneath is covered with a complicated meander ornament in relief—a play of lines evidently taken from a woven pattern and resembling the decorations of Moorish walls, where the fundamental motive was also the tent-cloth. The border of this surface represents, without conventionalization, an edging set with precious stones, such as may have been customary upon costly Syrian stuffs. The small interior chamber was only large enough for the reception of a sarcophagus. The entrance to it was not marked by any architectural features—even as the tent itself was not provided with a door—but the passage was originally closed by a slab, upon the face of which the woven pattern was without doubt continued. A second tomb of the vicinity, also marked by an undecipherable inscription, is of similar character. (Fig. 118.) The gable represents a wooden construction, somewhat like the framing of Lycian sarcophagi; its double acroterium is decorated with three rosettes. The principal surface, the square below, is without carving, and had probably a painted pattern. A third frontispiece of this type shows a floral frieze of alternate palmettoes and buds, resembling an Assyrian motive, but inverted, perhaps because its direct model was the border of a carpet. It recalls the hanging rows of pomegranates upon the columns Jachin and Boaz of Solomon’s Temple. The cliffs of Phrygia are honey-combed by such rock-cut tombs. Especially in the district north of Seid-el-Ar are there numberless{173} small grottoes, the entrances to which are either perfectly plain or provided only with a simple triangular gable—all giving proof of the rarity of artistic effort among these idyllic mountains.

The influence of Assyrian and Persian methods is evident even to the west of the river Halys, the border of the Mesopotamian dominion before Cyrus; but upon its farther banks, in Eastern Phrygia, Oriental art is universally prevalent. At Eyuk there are remains, supposed to be those of a temple, with a portal flanked by monsters like the cherubim of Nineveh and Persepolis. At Boghaz-Kieui, besides rock-cut reliefs entirely similar to those of Persia, there are the foundations of a terrace with the ruins of a palace, built upon the plan of the royal dwellings of Persepolis.

Lydia, the last of the three independent countries of Asia Minor, was so near to the Ionic cities of the coast, and so exposed to the influence of their civilization, that but few national peculiarities were preserved in the historical period. The tumulus was there, as in early Greece, the customary form of the monumental tomb. In Lydia, as in Etruria, numbers of these mounds stood in an extended necropolis. The conical tumulus is as characteristic a form for the extreme west of Asia Minor, for the Troad, as the strictly geometrical pyramid is for Egypt, or its terraced variation for Mesopotamia. The mound of earth was at times reveted with a masonry of large polygonal blocks, or placed upon a low cylindrical drum of such Cyclopean walls; the only architectural ornaments were simple base and cornice mouldings. The best-preserved, though not the most important, monument of this kind is the so-called Grave of Tantalos upon Mount Sipylos, near Smyrna, one of a group of twelve. (Fig. 119.) The rectangular chamber in its centre, 3.5 m. long and almost 3 m. high, is roofed by a false vault, the horizontal, gradually projecting stones being cut within to the outline of a pointed arch. The entrance to this tumulus, like the shafts of the Egyptian pyramids, was hidden by the casing of exterior masonry. The fragments of a stone pier near by, somewhat like the Meghazil monument of Amrith, probably belonged to the ornament upon the summit of the cone, which, with a diameter of plan equal to 33.6 m., attained a height of 27.6 m. Of greater grandeur, though in an entire state of destruction, are the royal{174} graves of the Lydian capital. The world-renowned name of Sardis has been preserved in the appellation of the squalid village Sarabat now standing upon its site. In its vicinity are the remains of more than one hundred tumuli. The most important of these, with a cylindrical drum 257 m. in diameter and 18.5 m. high, still rises to an elevation of 61.5 m. It is with some probability identified with that monument of Alyattes described by Herodotos, who exaggerates its dimensions to a diameter of 400 m. The cone of rammed earth was apparently not reveted with stone. Upon its apex there was a pier of five blocks, which bore a hemispherical termination; of this various fragments have been found.

Fig. 119.—The So-called Grave of Tantalos.

These tumuli approach in dimensions closely to the pyramids of Egypt. The elevation of the cone upon a cylindrical base was a certain advance, but its execution was such as to allow of no comparison between the monuments of the two countries. The pyramids of Egypt were built; the tumuli of Lydia were merely heaped up of earth. The former demanded great technical ability and the assistance of a commanding and calculating mind; the latter were the works of an enslaved people alone. But, on the other hand, the Lydian cones more closely resembled the natural form of a funeral mound than did the pyramids of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and on this account were capable of greater development. Such tumuli are to be met with from Asia to Etruria, and were adopted even by the great architects of Greece: the highest artistic civilization always gives preference to the simplest solution of a problem.{175}

Fig. 120.—View of the Athenian Propylæa. Restoration.

THE Mediterranean Sea was the heart of the Old World; the important lands of the early history of civilization were grouped about its richly indented shores, generally decreasing in respect of culture as they receded from it. The northeastern part of the Mediterranean, because of its many islands, having an even greater proportionate coast-line, was the centre of the countries ennobled by Hellenic civilization. Separating and uniting at once, like all the waters of the earth, the Ægean Sea formed the boundary between the two chief races of Greek intellectual life—the Dorians and the Ionians; while it was, at the same time, the favoring medium of exchange for the productions of their genius. European Greece, with its predominating Doric population, and the almost exclusively Ionic coasts of Asia Minor, equally looked upon this sea as their own, traversing{176} it with thousands of ships, and gaining more from the trackless waters before them than from the interior lands of the immense continents whose seaboard alone they were content to occupy. In Asia the Greeks were restricted to the countries upon its uttermost western border; in European Greece the development was chiefly directed towards the eastern coast, paying even less attention to their own shores on the Adriatic than to the early colonized ports of Magna-Græcia and Sicily. The Archipelago itself provided convenient strongholds and outposts in every direction. The numerous harbors and anchoring-places of its many islands offered protection against the notorious treachery of the Ægean main—a protection imperatively necessary for the primitive seafarers of antiquity. But, as in the history of all civilization, the currents of Greek intellectual and artistic progress moved distinctly from east to west. The European (Doric) culture was in itself less calculated to influence Asia than the Asiatic (Ionic) to affect the younger continent. It was, as decided by nature, upon European soil, upon Attica—the most advanced promontory of European Greece—that the two branches of the Greek race united, and bore in Athens that double fruit at which we marvel. The Dorians, displaced, in some measure, by the rapid growth of Ionic Asia and Europe, turned still farther westward, and settled upon the shores of Sicily and the Gulf of Tarention, where imposing monuments still attest the extent of their power.

The legends of the wanderings of Hellenic tribes, and especially of the so-called Doric migration, were based upon the busy currents of intercourse between Asia and Europe, over seas and straits, and between the European continent and the Morea, the Island of Pelops. The relations and the quarrels of Hellenic and semi-barbaric peoples upon each side of the Ægean are illustrated by the tales of the Argonauts and their voyage, and of the Trojan War, both of which bear the stamp of a certain piratical rivalry. The fatal lack of unity, resulting from the separate development of neighboring districts, could not be more distinctly characterized than by the fact that the Greek races, although they felt themselves divided from other nations—from barbarians—by an impassable gulf, and were aware of their own absolute intellectual{177} superiority, yet lacked any comprehensive designation for themselves: the name Greeks, or Hellenes, is of comparatively recent origin.

The Homeric epics prove that the intellectual development of the people to whom the immortal poet belonged stood, at least as early as the ninth century B.C., at a height to which nations of such primitive civilization as the Egyptians and Chaldæans had never attained. Phenomenal as the appearance of those poems may have been, they still could not have stood so high above their time—which they evidently represent with a certain transfiguration—that contemporaries were not able to comprehend and enjoy them. The creative arts stood, at this epoch, in strange contrast to so great an intellectual height; they were far surpassed by the advance of poetry. Though certain textile and ceramic manufactures (the making of wooden and bronze utensils, woven stuffs, and pottery) must have been practised to some extent in Greece proper, the better artistic productions are continually referred to as imported from the civilized countries of Asia. Larger objects, and notably buildings, were either exceedingly primitive, or, in the lack of trained native ability, were erected and ornamented in foreign styles. The Homeric epics know nothing of a columnar temple, nothing of artistic images of the gods, nothing even of dwellings corresponding to the importance of their princely heroes. Even at a much later time a Spartan, accustomed to erect his own house with saw and axe alone, might be astonished at the squarely hewn beams of a ceiling, which he previously had seen formed only of round trunks, like those imitated upon the Lycian block-house tombs.

It is of this exceeding simplicity that we must picture to ourselves the palaces of the kings, one of which is so attractively described by the singer of the Odyssey, in the account of the royal dwelling at Ithaca. The entire establishment must have been similar to a grange—a wall enclosing a number of buildings with the court before them. The rustic parallel is clearly brought to mind by the description of this farm-yard, where the compost-heap, surrounded by swine and geese, was the bed of the old watch-dog, who, in Homer’s truly idyllic account, alone recognizes his master, and, dying, wags his tail in greeting. From this yard a gate led to an{178} inner court, comparable to the peristyle of later buildings, but without the ornament of columns, and in all respects extremely primitive. Goats and beeves were driven in here without further ado to be slaughtered. This adjoined upon one side the chambers of the men, upon the other those of the women, so separated that the tumultuous massacre of the suitors in the principal hall did not disturb the slumber of Penelope, and only reached the ears of the maids like distant moaning. Upon the third side, probably opposite the entrance, was the hall of the men, a ceiled space, which must have been of considerable extent, as the hundred and eight unwelcome guests could here unite in the banquet and other amusements. Its ceiling, like that of the armory and that of the royal sleeping-chamber, was supported by upright beams of wood. We may imagine these similar to the shafts in the Palace of Oinomaos at Elis, one of which, bound together with iron hoops, was preserved as a relic in the time of Pausanias. The ceiling beams of the hall were smoked and blackened by open fires and torch-lights as in rustic dwellings. Of the walls there is no mention, though the supposition is not improbable that the bright metal sheathing of the palaces of Menelaos and Alkinoös existed here also. It would be explained by the Phœnician overlaying of wood-work with beaten bronze, or, to speak more correctly, with copper. The space could not have been without openings for light and air. These are not directly mentioned by the poet, but may be assumed, from the analogies offered by other civilized nations of early antiquity, to have existed in the wall, immediately under the ceiling. Here the interstices between the immense horizontal beams, which rested upon the walls, were left open, and the motive of the subsequent Doric metope resulted of itself. That the timbers overhead were not sheathed with boards is evident from a Homeric simile: Athene rose to the ceiling, and there sat, “like unto the resting swallow;” that is to say, upon the cross-beams of the open triangle formed by the roof-framing. Further evidence is offered by the account of the hanging of Epicaste upon a ceiling beam, which must have been exposed from all sides.

The tholos of the palace at Ithaca was an isolated circular structure, before the court, and may perhaps be identified with the high thalamos to which Telemachos descended. In this also lay{179} gold and metal in heaps; while shrines containing garments, and amphoras filled with oil and wine, etc., stood around. Its double door, of careful workmanship, agrees with the character of a treasury. If this identification of the tholos and thalamos be accepted, no doubt can remain that we have here to deal with a space similar to many yet remaining in Greece, generally known under the name of treasure-houses. Examples exist at Orchomenos, near Pharsalos, Amyclæ, Menidi, and in Mykenæ.

Fig. 121.—Plan and Section of the Tholos of Atreus.

Fig. 122.—Restoration of the Tholos of Atreus. Portal. (Clarke.)