Part 6 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 12.--a.s.syrian Cylinder, in the National Library, Paris.
Serpentine.]
The force and suddenness of these visitations could hardly fail to impress the imagination of a people exposed to them, and it is not surprising that Mesopotamia had its G.o.d of storms and thunder. He, Raman, it is, perhaps, who is figured in the bas-relief from Nimroud reproduced below (Figs. 13 and 14),[107] in which a G.o.d appears bearing an axe in his right hand, and, in his left, a kind of f.a.ggot, whose significance might have escaped us but for the light thrown upon it by cla.s.sic sculpture. The latter no doubt borrowed a well-known form from the east, and the object in question is nothing less than the thunderbolt given by Greek artists to their Zeus.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 13.--G.o.ds carried in procession; from Layard's _Monuments of Nineveh_, first series, pl. 65.]
It was this adoration of the stars and planets that led by degrees to what we call polytheism. Man part.i.tioned those terrible powers of nature of which he felt himself the sport, between a vast number of agents, between crowds of genii upon whose mercies he thought himself dependent, and whom he did his best to propitiate by gifts and to compel by magic. Little by little, intelligence perfected that work of abstraction and simplification by which all races but those who have stuck fast in the conceptions of their infancy have arrived at a single conclusion. Without ceasing to believe in the existence of genii, they invented the G.o.ds, a race of beings far more powerful, not only than short-lived man, but even than the confused army of demons, of those beings who enjoyed the control of not a few of the mysterious agencies whose apparent conflict and final accord are the causes of the life, movement, and equilibrium of the world.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 14.--G.o.ds carried in procession; from Layard's _Monuments of Nineveh_, first series, pl. 65.]
When the intellect had arrived at this doctrine, calmness and serenity fell upon it. Each deity became a person with certain well-defined powers and attributes, a person who could not escape the apprehension and the appeals of mankind with the facility of the changing and fantastic crowd of demons.
His dwelling-place could be pointed out to the faithful, whether it were in his own peculiar star, among the eternal snows upon the summits of the distant mountains, or near at hand, in the temple built for him by his wors.h.i.+ppers. Such a deity could be approached like a sovereign whose honour and interest are bound up with his word. So long as by prayer, and still more by sacrifices, the conditions were observed on the suppliant's side, the G.o.d, invisible though he was, would do his duty and protect those with whom he had entered into an unwritten contract.
But in order to establish this mutual relations.h.i.+p between G.o.ds and men, it was necessary that the former should be brought within reach of the latter. With the development of the religious sentiment and of definite and clear ideas as to the G.o.ds, the plastic faculty was called upon for greater efforts than it had before made.
Something beside grimacing and monstrous images of genii was asked from it.
Figures were demanded which should embody something of the n.o.bility and majesty attributed to the eternal masters of the world. The divine effigy was the incarnation of the deity, was one of the forms in which he manifested himself, it was, as the Egyptians would say, one of his _doubles_. Such an effigy was required to afford a worthy frame for the supreme dignity of the G.o.d, and the house built by man's hands in which he condescended to dwell had to be such that its superior magnificence should distinguish it at a glance from the comparatively humble dwellings in which mortals pa.s.sed their short and fugitive lives.
It was thus that the temples and statues of the G.o.ds took form when the various deities began to be clearly distinguished from one another, and, by a process of mental condensation, to acquire a certain amount of consistence and solidity. The Chaldaean temples, unlike those of Egypt and Greece, have succ.u.mbed to time, and the ancient texts in which they are described are short and obscure. Their ruins are little more than shapeless heaps of _debris_. In endeavouring to arrive at a clear understanding of the Chaldaean notions as to the G.o.ds, we are unable to study, as we did elsewhere, the forms of their religious edifices, with their plans, dimensions, and the instructive variety of decorative symbols and figures with which the sanctuary and its dependencies were overspread.
On the other hand a sufficient number of figures of the G.o.ds have come down to us. They abound upon small objects, such as cylinders, engraved stones, cones, scarabaei, the bezels of rings, terra-cotta tablets and statuettes.
They are also found, though less frequently, among the _debris_ of monumental sculpture, in the bas-reliefs of the Ninevite palaces, and even among certain figures in the round which have been recovered from the ruins of these latter buildings. We can therefore easily find out the particular attributes given by the artist as the interpreter of the national beliefs to those G.o.ds whose visible bodies it was his office to create; we can see what choice and combination of forms he thought best fitted to solve the problem presented to him. But as yet we are not in a position to put a name to each even of the figures that recur most frequently. In the case of Egypt there is no such difficulty: when we encounter the image of one of her G.o.ds upon the walls of a temple or in the cases of a museum, we can say without hesitation, ”This is Osiris or Ptah,” as the case may be, ”Amen or Horus, Isis, Sekhet, or Hathor.” It is not so with Chaldaea. Figures are there often found uninscribed, and even when an inscription is present it not seldom offers difficulties of interpretation which have not yet been cleared up; for the divine names are usually ideograms. Only a few have been identified beyond all doubt, those namely of which we have Hebrew or Greek transcriptions, preserving for us the real Chaldaean original; Ilou, Bel, Nisroch, Beltis, Istar, are examples of this. Hence it results that a.s.syriologists often feel no little embarra.s.sment when they are asked to point out upon the monuments the figures even of those G.o.ds of whose names they are the least doubtful. The a.s.syrians and Chaldaeans, like other nations of antiquity, had what we should now call their _figured mythology_, but we are still imperfectly acquainted with it. Even for those whom we may call the most exalted personages of the Chaldaean Olympus, scholars have hardly succeeded in ill.u.s.trating the texts by the monuments and explaining the monuments by the texts; and we are yet far from being able to inst.i.tute a perpetual and standard comparison as we have done in the case of Egypt and still more in that of Greece, between the divine types as they appear in religious formulae and in the national poetry, and the same types when embodied by the imagination of the artist.
A long time may elapse before a mythological gallery for Chaldaea, in which all the important members of the Mesopotamian pantheon shall take their places and be known by the names they bore in their own day, can be formed, but even now the principles upon which they were represented by art may be stated. The images of the various G.o.ds were built up in great part by the aid of combinations similar to those made use of in realizing the minor demons. A natural bent towards such a method of interpretation was perhaps inherited from the days in which the _nave_ adoration of all those animals which help or hurt mankind formed a part of the national wors.h.i.+p; again, certain animals were, by their shapes and const.i.tution, better fitted than others to personify this or that quality which, in its fulness, was considered divine. It was natural, therefore, that the artist should, in those early days, have indicated the powers of a deity by forms borrowed from the strongest, the most beautiful, or the most formidable of animals.
Nothing could suggest the instantaneous swiftness of a G.o.d better than the spreading wings of an eagle or vulture, or his destructive and irresistible power better than their beaks and talons, the horns and dewlap of the bull, or the mane and claws of the lion.
The sculptor had, therefore, a good reason for employing these forms and many others offered to him by the fauna of the regions he inhabited. He introduced them into his work with skill and decision, and obtained composite types by their aid which we may compare to those of Egypt. But there were some differences which deserve to be remembered. The human face received more consideration from the Mesopotamian sculptors than from those of Egypt. Except in the sphinxes and in two or three less important types the Egyptians, as our readers will remember, crowned a human body with the head of a snake, a lion, or a crocodile, an ibis or a hawk, and sometimes of a clumsy beast like the hippopotamus,[108] and their figures are dominated and characterized by the heads thus given to them. At Babylon and Nineveh the case is reversed. Animals' heads are only found, as a rule, upon the shoulders of those figures which are looked upon by common consent as genii rather than G.o.ds. In the latter a contrary arrangement prevails.
They may have, like Dagon, a fish's tail hanging down their backs, or, like the colossal guardians of the king's palace, the body and limbs of a lion or bull with the wings of an eagle, but the head is that of a man and the sculptor has given it all the beauty he could compa.s.s. To this, we believe, there is but one exception--the eagle-headed G.o.d to whom a.s.syriologists have a.s.signed the name of Nisroch. He seems to have occupied a high place among the Mesopotamian divinities (Fig. 8).
But the difference between the two systems does not end here. There are a few deities, such as Ptah, Osiris, and Amen, to whom the Egyptians gave a human form in its simple entirety; but even in such cases it was not reproduced in its native elegance and n.o.bility. The extremities of Ptah and Osiris were enveloped in a kind of sheath, which made their figures look more like mummies than beings with the power of life and motion. It was not so in Chaldaea, as we shall see if we examine the procedure of the Mesopotamian artist when he had to figure the greater G.o.ds, those in whom the highest efforts of mental abstraction found concrete expression. Take, for instance, Nebo, the G.o.d of intelligence and prophecy, and Istar, the personification of the earth's fertility, of its power of creation and destruction and its inexhaustible energy. Nebo stands upright, his head covered with a horned tiara: his ample beard is gathered into three rows of close curls: he wears a long robe falling straight to the ground (Fig. 16).
As for Istar, she is a young woman, nude, large-hipped, and pressing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with her hands (Fig. 15). The awkwardness and rudeness which to some extent characterizes these figures is due to the inexperience of the artist; his intentions were good, but his skill was hardly equal to giving them full effect. His Nebo was meant to be as majestic as a king or high priest; his Istar is the spouse, the mother, the nurse; she is the G.o.ddess ”who,” as the inscriptions say,[109] ”rejoices mankind,” who, when fertilized by love, a.s.sures the duration and perpetuity of the species. It was this method of interpretation that was in later years to lead to those great creations of Greek art whose beauty is still the wonder of mankind.
Between these Chaldaean figures and those of the Greek sculptors the difference was one of degree. The anthropomorphism of the Chaldees was franker than that of the Egyptians, and so far the art of Chaldaea was an advance upon that of Egypt, although it was excelled by the latter in executive qualities. The method to which it had committed itself, the diligent and pa.s.sionate study of the human figure, was the royal road to all excellence in the plastic arts.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 15.--Statue of Nebo; from Nimroud. British Museum.
Calcareous stone. Height 6 feet 5 inches.]
But our present business is to discover this people's real conceptions of its G.o.ds and to get a clear idea of their characteristic qualities. We shall not attempt, therefore, to show how most of them belonged to one of those divine triads which are to be found, it is believed, in Chaldaea as well as in Egypt: we shall not ask how these triads were subordinated, first, one to another, and secondly, to a single supreme being, who, in Mesopotamia as elsewhere, was in time perceived more or less clearly and placed at the head of the divine hierarchy. These triads are nearly always found in polytheistic religions, and that for sufficiently obvious reasons.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16.--Terra-cotta Statuette; from Heuzey's _Figurines antiques du Musee du Louvre_.]
The most simple relations.h.i.+p offered by the organic world to the mind of man is the relations.h.i.+p of the s.e.xes, their contrast, and the necessity for their union. Wherever religious conceptions spring up G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses are created together. All the forces divined by human intelligence are doubled into two persons, closely united, the one the complement of the other. The one has the active, the other the pa.s.sive _role_. Egypt, Chaldaea, Greece, all had these divine couples; Apsou, or, as Damascius calls him, Apason and Tauthe; Anou and Antou, the Anatis of the Greek writers; Bel and Belit, or Beltu, perhaps the Greek Mylitta; Samas, the sun, and Allat, the queen of the dead; Merodach (or Marduk) and Zarpanit, a G.o.ddess mother who protected unborn infants and presided at births; Nabou and Nana; a.s.sur and Istar; Dumouzi and Istar. Precise details as to the status of these divinities are still wanting. Several among them seem to have been at one time endowed with a distinct individuality, and at other periods to have been almost indistinguishable from some other deity. They were without the distinct features and attributes of the inhabitants of Olympus, but we are left in no doubt as to the binary divisions of which we have been speaking.
The attraction of desire and the union of the s.e.xes leads to the birth of the child; with the appearance of the latter the family is complete, and, with it, the type upon which the triple cla.s.sification of the G.o.ds was founded. But even when we attempt to trace the composition of a single group and to a.s.sign his proper place to each of its members, the embarra.s.sment is great. We find a single G.o.d sometimes filling, to all appearance, the _role_ of husband and father, and sometimes that of the son; or a single G.o.ddess acting at different times as the wife and daughter of one and the same G.o.d. Some of these apparent contradictions must be referred to the want of certainty in our interpretation of the inscriptions, some to the floating quality of the conceptions to which they relate. It may never, perhaps, be possible to make out a complete list, or one which shall not be obnoxious to criticism on other grounds; moreover, the historian of art has no need to enter into any such discussion, or to give the details of a nomenclature as to which a.s.syriologists themselves have many doubts. It suffices that he should point out the multiplicity of couples and triads, the extreme diversity of deities, and thus indicate a reason for the very peculiar aspect of the cylinders and engraved stones of Chaldaea, for the complex forms of the G.o.ds, and for the mult.i.tude of varied symbols which enc.u.mber the fields of her sculptured reliefs. Some of the figures that crowd these narrow surfaces are so fantastic that they astonish the eye as much as they pique the curiosity (see Fig. 17).
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17.--A Chaldaean Cylinder: from Menant's _La Bible et les Cylindres Chaldeens_.]