Part 26 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 151.--The transport of a bull. Height of the slab, 7 feet 3 inches; British Museum.]
The block of alabaster that we saw a moment ago on a boat towed by hundreds of human arms has been delivered to the sculptors and has put on, under their hands, the rough form of a mitred, human-headed bull. It will be completed after being put in place; the last touches of the chisel and the brush will then be given to it; but the heaviest part of the work is already done and the block has lost much of its original size and weight.
Firmly packed with timber, the bull lies upon its side upon a sledge which is curved in front like a boat, or a modern sleigh. Two cables are fastened to its prow and two to its stern. The engineer is again seated upon the stone and claps his hands to give the time, but now he is accompanied by three soldiers who appear to support his authority by voice and gesture. In order to prevent friction and to facilitate the movement of the sledge, rollers are thrust beneath its runners as they progress. Before the huge ma.s.s will start, however, the straining cords and muscles have to be helped by a thrust from behind. This is given by means of a huge lever, upon which a number of men pull with all their weight, while its curved foot is engaged under the sledge. A workman is occupied with the reinforcement of the fulcrum by thrusting a wedge in between its upper surface and the lower edge of the lever. When everything is ready a signal will be given, the men behind will throw their weight upon the lever, the sledge will rise a little, the ropes will strain and tighten, and the heavy ma.s.s will glide forward upon the greased rollers until arms and legs give out and an interval for rest is called, to be followed presently by a repet.i.tion of the same process. Every precaution is taken to minimize the effect of any accident that may take place in the course of the operation. Behind the sledge spare ropes and levers are carried, some upon men's backs, others on small handcarts. There are also a number of workmen carrying rollers.
We shall only refer to one more of these reliefs and that the one with which the series appears to close (Fig. 152). This carved picture has been thought, not without reason, to represent the erection of the bull[413] in its destined place. After its slow but uninterrupted march the huge monster has arrived upon the plateau where it has been awaited. By one great final effort it has been dragged up an inclined plane to the summit of the mound and has been set upon its feet. Nothing remains to be done but to pull and thrust it into its place against the doorway it has to guard and ornament.
The same sledge, the same rollers, the same lever, the same precautions against accident are to be recognized here as in the last picture. The only difference is in the position of the statue itself. Standing upright like this it is much more liable to injury than when p.r.o.ne on its flank. New safeguards have therefore been introduced. It is packed under its belly with squares of wood and inclosed in scaffolding to prevent dangerous vibration. Additional precautions against this latter danger are provided by gangs of men who walk at each side and hold, some ropes fastened to the uprights of the scaffolding, others long forked poles engaged under its horizontal pieces. By these means equilibrium could be restored after any extra oscillation on the part of the sledge and its burden.
All these manoeuvres are remarkable for the skill and prodigality with which human strength was employed; of all the scientific tools invented to economise effort and to shorten the duration of a task, the only one they seem ever to have used was the most simple of all, the lever, an instrument that must have been invented over and over again wherever men tried to lift ma.s.ses of stone or wood from the ground. Its discovery must, in fact, have taken place long before the commencement of what we call civilization, although its theory was first expounded by the Greek mathematicians.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 152.--Putting a bull in place; from Layard.]
In a relief in the palace of a.s.surn.a.z.irpal at Nimroud, there is a pulley exactly similar to those often seen over a modern well.[414] A cord runs over it and supports a bucket. There is no evidence that the a.s.syrians employed such a contrivance for any purpose but the raising of water. We cannot say that they used it to lift heavy weights, but the fact that they understood its principle puts them slightly above the Egyptians as engineers.
NOTES:
[411] As to the simplicity of Egyptian engineering, see the _History of Art in Ancient Egypt_, vol. ii. p. 72, and fig. 43.
[412] See LAYARD, _Monuments_, 2nd series, plate ii. The same author gives a detailed description of this picture in his _Discoveries_, pp. 104-106.
[413] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 112.
[414] LAYARD, _Nineveh_, vol. ii. p. 32.
-- 10.--_On the Graphic Processes Employed in the Representations of Buildings._
The Chaldaeans and a.s.syrians knew as little of perspective as they did of mechanics. When they had to figure a building and its contents, or a landscape background, they could not resist the temptation of combining many things which could not be seen from a single standpoint. Like the painters and sculptors of Thebes they mixed up in the most naive fas.h.i.+on those graphic processes that we keep carefully apart. All that they cared about was to be understood. We need not here reproduce the observations we made on this subject in the corresponding chapter of Egyptian Art;[415] it will suffice to give a few examples of the simultaneous employment by Ninevite sculptors of contradictory systems.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 153.--Chaldaean plan. Louvre.]
It is not difficult to cite examples of things that may, with some little ingenuity, be brought within the definition of a plan. The most curious and strongly marked of these is furnished by one of the most ancient monuments that have come down to us; we mean a statue found at Tello in Lower Chaldaea by M. de Sarzec. It represents a personage seated and holding on his knees an engraved tablet on which two or three different things are represented (Fig. 153). On the right there is one of those styles with which letters or images were cut in the soft clay, at the bottom of the tablet there is a scale which we know from another monument of the same kind to have been originally 10.8 inches in length, _i.e._ the Babylonian half-cubit or span.
By far the larger part of the field, however, is occupied by an irregular figure in which the trace of a fortified wall may be easily recognized.
When these monuments were first brought to France this statue was supposed to be that of an architect. When the inscriptions were interpreted, however, this opinion had to be modified in some degree. They were found to contain the same royal t.i.tle as the other figure of similar style and material discovered by M. de Sarzec on the same spot, the t.i.tle, namely, of the individual whom archaeologists have at present agreed to call Gudea.[416] It therefore seems to represent that prince in the character of an architect, as the constructor of the building in which his statues were placed as a sacred deposit. Must we take it to be the plan of his royal city as a whole, or only of his palace? It is difficult to answer this question, especially while no precise information has been obtained from the inscriptions, whose interpretation presents many difficulties. There can, however, be no doubt that the engraver has given us a plan according to his lights of a wall strengthened by flanking towers, of which those with the boldest salience guard the six pa.s.sages into the interior.
We find a still more simple plan upon an a.s.syrian monument of much later date, namely, upon the armour of beaten bronze that formerly protected the gates of Balawat. In this example (Fig. 154) the doorways, the angles, and the centres of the two longer curtains are strengthened by towers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 154.--a.s.syrian plan; from the Balawat gates in the British Museum.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 155.--Plan and section of a fortress; from Layard.]
The way in which the sculptor has endeavoured to suggest the crenellations shows that these plans are not drawn on the same princ.i.p.al as ours; there is no section taken at the junction with the soil or at a determined height; the draughtsman in all probability wished to give an idea of the height of the flanking towers. His representation is an ideal _projection_ similar to those of which we find so many examples in Egypt, only that here we have the towers laid flat outside the fortification to which they belong in such a fas.h.i.+on that their summits are as far as possible from the centre of the structure. We shall see this better in another plan of the same kind in which the details are more carefully made out (Fig. 155). It comes from a bas-relief, on which a circular fortress, divided into four equal parts by walls radiating from its centre, is portrayed.
In this relief we find another favourite process of the Egyptians employed, namely, that in which a vertical section is combined with a projection, so that the interior of the building and its arrangements may be laid open to the spectator. In this instance we can see what is pa.s.sing in the four princ.i.p.al chambers of the castle. In each chamber one or two persons are occupied over what appear to be religious rites.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 156.--Plan, section, and elevation of a fortified city; from Layard.]
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