The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.Rawlinson, George
History
The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria: The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.
The drawing of the designs resembles that of the sculptures except that
the figures are generally slimmer and less muscular. The chief
peculiarity is the strength of the outline, which is almost always
colored differently from the object drawn, either white, black, yellow,
or brown. Generally it is of a uniform thickness (as in No. I., [PLATE
LXXIX., Fig. 2]), sometimes, though rarely, it has that variety which
characterizes good drawing (as in No. II., [PLATE LXXIX Fig. 2]).
Occasionally there is a curious combination of the two styles, as in the
specimen [PLATE LXXX., Fig. 1]--the most interesting yet
discovered--where the dresses of the two main figures are coarsely
outlined in yellow, while the remainder of the design is very lightly
sketched in a brownish black.
[Illustration: PLATE 80]
The size of the designs varies considerably. Ordinarily the figures are
small, each brick containing several; but sometimes a scale has been
adopted of such a size that portions of the same figure must have been
on different bricks. A foot and leg brought by Mr. Layard from Nimrud
must have belonged to a man a foot high; while part of a human face
discovered in the same locality is said to indicate the form to which
it belonged, a height of three feet. Such a size as this is, however,
very unusual.
It is scarcely necessary to state that the designs on the bricks are
entirely destitute of _chiaroscuro_. The browns and blacks, like the
blues, yellows, and reds, are simply used to express local color. They
are employed for hair, eyes, eye-brows, and sometimes for bows and
sandals. The other colors are applied as follows: yellow is used for
flesh, for shafts of weapons, for horse trappings, sometimes for horses,
for chariots, cups, earrings bracelets, fringes, for wing-feathers,
occasionally for helmets, and almost always for the hoofs of horses;
blue is used for shields, for horses, for some parts of horse-trappings,
armor, and dresses, for fish, and for feathers; white is employed for
the inner part of the eye, for the linen shirts worn by men, for the
marking on fish and feathers, for horses, for buildings, for patterns on
dresses, for rams’ heads, and for portions of the tiara of the king.
Olive-green seems to occur only as a ground; red only in some parts of
the royal tiara, orange and lilac only in the wings of winged monsters.
It is doubtful how far we may trust the colors on the bricks as
accurately or approximately resembling the real local hues. In some
cases the intention evidently is to be true to nature, as in the eyes
and hair of men, in the representations of flesh, fish, shields, bows,
buildings, etc. The yellow of horses may represent cream-color, and the
blue may stand for gray, as distinct from white, which seems to have
been correctly rendered. The scarlet and white of the king’s tiara is
likely to be true. When, however, we find eyeballs and eyebrows white,
while the inner part of the eye is yellow, the blade of swords yellow,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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