The Growth of Sculpture [pp. 420-432]

THE GROWTH OF SCUILPTURE.
features of Pasht or the ibis-beak of Thoth, to
sever the arms and legs of a Memnon, or to throw
expression into the lifeless eyes of a Sesostris.
How could it be otherwise? Everywhere the
total amount of originality is small, and the number of innovators is infinitesimal compared with
the number of those who follow "the best models." The history of Greek sculpture or Italian
painting shows us how each epoch-making artist
only advanced a trifle upon the work of those
who preceded him. Yet, to get even such slow
improvement, the elements of progress must be
at work throughout an entire nation, leavening
the whole mass. These elements were as wholly
wanting in ancient Egypt as they are in modern
China. The Egyptian peasant or artisan lived
in a monotonous and narrow plain, studded with
little villages, each of which, like those of the
Gangetic plateau in our own days, contained absolutely identical social factors-the cultivators,
the potters, the weavers, the bakers, and the
priests. Up and down the river, life was exactly
the same. There was no intercourse with unlike
communities, no foreign trade, no exchange with
neighboring villages, nothing to arouse thought,
individuality, original effort. Each man learned
his craft from those who went before, and the
sculptor or the painter learned his like the rest.
Thus there was no advance, no progress, no alteration almost. The whole of life crystallized
naturally into a set conventional system, controlled
from above by the king, in which spontaneous individuality would have seemed very like a disease.
Yet it is noticeable that in art this fixed system,
with its regular canons, affected most the high
personages of the stereotyped governmental and
religious hierarchy, while it left the lower ranks
comparatively free. The stiffest and most invariable figures are those of the gods, where innovation is absolutely inadmissible. Next comes
the sacred form of the king, always represented
in certain conventional attitudes as performing
certain ordinary official acts, but still allowing of
some variation in detail. The priests and high
functionaries may be permitted a certain relaxation from the absolutely formal attitudes; and,
when we reach the bas-reliefs or pictures which
show us the people engaged in every-day work,
we meet with comparative freedom of treatment.
Lastly, animal shapes, the least common of all,
and so the least liable to harden down into conventionality, are often represented with much
technical skill, and occasionally even with something approaching to spirit.
When we turn to Assyria, we arrive at a sort
of intermediate stage between Memphis and
Athens. Judged by the imitative standard, the
plastic art of Nineveh is decidedly in advance of
that of Egypt. The human face and figure are
far more naturally treated. A rude perspective
is suggested, and sometimes realized with considerable skill. The muscles are represented
with some approach to accuracy. In Egyptian
art, figures walking always have the soles of both
feet planted flat upon the ground; in Assyrian
bas-reliefs, the toe alone of the hinder or retreating foot touches the earth. "Assyrian art," says
Luibke, justly, "is distinguished even in its earliest works from the Egyptian by greater power,
fullness, and roundness in the reliefs, by a fresher
conception of nature, and by a more energetic
delineation of life; but it lacks, on the other hand,
the more delicate sense of form and the stricter
architectural law that marked the other." I
think, if we regard the question from the evolutionary standpoint, we shall admit that even the
last-named points are really marks of freedom
and progress. "This may be traced," continues
the historian, with a rare outburst of common
sense, " in the first place to a difference of character, of their relations to nature, and of their
artistic taste; but it was induced also, undoubtedly, by the slighter connection with architecture,
and by the more tractable material for work afforded by alabaster." There we get the whole
solution of the problem summed up in a nutshell.
Moreover, Assyria differs also from Egypt in
this, that from the earliest monuments at Kalah
Sherghat to the latest at Kouyunjik we can trace
a continuous and constant improvement. The
despotism of Nineveh never became so conventionalized and crystallized as that of Thebes.
Egypt was stationary or retrograde; Assyria was
slowly progressive.
The valley of the Tigris, like that of the Nile,
naturally gave rise at an early period to a great
gemi-civilized agricultural community. But the
Assyrians were a Semitic people, and the difference of race counted for something in Mesopotamia, even as it has counted for something
among the monotonous flats of Upper India. In
addition to this primary differentiating cause,
there was a second cause in the physical conditions. Assyria is not so wholly isolated as Egypt.
Though an inland country, it is not utterly cut off
by the desert from all mankind, and compelled to
mature its own self-contained civilization within
its own limits like China or Peru. The great
river formed a highway for communication with
the kindred culture of Babylon, while lines of
commerce connected the Assyrian capital with
the Phcenician, Hellenic, and Hebrew worlds, as
well as with the primitive Persian, Median, and
Indian empires. Hence, while the type of organization remains, as in Egypt, military and despotic, there is more individual thought and action
among the people. It is true the existing remains
of Assyrian art refer even more exclusively to the
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