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Monuments of art of ancient Assyria. Architecture of ancient Assyria

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The largest role in the history of the Ancient East in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. played by Assyria. The origins of Assyrian art go back to the 3rd millennium (Ancient Ashur), but it received its highest development only in the 1st millennium BC, from which the largest number of monuments have been preserved. At this time, Assyria became a major military-despotic slave-owning power that claimed dominance throughout the Ancient East. The dominion of Assyria, which waged great predatory wars, extended to Western Asia from Iran along the Mediterranean Sea and reached the capital of Egypt - Thebes. 9th - 7th centuries BC. - the time of the highest rise of Assyrian art, which absorbed and transformed in a new way much of what was found in previous time. During this period, cultural relations between Assyria and other countries took place on a large scale. Around 7th century BC. The Assyrians are in direct contact with the Greeks. The latter, through Assyria, adopted many of the cultural achievements of the Ancient East; in turn, the Assyrians became acquainted with a new world, previously unknown to them.

The socio-economic system of Assyria was based on the brutal exploitation and enslavement of a huge mass of the population. All power (both civil and priestly) was concentrated in the hands of the Assyrian kings; art was required to glorify military campaigns and glorify royal valor. This found its most consistent expression in the images on the reliefs of Assyrian palaces. Unlike more ancient art Mesopotamia and the arts of Egypt, Assyrian art was predominantly secular in nature, despite the connection between art and religion that existed in Assyria, typical of all ancient Eastern cultures. In architecture, which continued to be the leading form of art, it was not cult architecture that prevailed, but serf and palace architecture. The architectural complex of the palace of Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin (now Khorsabad) has been studied better than others. It was built in the 8th century. BC, simultaneously with the city, built according to a specific plan in the form of a square with a rectangular grid of streets. The city and palace were surrounded by a fortress wall. An interesting feature of the layout was the construction of the palace on the line of the city fortress wall in such a way that one part of it was within the city limits, and the other went beyond its boundaries. Adjacent to the palace on the city side was a series of buildings that formed the official and sacred area, which included a temple and other buildings. This entire complex, including the palace, was in turn surrounded by a fortress wall, forming a citadel, separated from the city and thus protected not only from external enemies, but also from internal ones, in case of an uprising in the city.

The palace rose on an artificially constructed embankment, the construction of which required 1,300,000 cubic meters of alluvial soil and the use of a huge amount of slave labor. The embankment consisted of two terraces located side by side in the shape of the letter T, 14 m high and occupied an area of 10 hectares. In its layout, the palace was similar to the usual residential building in Mesopotamia, but it was, of course, many times larger. Closed spaces were grouped around numerous open courtyards connected to each other, and each courtyard with adjacent rooms formed, as it were, a separate isolated cell that could also have defensive value in the event of an attack. A special feature of the palace was the asymmetrical overall layout. Nevertheless, the palace was clearly divided into three parts: the reception area, extremely richly decorated, the living area, connected with the service premises, and the temple area, which included temples and a ziggurat.

Unlike the ancient ziggurat of Ur, the Khorsabad ziggurat consisted of seven tiers. The lower tier had 13x13 m at the base and 6 m in height, the subsequent ones, decreasing in size, ended with a small chapel. It can be assumed, although the ziggurat has reached us in ruins, that the total height of the building was approximately a ten-story building. Thanks to the decorative treatment of the wall, which had vertical projections, and the line of the ramp, decorated with a parapet, the mass of the building acquired a certain lightness, without disturbing the overall monumental character of the architecture.

Long ribbons of reliefs stretched at human height through the halls of Assyrian palaces. In the Khorsabad Palace, 6,000 square meters were occupied by relief. m. Researchers believe that there were cardboards on which artists drew the general outlines of images, while countless assistants and students copied individual scenes and executed the details of the compositions. There is also evidence to suggest the presence of sets of stencils of hands, feet, heads, etc. for both images of humans and animals. Moreover, sometimes, apparently in a hurry to complete the task, the figures were made up of randomly taken parts. This assumption becomes especially probable when you remember the huge areas that were occupied by relief compositions, and those small lines that were provided for the decoration of palaces. Working on large wall planes required a somewhat broad manner and generality. Sculptors carved figures that barely stood out from the background, but with sharply defined contours. Details were usually rendered in incised, deep relief (en creux), while decorations were engraved rather than carved (embroidery on clothing, etc.).

The subjects of the compositions were mainly war, hunting, scenes of everyday life and court life, and, finally, scenes of religious content. The main attention was focused on those images where the king was the central figure. All the work of Assyrian artists was aimed at glorifying him. Their task was also to emphasize and physical strength the king, his warriors and retinue: we see in the reliefs huge people with powerful muscles, although their bodies are often constrained by a conventional canonical pose and heavy, fluffy clothing.

In the 9th century BC, under Ashurnasirpal II, the Assyrian state reached its greatest prominence. Distinctive features The art of this period is simplicity, clarity and solemnity. In depicting various scenes on reliefs, artists tried to avoid overloading the image. Almost all compositions of Ashurnasirpal II's time lack landscape; sometimes, as in hunting scenes, only a flat line of ground is given. One can distinguish here scenes of a historical nature (depictions of battles, sieges, campaigns) and images of palace life and ceremonial receptions. The latter include the most carefully executed reliefs.

Human figures, with rare exceptions, are depicted with the convention characteristic of the Ancient East: shoulders and eyes - straight, legs and head - in profile. The models of the masters of this time seem to have been reduced to a single type. The variety of scales when depicting persons of different social status is also preserved. The figure of the king is always completely motionless. At the same time, these reliefs reflect the great observation skills of the artists. The naked parts of the body are executed with knowledge of anatomy, although the muscles are exaggeratedly emphasized and tense. Great expressiveness is given to the poses and gestures of people, especially in crowd scenes, where the artist, depicting warriors, foreigners, servants, did not feel bound by the canon. An example is a relief with a scene of the siege of a fortress by Assyrian troops, which is one of a whole series of reliefs telling about the victorious campaigns of Ashurnasirpal and glorifying his power. In terms of execution, these reliefs, like the literary works of that time (royal chronicles), are somewhat dry and protocol; they carefully list the small details of weapons, etc., depicting the most cruel and bloody scenes with dispassionate monotony. assyrian art architecture

In the 8th century. BC. some new features appear in Assyrian art. The reliefs and paintings from the palace of Sargon II (722 - 705 BC) are similar to the previous ones in the severity of their manner, the large size of the figures and the simplicity of the composition. But artists show great interest in the appearance of people. The musculature becomes less exaggerated, although its processing is still very strong and sharp. The artists of the reliefs also try to convey some of the individual features of a person’s appearance, which is especially noticeable in the depiction of Sargon himself. A more careful study of the model forces artists to dwell on such details as folds of skin on the neck, etc. In reliefs with images of animals, movement is well and truly conveyed. Artists begin to observe nature more carefully, and a landscape appears. The features of the areas and countries through which the Assyrian troops passed in their numerous campaigns are conveyed with great reliability. The same can be observed in literature, the best example of which is the chronicle description of Sargon’s eighth campaign. According to the interpretation, the relief remains as flat as in the previous period, but the dryness disappears, and the contour of the figure becomes smoother and rounded. If earlier, in the reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II, artists sought to convey power and strength by the size of those depicted or by exaggeration of muscles, now the same theme is revealed in a different, more the hard way. For example, while celebrating victories, artists show the difficulties overcome by the Assyrian army, carefully conveying the landscape in every detail.

At the end of the 8th - beginning of the 7th century. BC. further development of the relief can be noted. The compositions become significantly more complicated, sometimes overloaded with details that are not directly related to the plot. For example, in the scene “Construction of the Palace of Sennacherib”, along with a detailed image of the work being carried out, the surrounding landscape is conveyed, into which scenes are also included fishing, and the distillation of rafts, and even a herd of wild boars wandering in the reed thickets. The same is now typical for reliefs depicting scenes of battles and campaigns. Wanting to diversify the long rows of walking figures in crowd scenes, the artist resorts to various techniques, showing different positions of the heads and movements of the hands, and different gaits of those depicted. The abundance of details and the large number of figures increase simultaneously with a decrease in their size. The relief is now divided into several tiers.

The Assyrian relief reached its highest development in the 7th century. BC, during the reign of King Assyria Ashurbanipal (668 - 626 BC). The content of the images remained the same: they all glorified the king and explained the phenomena of life by the divine will of the ruler. The central place in the reliefs that decorated the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh was occupied by battle scenes telling about the military victories of the Assyrian king; There are also numerous scenes of royal hunting. The motives become very diverse. IN fine arts The trends of the previous period are developing with great force, and the features of realism are significantly strengthening. In constructing complex scenes, artists strive to overcome difficulties in depicting movement and angles. All compositions are very dynamic. In this regard, the best executed scenes are the hunting scenes, which are more saturated with life and movement than others. The scenes of hunting gazelles and wild horses are remarkable for their laconicism and power of expressiveness. The naturalness of the animal poses, the sense of steppe space achieved by the free and at the same time superbly rhythmically organized placement of figures on a plane and large fields of unoccupied space, force us to classify these reliefs as the pinnacles of Assyrian art. The technique of making relief has also reached great perfection. But at the same time, in the art of Ashurbanipal’s time there are also features of stagnation, manifested in an increase in decorativeness, a kind of heraldic abstraction that leads away from the truth of life, in a certain sophistication of execution that becomes an end in itself.

In round sculpture, Assyrian masters did not achieve such perfection as in relief. Assyrian statues are few in number. Those depicted are usually shown in strictly frontal, frozen poses, they are dressed in long clothes that hide the shape of the body under a carefully ornamented costume - a feature that makes these statues similar to many figures on reliefs, where clothes also served as a plane for outlining the smallest details of embroidery and other decorations. An example of Assyrian round sculpture is a small limestone statue of Ashurnasirpal II, dressed in a heavy long robe (9th century BC). It is extremely planarly interpreted, it looks more like a board than a three-dimensional figure. The statues of minor gods, originating from Khorsabad, holding in their hands magical vases with flowing water, have the same character. The planar nature of such statues can be explained by their dependence on architecture, since, undoubtedly, they are designed to be perceived against the background of a wall. A slightly different type of statue of the god Nabu (8th century BC, British Museum), distinguished by its massiveness and volume.

In the cultural history of the Ancient World, Assyria, which during the period of its power united most of the countries of Western Asia, played an important role. The Assyrians adopted and enriched the cuneiform system, scientific knowledge, literature and art from the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia. The remarkable height of Assyrian culture for its time is evidenced by the famous library of Ashurbanipal, found in the ruins of his palace. In architecture and fine arts, the Assyrians developed many of the basic features developed by the previous cultures of Mesopotamia. Full of originality and possessing high artistic merits for its time, the art of Assyria represents a bright page in the history of art of the Ancient World. It had a great influence on the art of a number of neighboring countries and, in particular, on the art of Urartu, its closest neighbor and rival in the 1st millennium BC

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The best works of Assyrian art are also scenes of lion hunting. The powerful and majestic beauty of wild animals and their struggle with humans are full of intense dramatic content. The masterpieces of Assyrian art of this time are images of killed, wounded and dying predators, especially the reliefs “Hunters Carrying a Killed Lion”, “Lion Spewing Blood” and “Wounded Lioness”. With great observation, the artist conveyed in the last of these reliefs the figure of a mighty beast, showing the contrast of the still living and powerful front part of his body and the lifelessly dragging legs pierced by arrows. The relief is distinguished by soft sculpting, emphasizing the tension of the muscles of the front legs and the fine modeling of the head. The most remarkable thing is that in the image of the lioness the state of the wounded animal is so vividly conveyed that it is as if one can feel the death roar rushing from its open mouth. In depicting the suffering of wild animals, Assyrian artists found those features of realism that were not available to them in creating images of people.

The technique of making relief has also reached great perfection. But at the same time, in the art of Ashurbanipal’s time there are also features of stagnation, manifested in an increase in decorativeness, a kind of heraldic abstraction that leads away from the truth of life, in a certain sophistication of execution that becomes an end in itself.

Statue of Ashurnasirpal II from Nimrud (Kalakh). Alabaster. First half of the 9th century. BC e. London. British museum.

Metal-plastics reached great perfection in Assyria. Its best example is the relief compositions on bronze sheets that were used to cover the gates found in the ruins ancient city Imgur-enlil on the Balavat hill (the time of Shalmaneser III, 9th century BC). The particular interest of this work for the history of art lies in the depiction (among many others) of the scene of the sculptor making the king’s victory stele. This is one of the rarest evidence of the life and work of artists in the art of Western Asia.

In Assyrian glyptics of the 1st millennium BC. scenes of religious content occupy a significant bigger place than in palace reliefs. But stylistically, the images on cylinder seals are close to monumental reliefs and differ from Sumerian-Akkadian glyptics in their great craftsmanship, fine modeling of figures and careful rendering of details.

Art of the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom (7th - 6th centuries BC)

After the fall of Assyria in the 7th century. BC. under the onslaught of all its united enemies, the independence of Babylon is restored and its power expands. It again becomes the center of a vast state. He subjugates Phenicia and Palestine, leads big wars with Egypt for trade routes. The Neo-Babylonian kingdom was dominated by the trading and usurious slave-owning elite, which concentrated extensive trade in its hands. The priesthood played a very important role, actually controlling all the activities of the state. Probably, the politics of the priesthood left its mark on official art, expelled from it subjects that glorified the earthly ruler, and directed the creativity of artists towards a decorative style.

In the city of Vavalon, famous for its wealth and splendor, mainly the remains of architectural monuments have survived to this day. The heyday of Neo-Babylonian architecture dates back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar II (604 - 562), who sought to eclipse the former power and luxury of Nineveh and Thebes with his capital. Excavations revealed an almost complete picture of the city, built on a quadrangular plan, decorated with palaces and temples. The city was surrounded by a triple wall with many towers. The walls were extremely wide; a four-horse team could pass along them. In front of the outer wall, a ditch was dug with slopes lined with bricks. Nebuchadnezzar, who pursued a great policy of conquest, took all measures to make Babylon an impregnable fortress. One of Nebuchadnezzar's three famous palaces stood on big platform, had five courtyards and was surrounded by wide walls. The wall facing the courtyard of the Main Hall was lined with glazed bricks with colorful decorations different colors, mainly dark and light blue, white, yellow and black. Another palace was also discovered - a summer one, with the famous “hanging gardens” (usually attributed to the legendary Assyrian queen Semiramis), the remains of which, or rather a system of reservoirs, wells and canals connecting to the Euphrates, were discovered by archaeologists. At some distance from the first palace there was main temple Babylon, dedicated to the god Marduk, the so-called “E-sagila”. Next to the temple there was a famous ziggurat in ancient times, called “Etemenanki”. The Babylonian ziggurat was of enormous size: 91 X 91 m at the base and 90 m high. It was this that gave rise to the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel. Excavations also uncovered the “Processional Road” - the sacred road along which they passed to the temple of Marduk, which served as the main compositional axis of the city and was about 7.5 m wide. It was paved with limestone slabs inlaid with red breccia.

Ishtar Gate in Babylon. Cladding made of glazed tiles. Around 570 BC e. Berlin.

The famous “Ishtar Gate”, through which processions entered the city, has also been excavated. The “Ishtar Gate” consisted of 4 massive square towers with an arched passage between them. Their walls were decorated with glazed bricks with relief images of lions, wild bulls, and fantastic creatures, yellow and white on a dark blue background. Along the top of the walls there was a tiled frieze and a row of battlements.

Fantastic beast. Tiled image from the Ishtar Gate in Babylon. Around 570 BC e. Berlin.

Neo-Babylonian art is very decorative, but its images lack power and contain signs of decline. This is evidenced by numerous examples of glyptics, among which the predominant images are so schematic that sometimes it is even difficult to identify them true meaning. After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, torn apart by internal contradictions and acute class struggle, began to lose its importance and in 538 BC. was conquered by Cyrus and annexed to the Iranian state.

The most ancient peoples Western Asia made a significant contribution to the history of art of the Ancient East. Architects and artists found solutions to a number of fundamental issues in architecture, sculpture, painting and applied art. In monumental buildings, despite their simple and heavy, almost cubic forms, a certain understanding of architectural mass and its division was developed. Although the mass played in the architecture of Mesopotamia main role, dominating the internal space, a significant achievement was the use of the vault, which opened up new possibilities for spatial solutions. In the synthesis of architecture and fine arts, architecture was of decisive importance, but monumental sculpture and painting received significant development. The image of a person has occupied a very important place in the fine arts. Despite the narrow class tasks that the slave-owning nobility and priesthood set for art, it reflected many significant aspects of reality, in some (albeit short-lived) periods rising to truly realistic quests (as in the times of Sargon the Ancient, Naramsin and Gudea or in the times of Ashurbanipal). Art as a means of artistic knowledge real world has become, in comparison with primitive art, to a higher level, corresponding to the new conditions of life of society and its success in mastering the forces of nature.

1. Introduction

The remains of works of Assyrian art, destroyed and buried as a result of sudden catastrophes, rested undisturbed for two millennia under hills of garbage devoid of any vegetation, and only in the second half of the 19th century. came to light thanks to the expensive excavations of the French and British. In Ashur (Kaleh-Shergat), the homeland of the primitive god of the same name and the northern Semites, who received the name Assyrians from it, located on the right bank of the Tigris, individual remains of monuments of ancient Assyrian art have been discovered. Much more fruitful were the results of the excavations of Nineveh, the later capital of Assyria, which lay on the left bank of the Upper Tigris, the favorite city of the great goddess Ishtar. In Nineveh itself, on the ruins of which the towns of Kuyundzhik and Nebi-Yunus now stand opposite the city of Mossul, in Kalakh (present-day Nimrud), south of Nineveh, and in Imgur-Bel, present-day Balavat, east of Nineveh, the British A.G. Layard, W. Kenneth Loftus, Gormuzd Rassam and George Smith made great, extremely important discoveries, the main results of which entered the British Museum in London. In Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), north of Nineveh, excavations were carried out by the French Botta and Flandin, Place and Thomas, so the works of art found there are in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Assyrian art, as the heir of Babylonian.

The Assyrians, who once inhabited these places, strong and muscular, lovers of war and hunting, poured a new stream into the decrepit Mesopotamian art of the 9th-7th centuries BC. e., and although this stream was not very clean, it was still stronger, more alive and fresh. Of course, the Assyrians recognized themselves as the flesh and blood of the Babylonians, to whom they owed both religion, government institutions, science and literature, and the main features of art; but they did not hesitate to borrow some individual forms of ornamentation also from their distant relatives, the Egyptians. But the very fact of the further development of art on the banks of the Tigris during the era of greatest prosperity of the Assyrian state, which lasted a quarter of a millennium (884-626 BC), proves that the northern Mesopotamians consciously followed their own path; indeed, works of Assyrian art occupy a completely separate position among similar works remaining from all the peoples of the globe, as a result of which the Assyrians cannot be called imitators in the common sense of the word. For example, winged lions and wingless bulls with human heads, standing in the form of high-relief colossi on guard at the entrances to Assyrian palaces, due to their mythological character and significance could also be of Babylonian origin. But if their use as symbols and decorative figures had been as widespread among the Babylonians as among the Assyrians, then they would not have been discovered on Assyrian soil alone. Limestone or alabaster slabs with relief images of various episodes from the life of the king, placed one next to the other and stretching in rows along the lower part of the walls in the courtyards, in the passages and in the halls of the palaces of the Assyrian sovereigns, most clearly indicate the national Assyrian further development of Mesopotamian art, although not it is doubtful that the style of these reliefs was formed in Babylon.

2 – Features of architecture.

The most direct connection between Assyrian art and Babylonian art is visible in architecture, to which almost all hitherto discovered artistic monuments of Assyria belong in one way or another. And in this country, the main building materials were stamped clay, sun-dried brick, in noticeable places fire-burnt brick, and in some places glazed. The Assyrian temples, called tsigurat, were, just like the Chaldean and Babylonian ones, massive terrace-like buildings that tapered upward. But the rectangular base, which dominated the south of Mesopotamia, here in the north gave way to a square one, which originated in Central Mesopotamia. Like the palace of King Gudea in Sirpurla, which we talked about above, the palaces consisted of more or less courtyards, each of which, together with the halls and chambers overlooking it, constituted one closed whole. Several such compartments, usually three, rooms for men, women and household needs, were surrounded by one common wall with quadrangular crenellated towers protruding from it and with massive entrance gates and formed one building crowned with battlements on a wide-spreading eminence, to which double staircases and ramps. The extensive outer surface of the walls of the palaces, as in Ancient Chaldea, on the main facade was dissected by a system of recesses, the stepped profile of which, of course determined by the nature of the brick buildings, corresponded to a double or triple row of battlements arranged in steps. The ancient Chaldean division of the facade into parts by round pillars placed one next to the other is also found in places in Assyria. The low upper floors, opening onto the flat roof, looked only like turrets on individual projections of the walls; Windows or galleries with columns appeared, apparently, only in such superstructures on the walls and above the gates. However, even here there is no shortage of signs of further development compared to ancient Babylonian architecture. First of all, it should be noted that the Assyrians used the vault much more often than the ancient Chaldeans of the south. Julius Oppert said: “Even in today’s Babylon, buildings are constructed of brick and wooden pillars, in contrast to the new Nineveh (Mosul), where the vaults are made of raw brick.”

In the Assyrian ruins, clear parts of the box vault have been preserved, on the one hand, above the spans of the gates of the city walls, and on the other, in the drainage canals, in which one can see either a circular, or elliptical, or pointed vault. Pieces of masonry, which could only be mistaken for the remains of collapsed vaults, were also found in the Khorsabad palace. Gates and doors, as a rule, had an arched top, but there are also doors with a straight top. Box vaults apparently covered the passages and oblong main halls of the palaces. French researchers, since the time of Place and Thomas, have argued that some of the square halls had a domed roof. Reliefs originating from Kuyundzhik, British Museum, depict small buildings (Fig. 140), proving that the Assyrians were not alien to buildings with a domed roof. However, on other plates with images of Assyrian palaces, in addition to Armenian buildings with a pediment, we see only buildings with a flat roof. In any case, such a roof, built on wooden beams, on top of which a floor of broken clay is paved, constitutes a general rule in Assyrian construction, as is confirmed by the fact that Layard, during his excavations, constantly found heaps of ash from charred beams, as well as , that the inscriptions of the kings speak of cedar logs that were brought for buildings.

Rice. 140 – Relief from the palace of Sankheriba in Kuyunzhik.

Stone columns, as far as can be judged from the few fragments that have survived from them, were used in the construction of Assyrian palaces only in the above-mentioned secondary places or as decorations on the outer surface of the walls. However, the image inside the house on one bronze relief found in Balavat, as well as the bronze shell of a wooden column discovered by Plas in one of the courtyards in Khorsabad, and finally the inscriptions analyzed by Meissner and Rost, of which one says that Sennacherib ordered supporting the ceiling with columns in one room on the lower floor shows that the Assyrians were not alien to wooden columns as supports. In any case, columns in Assyria fulfilled their purpose better in those tent-like, light, small temples (aediculae, pavilions, kiosks), which in it, as in Egypt, existed along with massive structures known to us mainly from images on slabs with reliefs than in monumental buildings.

Rice. 141 Assyrian relief from Nimrud

An image of a real tent was found in the northwestern palace at Nimrud (Fig. 141). The upper ends of the supports presented here extend freely to the outside. The capital with volutes, the one visible on the left side of the picture, is strikingly reminiscent of similar capitals found in Egyptian painting. Also unique are the two capitals on the right, with volutes and facing each other figures of a stone ram on stands placed above the volutes. Based on this motif, Perrault sees in the Assyrian volute, both here and elsewhere, an imitation of the horns of a stone ram. However, such an explanation of the origin of the volute, in the sense of a general position, is unlikely. On the Khorsabad and Kuyunjik reliefs, small temples are represented not as tents, but as stone buildings; their columns, like everywhere else in Assyria, are round and smooth. The volutes of their capitals are doubled, placed one above the other. Finally, a relief in the British Museum depicting the sun god in his columned temple proves that the capital with volutes was used in late Babylonian art and that, therefore, it cannot be looked upon as an Assyrian invention. But the assumption that it originated from the Egyptian palm-shaped capital seems especially incredible. However, in Assyrian architecture there are types of columns that belong only to it alone. This includes the Khorsabad column with a capital in the form of a flattened ball (Fig. 142), decorated with two crowns of arcs, covering one another; this should also include the base of the column found in Kuyundzhik, which has a similar shape and similar decoration; this foot rests on the back of a winged bull with a human head. This also includes a fragment of a base from Nimrud in the form of a winged sphinx of a semi-Egyptian character. That the bases of the columns were actually given the appearance of these fantastic animals, as was later done in medieval Europe, can be seen from one relief found in Kuyundzhik, British Museum. The bases of the building columns in this relief, which look like round pillows, rest on the backs of animals that stand in pairs, one opposite the other. The lower edge of this stand is decorated with stepped teeth. There is no doubt that all these forms, with the exception of the Sphinx, are of Mesopotamian origin.

Rice. 142 Capital in the form of a flattened ball from Khorsabad

But the history of the development of Assyrian art goes back to more early periods. In the 3rd millennium BC. e. Assyria was heavily influenced by Sumerian culture. In one of the sanctuaries of this time, the sanctuary of the goddess Ishtar in the city of Ashur - the ancient capital of Assyria, figurines reminiscent of Sumerian ones were found. In the 15th century BC. e. Assyria became dependent on the state of Mitanni in the northern Mesopotamia. The art of Assyria absorbed a lot from Mitannian and Hittite art. But the art of Assyria received its highest development only in the 1st millennium BC. e., when Assyria turned into a strong slave-holding state, subjugating almost all of Western Asia as a result of wars of conquest.

The centralization of power in the hands of the Assyrian kings contributed to the fact that very specific demands were made on art: to glorify the deeds of the king and military power Assyria.

Palace of Sargon II

A classic example of Assyrian architecture is the palace of the 8th century BC. e. King Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad). It was built on an artificial terrace, part of the palace protruded beyond the city wall. The palace complex also included a sanctuary with a ziggurat tower of seven ledges. The entrances were covered with arches, and on their sides were placed monumental figures “shedu” or “lamassu” (as they are called in Assyrian texts), gateway sculptures in the form of lions and bulls with human heads and wings, executed in the technique of very high relief, turning into a round sculpture (Paris, Louvre). An interesting technique is the image of five legs, so that both those entering and passing by can see the “guard” of the gate simultaneously both at rest and in motion.

In some parts of the palace, columns with stone bases and wooden trunks were used as load-bearing supports.

Tiles were also introduced into the decoration of the palace of Sargon II (for example, in the design of the entrances) - glazed bricks with a bright multi-color glaze. Near the doors stood tall “trees of life”, bound in metal, on the tops of which were mounted palm leaves made of gilded bronze. The colorful decoration of the palace was apparently combined with the skillful introduction of landscaping on the terraces.

Sculpture

Relief predominates in Assyrian plastic art. Round sculpture in the art of Assyria big role didn't play.

From the time of Ashurnasirapal II, a remarkable alabaster statue of Ashurnasirapal II himself has come down (London, British Museum, height 1.06 m), depicting the king as a high priest. It was installed in the temple, in a cult niche, and was an object of worship. Its composition is strictly frontal, the image of the king is idealized.

In the palace of Ashurnasirpal, very low, flat reliefs depicting battles and royal hunts have been preserved. They are rough, harsh in style and present a whole panorama of battle and hunting scenes. Despite the general anatomical correctness and detailed elaboration of the muscles of the legs and arms, the images of people and animals are stiff. General scheme reliefs by the time of Ashurnasirpal II had already been fully established.

painting

The paintings that decorated some rooms of the palace of Sargon II depicted processions in which the king appeared accompanied by his entourage and soldiers.

In the palace of King Sennacherib (705-681 BC), son of Sargon II, in Til-Barsib, a city located on one of the main roads connecting Assyria with Syria, there were also paintings on the walls depicting the king and his deeds (fragments in Paris, in the Louvre and in the Aleppo Museum). Stylistically, these paintings are heterogeneous and cover the period from the second half of the 9th century BC. e. until the middle of the 7th century BC. e. They are made using white lime plaster, which is applied in a thin layer to the adobe wall over a layer of clay mixed with chopped straw. In some places you can even trace the artists’ working technique, successive stages this work. First, the contours of the images were applied with black paint, and then paints were applied: red-brown, ultramarine-blue, black and white, less often pink and blue. The coloring is conditional, flat, without shadows.

Palace of Ashurbanipal

The last period of flowering of Assyrian art came during the reign of Ashurbanipal, in the second half of the 7th century BC. e. Excavations uncovered the ruins of his palace in Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik), where, in addition to various works of fine art, clay tablets with wedge-shaped texts were found, which made up the famous library of Ashurbanipal, which made it possible to get acquainted with high level Assyrian culture.

The reliefs still glorify the king and depict military and hunting scenes. They are executed differently: some works were performed by first-class craftsmen, others by artisans. The reliefs were conventionally painted. However, unlike the works of previous times, they convey the movement of the figures with great skill. The reliefs show the sequential development of action.

The largest role in the history of the Ancient East in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. played by Assyria. The origins of Assyrian art go back to the 3rd millennium (Ancient Ashur), but it received its highest development only in the 1st millennium BC, from which the largest number of monuments have been preserved. At this time, Assyria became a major military-despotic slave-owning power that claimed dominance throughout the Ancient East. The dominion of Assyria, which waged great predatory wars, extended to Western Asia from Iran along the Mediterranean Sea and reached the capital of Egypt - Thebes. 9th - 7th centuries BC. - the time of the highest rise of Assyrian art, which absorbed and transformed in a new way much of what was found in the previous time. During this period, cultural relations between Assyria and other countries took place on a large scale. Around 7th century BC. The Assyrians are in direct contact with the Greeks. The latter, through Assyria, adopted many of the cultural achievements of the Ancient East; in turn, the Assyrians became acquainted with a new world, previously unknown to them.

The socio-economic system of Assyria was based on the brutal exploitation and enslavement of a huge mass of the population. All power (both civil and priestly) was concentrated in the hands of the Assyrian kings; art was required to glorify military campaigns and glorify royal valor. This found its most consistent expression in the images on the reliefs of Assyrian palaces. In contrast to the more ancient art of Mesopotamia and the art of Egypt, Assyrian art was predominantly secular in nature, despite the connection between art and religion that existed in Assyria, typical of all ancient Eastern cultures. In architecture, which continued to be the leading form of art, it was not cult architecture that prevailed, but serf and palace architecture. The architectural complex of the palace of Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin (now Khorsabad) has been studied better than others. It was built in the 8th century. BC, simultaneously with the city, built according to a specific plan in the form of a square with a rectangular grid of streets. The city and palace were surrounded by a fortress wall. An interesting feature of the layout was the construction of the palace on the line of the city fortress wall in such a way that one part of it was within the city limits, and the other went beyond its boundaries. Adjacent to the palace on the city side was a series of buildings that formed the official and sacred area, which included a temple and other buildings. This entire complex, including the palace, was in turn surrounded by a fortress wall, forming a citadel, separated from the city and thus protected not only from external enemies, but also from internal ones, in case of an uprising in the city.

The subjects of the compositions were mainly war, hunting, scenes of everyday life and court life, and, finally, scenes of religious content. The main attention was focused on those images where the king was the central figure. All the work of Assyrian artists was aimed at glorifying him. Their task was also to emphasize the physical strength of the king, his warriors and retinue: we see in the reliefs huge people with powerful muscles, although their bodies are often constrained by a conventional canonical pose and heavy, fluffy clothing.

In the 9th century BC, under Ashurnasirpal II, the Assyrian state reached its greatest prominence. The distinctive features of the art of this period are simplicity, clarity and solemnity. In depicting various scenes on reliefs, artists tried to avoid overloading the image. Almost all compositions of Ashurnasirpal II's time lack landscape; sometimes, as in hunting scenes, only a flat line of ground is given. One can distinguish here scenes of a historical nature (depictions of battles, sieges, campaigns) and images of palace life and ceremonial receptions. The latter include the most carefully executed reliefs.

In the 8th century. BC. some new features appear in Assyrian art. The reliefs and paintings from the palace of Sargon II (722 - 705 BC) are similar to the previous ones in the severity of their manner, the large size of the figures and the simplicity of the composition. But artists show great interest in the appearance of people. The musculature becomes less exaggerated, although its processing is still very strong and sharp. The artists of the reliefs also try to convey some of the individual features of a person’s appearance, which is especially noticeable in the depiction of Sargon himself. A more careful study of the model forces artists to dwell on such details as folds of skin on the neck, etc. In reliefs with images of animals, movement is well and truly conveyed. Artists begin to observe nature more carefully, and a landscape appears. The features of the areas and countries through which the Assyrian troops passed in their numerous campaigns are conveyed with great reliability. The same can be observed in literature, the best example of which is the chronicle description of Sargon’s eighth campaign. According to the interpretation, the relief remains as flat as in the previous period, but the dryness disappears, and the contour of the figure becomes smoother and rounded. If earlier, in the reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II, artists sought to convey power and strength by the size of those depicted or by exaggerating the muscles, now the same theme is revealed in a different, more complex way. For example, while celebrating victories, artists show the difficulties overcome by the Assyrian army, carefully conveying the landscape in every detail.

At the end of the 8th - beginning of the 7th century. BC. further development of the relief can be noted. The compositions become significantly more complicated, sometimes overloaded with details that are not directly related to the plot. For example, in the scene “Construction of the Palace of Sennacherib,” along with a detailed image of the work being carried out, the surrounding landscape is shown, which includes scenes of fishing, rafting, and even a herd of wild boars wandering in the reed thickets. The same is now typical for reliefs depicting scenes of battles and campaigns. Wanting to diversify the long rows of walking figures in crowd scenes, the artist resorts to various techniques, showing different positions of the heads and movements of the hands, and different gaits of those depicted. The abundance of details and the large number of figures increase simultaneously with a decrease in their size. The relief is now divided into several tiers.

The Assyrian relief reached its highest development in the 7th century. BC, during the reign of King Assyria Ashurbanipal (668 - 626 BC). The content of the images remained the same: they all glorified the king and explained the phenomena of life by the divine will of the ruler. The central place in the reliefs that decorated the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh was occupied by battle scenes telling about the military victories of the Assyrian king; There are also numerous scenes of royal hunting. The motives become very diverse. In the visual arts, the trends of the previous period are developing with great force, and the features of realism are significantly strengthening. In constructing complex scenes, artists strive to overcome difficulties in depicting movement and angles. All compositions are very dynamic. In this regard, the best executed scenes are the hunting scenes, which are more saturated with life and movement than others. The scenes of hunting gazelles and wild horses are remarkable for their laconicism and power of expressiveness. The naturalness of the animal poses, the sense of steppe space achieved by the free and at the same time superbly rhythmically organized placement of figures on a plane and large fields of unoccupied space, force us to classify these reliefs as the pinnacles of Assyrian art. The technique of making relief has also reached great perfection. But at the same time, in the art of Ashurbanipal’s time there are also features of stagnation, manifested in an increase in decorativeness, a kind of heraldic abstraction that leads away from the truth of life, in a certain sophistication of execution that becomes an end in itself.

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