General history of art. Art of Assyria

The art of Assyria grew on the foundation laid by the culture of Ancient Babylon. Assyrian cities, located along the middle Tigris, on important trade routes, began to rise from the 14th century BC. e. The city of Ashur became the main center of the Assyrian state. Soon Assyria became a major military power, which contributed to the formation of art glorifying the strength of the victors and military valor. Assyrian palaces were striking in their luxury and included temples and ziggurats. The temple ensemble of Ashur consisted of a large courtyard surrounded by a massive wall with a gate and two ziggurats. The palace included two hundred rooms, richly decorated with reliefs, paintings, and glazed tiles.

The gloomy high halls were turned into museums, chronicles of military campaigns and battles. Reliefs and paintings, connected by plot, told about the life and everyday life of the palace. The brightness of the colors and the clarity of the contours made the reliefs easy to read.

I'm going.

Circular sculpture played a minor role in Assyrian culture. The few sculptures of kings convey the calm and power of power. Facial features are idealized, the power of the body is exaggerated. The statues were installed in temples and were intended to give honor. The palace was decorated with reliefs made of alabaster and limestone, depicting mythological scenes and scenes of court life. The reliefs were arranged in friezes. Monumental painting was represented by murals and multi-colored panels that decorated the gates and palace walls. Ornamental friezes made of polychrome and glazed bricks and metal decorations were used.

In 612 BC. e. conquered by Media and Babylon, Assyria fell.

Fragments of wall painting from the 18th century BC have been preserved from the Babylonian stage. e., which reproduce religious, mythological, as well as military themes.

The image maintains the rigidity of the traditional settings, introducing some new and more graceful decorative elements, such as plant elements of Aegean and Semitic origin, which enjoy greater expressive freedom.

These frescoes are distributed in panels marked with bands of color, with two central scenes placed one above the other. The top one depicts the royal vestment in the hands of the goddess Ishtar, who hands over the attributes to the monarch.

On the bottom there are two goddesses with spring vessels in their hands, located absolutely symmetrically.

Stylized palm groves separate the central stage from the remaining figures of sphinxes and winged griffins, located on both sides in sections in a vertical position. Other scenes depict processions of priests leading bulls to sacrifice as gifts to the deity. They are dominated by ocher tones, and the figures are more expressive and lively, which contrasts with the absolute stillness of the previous paintings. In Assyrian palaces, wall paintings covered rooms with narrative and decorative scenes.

Almost completely lost at present, painting, however, was widely used in Mesopotamia from the 4th millennium BC. e., whether as a complement to reliefs or as simply a painted composition. A now significantly damaged fragment of a wall painting that was found at Til Barsib and is kept in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. This palette of colors, smooth and without shine, which range from bright black to pale blue and pale pink, gives it a special uniqueness. Written in the 8th century. BC BC, this scene was part of one of the friezes that recreated the themes of Ashurbanipal's hunt.

The contours of the figures were emphasized with black lines on a single-color background. For their coloring, a limited range of even colors of pure tones was used. The figures were distributed in horizontal stripes, one above the other, which combined zoomorphic figures with geometric motifs.

In the 14th century BC. In Northern Mesopotamia, the Assyrian kingdom arose, which, thanks to predatory military campaigns, by the 9th century. BC. became the most powerful power in the Middle East. In the history of world art, Assyria left a deep mark with the creation of an official representative style that responded (both in architecture and in the visual arts) to the ideas of state military power and the images of God and the godlike king as an invincible and mighty warrior and great commander. Assyrian art, which initially absorbed the artistic heritage of the Sumerian-Akkadian Mesopotamia, Hurrian Syria and Hittite Asia Minor, as it were, summed up the previous processes and, on their basis, developed and canonized artistic forms that characterize the proclamative art of the Western Asian despotisms until the collapse of the Iranian Sassanid Empire in the 30s. 7th century AD

Assyrian cities, especially the capitals - Ashur (14-9 centuries BC bore the name of the supreme god), Kalhu (9 century BC), Dur-Sharrukin (founded by Sargon II and abandoned after his death in 705 BC), Nineveh (705-680 BC) - were like fortresses. The city, rectangular in plan, was protected by a moat, one or two lines of walls with buttress bastions and a citadel, which usually housed the government residence and the main shrines. Defensive walls (up to 18 m high and up to 6 m thick) were erected on stone foundations made of mud brick, then hidden with clay plaster; at the top they were often crowned with battlements, in Ashur they were lined with glazed brick with a blue background and a yellow border.

The city gate, like a castle, had an arched entrance guarded by two high square towers. In the strictly regulated urban layout, violation of which was punishable by execution, the main place was given to the wide Processional Road and the royal palace elevated on a high platform and additionally fortified in the citadel. The example of Dur-Sharrukin shows that the royal palace was a clearly planned ensemble of ceremonial and residential palace, temple and economic complexes, grouped into closed rooms under a common flat roof on the sides of large and small courtyards. Temples were built of two types: a seven-tiered ziggurat and a bit-khilani. The entrances to the palace were “guarded” by huge stone statues of winged man-bulls - a shed with the mighty muscular body of a bull and the proudly set head of a king in a ceremonial turban and framed by twisted curls of his hair and a thick beard. Perhaps these giants personified the vital force of the king and played the role of genius guardians of the ruler and the state.

Assyrian architects and artists have the honor of introducing ornamental friezes made of glazed brick into the design of the palace chambers (residence of Ti-kulti-Ninurtyg I, 13th century BC), and into the design of the building - a wedge arch (Dur-Sharrukin). Characteristic is the facing of walls with orthostats inside the building, and not outside, as was the case among the Hurrians and Hittites. In reliefs and painting by the 9th century. BC. a strict canon is established for depicting the human figure on a plane, simultaneously in front (eye, far shoulder) and profile (head, legs, near shoulder). All types of images affirm the idealized image of a muscular man of powerful build, with clear, large Semitic facial features framed by stylized curls of his hair and a long, large beard.

Most of all, Assyrian art became famous for its reliefs, embossed on bronze sheets or skillfully carved on limestone slabs, painted or tinted with highlighting of the most important details. These reliefs, on the one hand, seem to illustrate (and in sufficient detail) the history of Assyria, and on the other hand, show the evolution of the Assyrian official style. The pinnacle of its development is rightly considered to be stone reliefs from the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh (669 - c. 635 BC, London, British Museum), especially scenes of royal hunting, filled with the amazing rhythm of rapidly developing and suddenly dying movement, combining violent expression horsemen and animals rushing into battle, the tragic expressiveness of the death throes of wounded animals and the majestic solemnity of ritual actions and triumphal processions.

Late monuments of Assyrian art, including works of glyptics, demonstrate a tendency towards decorativeness, which was picked up and developed by artists celebrating the victory over Assyria in the end. 7th century BC. New Babylon.

In 2 thousand BC. Next to Sumerian art, and partly to replace it, new centers of culture arose. The southern half of Mesopotamia was united under the rule of Babylon, and the cities of Syro-Phenicia and Palestine emerged. In 612 BC. Assyria, conquered by Babylon and Media, fell. However, her art influenced other countries of the ancient world.

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 structures. 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 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.

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 king's figure 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 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.

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

The content of the article

BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN ART. In the history of art and archeology, the concept of “Babylonian-Assyrian art” is often applied to the culture of the peoples who inhabited Mesopotamia in ancient times - the territory of the entire southern part of modern Iraq, from approximately 34 ° N. to the Persian Gulf and from the Syrian Desert to the Zagros Mountains. The period of existence of the Babylonian-Assyrian culture is from approximately 5000 to 539 BC, when Babylon fell to the onslaught of the Persians.

In the archaeological excavations of the first half of the 20th century, especially after the First World War, many objects were discovered representing almost all types of artistic creativity: from rough painting and incisions on clay products to magnificent decorative wall compositions, from the first carved cylinder seals to complex bas-reliefs, from clay figurines of people and animals to colossal statues, often well proportioned, from almost shapeless cast metal trinkets to elaborate gold and silver jewelry and inlays.

The development of Babylonian-Assyrian art can be divided into the following five periods.

1. The oldest period is prehistoric and Sumerian, lasting until the reign of the Akkadian dynasty ca. 2400 BC

2. From the Akkadian Dynasty to the end of the 1st Babylonian Dynasty, 1595 BC.

3. Kassite period, until about 1100 BC

4. 9th–7th centuries, the heyday of Assyrian art.

5. Art of the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom, 626–539 BC.

ART OF SUMERIAN, AKKADIAN AND BABYLONIAN

The absence of stone and wood on the alluvial plain of Southern Mesopotamia already in the earliest period led to the use of the abundant clay there as a material for construction and small plastics. Throughout the history of this culture, the common building material was mud or baked brick, and bitumen was the binding mortar. Palaces and temples of colossal size were erected on huge brick platforms, which made it possible to protect the buildings from periodic floods. The oldest buildings were the huts of the inhabitants of the swamps, the walls of which were built from bundles of reeds tied together, coated with clayey silt.

During the development of the first of the three clearly defined primitive cultures of southern Mesopotamia - the Ubaid (named after archaeological finds at the site of Tell el-Ubaid, dated from the late 5th to mid 4th millennium BC) - clay bricks came into use and large building. The walls of these buildings, plastered with clay plaster, were decorated with a coating resembling a mosaic: elongated, conical clay “nails” with flat heads, painted black and red, were pressed into the wall at certain intervals. Also in this culture appeared beautiful pottery of elegant shapes, often with rather thin walls, decorated with paintings or scratched geometric patterns, and roughly sculpted figurines of people and animals.

During the development of the Uruk culture (late 4 thousand BC), named after finds in the excavations of the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk (modern Varka), temple buildings became more complex. The first ziggurat was erected in Uruk - a temple in the form of a pyramidal tower of several tiers of decreasing size, topped with a sanctuary, to which one climbed along ramps. From this time on, the ziggurat became the most characteristic type of temple architecture in Mesopotamia. Uruk also produced the earliest known cylinder seals - small in size, made of hard stone with deeply incised images of people and animals, mythological subjects and ritual scenes, as well as episodes from everyday life. Cylinder seals were used to mark various objects with the mark of their owner; when these seals were rolled over a soft clay surface, a miniature bas-relief was obtained that could be turned into a frieze of any length. Subsequently, the technique of making seals reached perfection and turned out to be the most original contribution of Mesopotamia to the development of decorative art.

The third primitive culture - Jemdet-Nasr, named after the finds in the hill of the same name near the ancient city of Kish (late 4th - early 3rd millennium BC) - is in many ways inferior to the previous one, but demonstrates significant achievements in the field of stone sculpture, like in the manufacture of bas-reliefs and round sculptures. The level of development of the latter is evidenced by the superbly executed figure of a wild boar.

During the Early Dynastic period (c. 2800 BC), artistic metalworking became important, as can be seen from surviving engraved metal vases decorated with hunting scenes and depictions of religious rites involving humans and deities. Animals were sometimes depicted in bas-relief, and sometimes sculpted heads were made with eyes inlaid with colored stones and tongues and horns made of gold. Most of the works of circular sculpture of this time are squat human figures with poor proportions. The images on the large bas-relief friezes of the early 3rd millennium BC from Tell el-Ubaid are executed with remarkable realism and vividness, for example the scene of milking a cow and other domestic work. One of the most interesting monuments of this era is the famous Stele of kites ruler of Lagash Eannatum, covered with reliefs with various scenes: Eannatum attacks enemies, defeats them, buries the dead. In the royal tombs of Ur dating back to the same time, remarkable examples of jewelry art were found - exquisite gold and silver jewelry, filigree, dagger scabbards, gold cups and bowls; among them are a pair of superbly executed inlaid plates known as Standard of War and Peace, each with three rows of figures of people and animals, lined with plates of mother-of-pearl on a lapis lazuli background.

With the accession of the Semitic Akkadian dynasty, the founder of which was the king of the city of Akkad Sargon the Ancient, the art of bas-relief achieved significant success. The most striking example is the victory stele of Naram-Sin (c. 2400 BC), presumably the son of Sargon. The stela depicts graceful human figures with good proportions; movements and actions are skillfully conveyed, and a subtle sense of balance in the composition is noticeable. Progress in round sculpture was manifested in the careful interpretation of the muscles and volume of figures, facial features and other details. The flourishing of art during this period had a significant influence on its further development.

With the rise of Gudea, king of Lagash (c. 2350 BC), and the Third Dynasty of Ur, a brief period of revival of Sumerian traditions began. The most remarkable monuments of art of this era are the numerous statues of Gudea, made of black diorite, rather rigid and heavy in shape, but with carefully rendered facial features and muscles, as well as other statues of men and women, reliefs and carved vases. The beautiful female ivory head that has survived from this time demonstrates a very high level of artistic craftsmanship.

The stele of Ur-Nammu (c. 2200 BC), king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, depicts in 5 tiers of relief compositions the construction of the famous ziggurat at Ur, the most remarkable known building of this type in Mesopotamia. Among the other figures on this stele is the oldest surviving image of angels. The longitudinal sides of the Ur ziggurat were apparently slightly curved in order to give this colossal structure the impression of being lighter.

The subsequent era of the First Dynasty of Babylon was marked by a general decline in artistic creativity. The Hammurabi dynasty (c. 1800 BC) left the only outstanding monument - the famous stele of Hammurabi, containing a code of laws, in the upper part of which there is a bas-relief depicting the king himself, receiving laws from the sun god Shamash; this relief is quite hard and clumsy in execution. Other artistic works from this period also show a decline in skill; the statues are characterized by a violation of proportions, paintings on ceramic vessels, reliefs and seals are made ineptly and roughly, their compositions are often overloaded with figures.

The dominance of the Kassite dynasty (c. 1600 BC), tribes of barbarian invaders who came from the Zagros Mountains region, threw the culture and art of Babylonia back more than 5 centuries. In this era, nothing original and creative appears; the repetition of more ancient models predominates, and at an extremely low level. The quality of carved cylinder seals has noticeably decreased, the contours of the design have become inexpressive; magical spells and prayers were often added to the images on the seals, as well as images of amulets - frogs, lizards and similar creatures, indicating a lower level of religious consciousness during this period. Bas-reliefs were placed mainly on boundary stones, where gods, kings or other characters were depicted along with symbols that were supposed to protect these stones from damage or destruction.

ART OF ASSYRIA

Assyrian art traces its origins to the art of Babylonia, which is especially evident in architecture. The Assyrians continued to imitate their southern neighbors, widely using baked bricks to construct buildings, despite the fact that they had stone.

The Assyrian kings were mainly occupied with wars of conquest, which influenced the character and themes of art. In sculpture and other types of plastic arts, the main place was occupied by images of the military exploits of kings or scenes illustrating their other favorite pastime - hunting; depictions of common people and women were almost completely excluded. During periods of calm between wars and the pacification of the rebellious, many Assyrian monarchs were engaged in the construction of temples and grandiose palaces. The best example of such activity is the new royal city of Sargon II, Dur-Sharrukin (translated as the city of Sargon, modern Khorsabad), built north of the old capital of Nineveh in 707 BC. The palace complex occupied an area of approx. 25 acres and consisted of almost a thousand rooms, numerous large courtyards, long, sculptured corridors and a 7-tiered ziggurat temple adjacent to the palace. Outside, the main gate was guarded by limestone figures of lions and giant winged bulls with human heads. Their torsos are carved in high relief, and their heads are completely three-dimensional, i.e. made as a round sculpture. The unique feature of these "goal guards" - lamassu - is that when viewed from the side, all four legs are visible in a walking position, while when viewed from the front, the added fifth leg gives the figure the appearance of a stationary animal. These gate guards were placed at the doorways of palaces and temples.

Excavations of the capital of Sargon indicate that Assyrian architects knew and used the designs of the semicircular and pointed arch, barrel vault, dome and (judging by the images on seals and bas-reliefs) columns.

The origins of the history of Assyria go back to the 3rd millennium BC, but few works of art date back to before 1000 BC, and most of them date back to the 9th–7th centuries. BC. - the era of the heyday of the Assyrian kingdom. Works of circular sculpture are very rare; the best and perhaps the only surviving example is the statue of Ashurnasirpal II (884–859 BC). Assyrian artists clearly preferred relief to free-standing sculpture. Often there are steles with a rounded top and the image of a king or deity; many of them are found in remote areas, where kings installed them to announce the annexation of conquered territories. In a similar way, kings celebrated their victories by erecting obelisks in their palaces with bas-relief images of various campaigns. The best of these monuments is Black obelisk Shalmaneser III (859–825 BC), on each of the 4 faces of which, in 5 registers, ceremonies of honoring the king by the five conquered peoples are depicted.

However, the most numerous are those bas-reliefs that, like “stone tapestries,” decorated the inside walls of the royal palaces with images of military campaigns, hunting, rituals and other scenes from the life of the king and his people. Sometimes individual details of these reliefs were highlighted with colors of soft shades - red, blue, black and white.

A characteristic feature of all these wall reliefs is the monotony and sparingness of the images of people and the increasingly sophisticated interpretation of animal figures. The human figures are energetically modeled and majestic, but constrained in movement, inelegant and expressionless, with conventionally interpreted curled hair and beards, emphasized by muscles and heavy clothes. The faces are almost the same on all the reliefs, from which it is clear that Assyrian artists were not concerned with the transfer of individual features. Like the Egyptian artists, they have no interest in the perspective reduction of figures depicted in foreshortening; As a result, the legs, lower body and head are depicted in profile, the eyes are fully frontal, and the chest is turned frontally so that both shoulders are visible.

However, in animal images, Assyrian artists achieved the highest skill in realistic and expressive treatment of form and action, especially in hunting scenes, depicting the pain, horror and rage of wounded wild animals. There is perhaps nothing in all ancient art that can compare with two reliefs from the palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh of a dying lion and a lioness pierced by arrows. In the second of them, the lioness is depicted in a death throes, the back half of her body is paralyzed, her legs are dragging helplessly, but she is trying to hold on, leaning on her front paws; from the slightly open mouth with a raised upper lip, a growl seems to be heard, expressing suffering and threat. This relief is a truly great creation of genius. Assyrian art reached its peak shortly before the collapse of the state, during the reign of Ashurbanipal (669–626 BC), the last of the great Assyrian monarchs.

Among the works of monumental and decorative art, it is worth noting the chased reliefs of the bronze lining of the Balavat gate, erected by Shalmaneser III (859–825 BC) to the southeast of Nineveh. Episodes from the first nine years of this king's reign are depicted here with amazing skill and clarity.

In the art of small forms - jewelry, ivory carving, glazed ceramics, embroidery, furniture - the Assyrians proved themselves to be skilled artisans; they continued to produce elegant gems and cylinder seals with the same variety of motifs as in monumental bas-reliefs.

ART OF THE NEOBABYLONIAN KINGDOM

The art of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom can be traced almost entirely to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BC). Under him, Babylon achieved unprecedented splendor, adorned with huge temples, palaces, the famous hanging gardens and a wide triumphal road, the walls on the sides of which were lined with colored glazed bricks and decorated with images of animals and dragons, made in red and yellow tones on a bright blue background. Even more colorful tile reliefs decorated the great city gate dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, and the king's throne room was decorated with panels with stylized borders of lotus flowers and palmettes. The use of glazed tiles or bricks to create bas-relief apparently came into practice during this period and became so popular that it gradually replaced all other bas-relief techniques. From this era of the last heyday of Babylon, only one work of monumental round sculpture has survived - a huge unfinished statue of a lion (made of dolerite) trampling the body of a man crushed by its paws, which, apparently, symbolized victory over the enemy.

Decorative and applied art continued to develop at a later time, almost until the beginning of our era, during the periods of Persian, Greek and Roman domination, but did not undergo any significant changes.

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 relief compositions on bronze sheets that lined the gates found in the ruins of the ancient city of Imgur-enlil on 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 much larger 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 and wages great wars with Egypt over 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 a large 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 of 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 was the main temple of 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 establish their 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 of 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 mass played a major role in the architecture of Mesopotamia, 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 of the 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.