THE ARTS.
LAYARD'S MONUMENTS OF NINEVEH.
This magnificent supplement to Mr. Henry Austen Layard's work, Kineveh and its Remains, consists of a hundred large prints, on fine stout paper, enclosed in a substantial portfolio. The prints are outlines, en- graved by Mr. Hell from Mr. Layard's drawings, of the paintings and sculpture in the mounds of Nineveh; wood-engravings, by Mr. Thompson and Mr. Williams, from drawings by Mr. Prentis, of ornamental objects and details; and engravings, from drawings by Mr. Scharf, of the obelisk in the British Museum. The objects represented are battle-scenes recording the victories of Ninevite kings, the invasion of mountain districts, the in- terior of the royal castle, the arrival of people with tribute; specimens of the painted decorations, on a larger scale; ivory ornaments and utensils. The work is of the greatest aid to the history both of nations and of art.
Historically, the position of the people whose cent is here illustrated lies between Egypt and Greece. The period terminates .about seven hundred years before the Christian mat, about the time that Grecian monumental history begins. The extension backwards is a mot question: some would carry it very far, into "the remotest antiquity "; but it might not be more than a single century, and there is every internal evidence that it cannot go to the twelfth or fifteenth century before the Christian iera. The palace of Elaorsabiid, opened by M. Botta in 1844, bears the royal legends of" Sargon, great king, powerful king, king of the kings of Assyria": this king is that son of Sennacherib whom Isaiah [xx. 1.] represents as the conqueror of Judaea, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Some of the sculptures brought by Mr. Layard from Nimroud are of the same age. On the other hand, these remains corroborate the fact recorded in Egyptian monuments, that at an earlier period Assyria was for some time in the possession of Egypt: the period of this occupation was about the fifteenth or twelfth century ac., when the eighteenth dynasty occupied the Egyptian throne. An Egyptian character survives in the Assyrian monuments; actual figures of Egyptian art remain, executed either by Egyptian artists resident in As- syria or copied by Assyrians from Egyptian works; but the general style of the treatment differs essentially from that peculiar to Egyptian art, indi- cating a considerable advance. There are now in Berlin, Egyptian remains carried home by Dr. Lepsius, which reach back to the third dynasty, about 3,500 years BC. More light, however, will be thrown on the intercourse of Assyria with external nations, when the inscriptions on the obelisk shall have been unlocked by the key, already discovered, to the Ninevite or oldest form of the " arrow-headed " character. Hitherto Assyria has been the only remaining enigma of remote antiquity; but probably two years will not have elapsed before it shall have been completely laid open.
Artistically, Assyria is the go-between in connecting Egypt with Greece, through Lycia; and it indicates the origin of several Jewish ideas. The unicorn probably owes his origin to the bull of Assyria, uniformly so re- presented in profile that only a single horn appears, and that projects for- ward over the forehead. In these pictorial records you have the actual costume of Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzar. But the most striking fact is the emancipation of art from the conventional methods of Egypt. The human figure of the Egyptian painting is a diagram of a fixed pattern, in which a Imairnum of individuality is allowed to enter, in order to stamp some kind of identity in the portrait of a monarch, or to distinguish broadly between nations; and the actions are also such as are agreed upon to represent cer- tain avocations. In Assyrian art a considerable step is made from the Egyptian type: the action is more free and natural; the forms are distin- guished by a rude but spirited representation of the natural contour, with the leading muscles well defined; the joints are neatly and effectively indi- cated; the ornament has the beauties of elaboration in pattern, striking Contrast in colour, and considerable finish in execution; in some of the Sculpture, especially such figures as the colossal human-headed bulls now in Paris, you see the grandeur acquired by the size of Egyptian art, with More life thrown into it. The plates are excellent for their purpose, but of Course they convey only a faint impression compared with that derived from standing under the massive sculpture itself.
The whole collection of plates lays before you the actual life of the monarch and his adherents at the period immediately preceding the monu- mental history of Greece; with the transition of art from the purely con- ventional and representative forms of Egypt to the lifelike forms of Greece. It completely sweeps away the idea that Egypt was a country isolated from the rest of the world, and supplies a valuable link in the chain which con- nects the remote antiquity of the Nile with the civilization of modern Eu- rope. Of this you read in Layard's book; in the plates you see it.
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