yet we are not in a position to put a name to each even of the
figures that recur most frequently. In the case of Egypt there
is no such difficulty : when we encounter the image of one of her
gods upon the walls of a temple or in the cases of a museum, we
can say without hesitation, " This is Osiris or Ptah," as the case
may be, "Amen or Horus, Isis, Sekhet, or Hathor." It is not so
with Chaldoea. Figures are there often found uninscribed, and
even when an inscription is present it not seldom offers difficulties
of interpretation which have not yet been cleared up ; for the
divine names are usually ideograms. Only a few have been identified beyond all doubt, those namely of which we have Hebrew
or Greek transcriptions, preserving for us the real Chaldaean
original ; Ilou, Bel, Nisroch, Beltis, I star, are examples of this.
Hence it results that Assyriologists often feel no little embar-
rassment when they are asked to point out upon the monuments
the figures even of those gods of whose names they are the least
doubtful. The Assyrians and Chalclaeans, like other nations of
antiquity, had what we should now call their figured mythology',
but we are still imperfectly acquainted with it. Even for those
whom we may call the most exalted personages of the Chaldaean
Olympus, scholars have hardly succeeded in illustrating the texts
by the monuments and explaining the monuments by the texts ;
and we are yet far from being able to institute a perpetual and
standard comparison as we have clone in the case of Egypt and
still more in that of Greece, between the divine types as they
appear in religious formulae and in the national poetry, and the
same types when embodied by the imagination of the artist.
A long time may elapse before a mythological gallery for
Chaldaea, in which all the important members of the Mesopotamian
pantheon shall take their places and be known by the names they
bore in their own day, can be formed, but even now the principles
upon which they were represented by art may be stated. The
images of the various gods were built up in great part by the aid
of combinations similar to those made use of in realizing the
minor demons. A natural bent towards such a method of interpre-
tation was perhaps inherited from the clays in which the
naive adoration of all those animals which help or hurt mankind
formed a part of the national worship ; again, certain animals were,
by their shapes and constitution, better fitted than others to
personify this or that quality which, in its fulness, was considered
Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/98
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A HISTORY OF ART IN CHALD.EA AND ASSYRIA.