Still more Assyrian is another plate, the arrangement of which recalls the reliefs of Assurbanipal or Sennacherib, and yet already there are forms which anticipate Mohammedan art; the gate of the city, its crenelations, and the forms of the helmets of the soldiers, all have an air of similarity with far later Mohammedan types. Another plate, not reproduced here, shows a Sassanid king regaling himself with wine and music, and gives already more than a hint of the favourite designs of the Rhages potters or the bronze workers of Mossoul.
Among Prince Bobrinsky’s bronzes which were found in the Caucasus is a late Sassanid aquamanile in the form of a bird. It is already almost Mohammedan, though retaining something of the extreme solidity and weight of earlier art. Once more, in the aggressive schematisation of the form of the tail and the suggestion of feathers by a series of deeply marked parallel lines, we get a reminiscence of Assyrian art, while in the treatment of the crest there is the more florid interweaving of curves which adumbrate not only Mohammedan but Indian forms.
In the aquamanile in the form of a horse (see Plate) the Sassanid influence is still predominant, but there can be no doubt that this is already Mohammedan, probably of the eighth or ninth century. We have already here the characteristics of Fatimite bronzes, of which a few specimens are shown at Munich. The great griffin of Pisa could not, of course, be moved from the Campo Santo, nor are the two specimens in the Louvre shown, but the stag from the Bavarian National Museum is there and affords a most interesting comparison with Prince Bobrinsky’s horse. Both have the same large generalisation of form, and in both we have the curious effect of solidity and mass produced by the shortened hind legs, with the half-squatting movement to which that gives rise.
The Bobrinsky horse is obviously more primitive, and probably indicates the beginnings of a school of bronze plastic in Mesopotamia
nearly parallel to that of Egypt. This school, however, never developed as fully along sculptural lines, and at a comparatively early date abandoned sculpture for the art of bronze inlay, of which Mossoul was the great centre in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the incised designs on the horse we have an example of the early forms of the palmette ornament and of the interlacing curves which form the basis of most subsequent Mohammedan patterns. Within the reserves formed by the _intreccie_ are small figures, of which one--that of a man seated and playing the lute--can just be made out in the reproduction. It is already typical of the figure design which the Mohammedan artists developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.