双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史34 基路伯和国王

 
甲虫在埃及被称为圣虫。人们用土、石做过无数个圣甲虫，挂在脖子上当作吉祥物。因为这些吉祥物很受欢迎，所以到了今天，埃及还在大量制作，并当作古董卖给游客。 
34 CHERUBS AND KINGS基路伯和国王
 
CAN you speak Assyrian? What’s that? “Of course not”? But you know one word of Assyrian, I’m sure, even though you may have forgotten the country. Assyria is an old country as Egypt is, and it’s a thousand miles to the east of Egypt. The Assyrian word I think you know is “cherub.” 
We call an angel head with wings a cherub. Sometimes we call a sweet baby a cherub. But an Assyrian cherub is neither. It’s a fairy-tale animal, either a lion or a bull with a man’s head and an eagle’s wings. In Assyria cherubs used to be made out of alabaster, which I know you remember is a kind of stone, usually white and softer than most of the stone the Egyptians had. 
The Egyptian sphinx was a man-headed lion lying down. The Assyrian cherub was a man-headed bull standing up. Here is an Assyrian cherub. Notice its man’s head—how carefully and tightly the hair and beard are curled. Even the end of the cherub’s tail is curled. 
Here is an easy puzzle. What’s wrong with this cherub? He has five legs! The sculptors knew, of course, that a bull had only four legs, but they made him with five legs so that a person looking at him from the front would see two legs together as if he were standing still, but when looking at him from the side would see the animal walking. 
The next piece of Assyrian sculpture is in low relief. A king is drinking out of a bowl. A servant stands back of him, fanning him with a plume to brush away the flies. 
Notice what muscles these men have-—how different from the Egyptian men, who were slender, with no muscles showing. The Assyrians thought that beauty was strength, that any one to be beautiful must be strong, so they showed their kings with big bulging muscles. 
 
ASSYRIAN CHERUB（亚述的基路伯） 
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
 
No.34-1　ASSYRIAN KING AND SERVANT（亚述王和仆人） 
The Assyrians believed also that hair as well as muscles was a sign of strength and that no real man who could grow a beard would have a smooth face like a woman. You remember the Bible story of Samson, whose great strength was supposed to be due to his long hair and who, when this was cut off, became weak? You see, the king has long hair and a beard tightly curled like ropes, but the servant has no beard. That was because the servant was not supposed to be as strong or manly as the king—the king didn’t want him to be. Some people who have butlers nowadays make them keep their faces smooth. 
Notice that the eye is like the Egyptian—front eye in a side view. 
The men had more clothing on—shawls or skirts with tassels which came to their ankles—and they wore half sandals. They were not altogether barefooted. 
The two chief things the Assyrian kings liked to do best—their two chief sports— were killing animals and killing people in battle, so most of their reliefs show them doing these things. 
But the best things the Assyrian artists made were figures of animals. They made them much more lifelike than those of the Egyptians. In many reliefs the horses are fine spirited steeds and their manes and tails are tightly curled. 
The Assyrians also made tiny reliefs on the curved surfaces of spool-shaped pieces of stone or clay. A small axle was put through the spool hole and the spool then became a tiny rolling-pin that could be rolled over any soft surface such as mud or wax and leave a flat imprint of the picture on the spool sides. 
In this way they could make as many of these small reliefs as they pleased. We think, however, they used these seals to sign writing. They did not write on paper, as they had no paper. They wrote on mud bricks before the bricks were dried and they stamped their seal at the end instead of signing their names, as your mother may stamp her initials or crest in sealing wax, with a seal ring, after writing a letter. 
These sculptures of the Assyrians have been dug up from the ruins of their old cities, carried away, and placed in museums, so that if you want to see them, you must go not to Assyria but to the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, or to other great museums. 
From what I have told you of Assyrian sculpture, how would you describe it in a few words? 
 
Huge beasts called cherubs—with five legs 
Strong and powerful men and animals 
Hair and beards in rope-like curls 
Low reliefs showing hunting and fighting scenes 
Very natural looking animals 
Small engraved spool-shaped seals 
 
And that’s about all we know of Assyrian sculpture dug up from the ruins of their once great cities and carried to the museums of Europe and America. Not much left to tell the tale of the proud, powerful, and cruel tyrants that ruled over millions of people— monarchs, and their subjects all dead these thousands of years. 
 
No.34-2　ASSYRIAN KING HUNTING（亚述王狩猎）