Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

THE ANIMAL STYLE 193
observed everywhere, in Egypt, in Hittite Asia Minor, in Babylonia
and Assyria, in the Aegean and Mycenaean world, in Cyprus and in
Phoenicia, in Phrygia, Lydia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Lycia, in
Etruria and in Sardinia, and finally in continental, island and colonial
Greece.
In Greece, the style flourished during the archaic period, but
gradually gave way to other decorative conceptions, richer and more
subtle. It persisted, however, in the East. In Assyria, above all,
it underwent a remarkable development. Assyria, and the countries
dependent on Assyria, retained all the schemes mentioned above,
but introduced a number of rather important alterations. The
animal ornamentation becomes more and more purely decorative :
the animal figure loses all reality, and comes to be used as a mere
ornamental motive, like vegetable and geometric motives. On
Assyro-Persian sword-hilts in the Louvre, and from Carchemish in
the Ashmolean, the very ancient scheme of a lion devouring a goat
is reduced to a lion attacking the head of a goat : the next stage is
the gradual transformation of both lion and goat's head into a collection
of lines, and the fantastic combination of them with floral ornament.
This is but one example ;
many could be given.
The Iranian world was strongly influenced by Assyria and its
civilization, especially in the first millennium B.C. But at the same
time it certainly had a civilization of its own, and a comparatively
independent art. The Iranian world probably created the animal style
usually called Scythian. I shall examine this style in some detail, for
the animal style nowhere attained so high a development as in South
Russia during the period of Scythian ascendancy. All the varieties ^
of the Oriental animal style are represented, the most archaic as well
as the most elaborate. From the sixth century b. c. onwards, we find
objects strewn all over with figures of animals, such as the axe from
Kelermes (pi. VIII, i),the stag from Kul-Oba, the fish of Vettersfelde :
objects decorated with groups of fighting animals ;
heraldic combina-
animals and groups of animals forming a dense network which
tions ;
covers the whole surface of the object, as in the phiale from Solokha
(pi. XX, ; 3) and so forth. Several of these motives were borrowed
directly from Oriental art, others were transformed by Ionian artists
and reached South Russia in a modified, Ionian form. By the
sixth century, three main currents are observable in the animal style
of South Russia : an Assyro-Persian current, an Ionian current, and
a current which may be called Scythian. These currents influenced
each other and gave rise to hybrid forms.
The purely Scythian variety, the only one which is used to decorate
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