Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

236 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
beginning of Chaldean art. These fundamental deductions
and historical conclusions, so quickly drawn by Heuzey
after his study of the archaeological details of the monuments,
found their full corroboration through the deciphering of
their accompanying inscriptions by Oppert and Amiaud,
and through the present writer's palasographical and historical
researches in connection with the Nuftar antiquities,
which afforded a welcome means of controlling and supplementing
the results obtained at Tello.
The magnificent collection of statues in diorite, or more
exactly dolerite, will always remain the principal discovery
connected with De Sarzec's name. With the exception of
but one erected
by Ur-Bau, they bear the name of Gudea,
patesi of Shir-pur-la or Lagash, as the city at some time
must have been called. Famous as the choicest museum
pieces so far recovered from Babylonian soil, and remarkable
for their unity of style and technique, and therefore
occupying a most prominent place in the history of ancient
art, they appeal to us no less through the simplicity and
correctness of their attitude and through the reality and
power of their expression, than through the extraordinary
skill and ability with which one of the hardest stones in
existence has here been handled by unknown Chaldean
artists. The mere fact that such monuments could originate
in ancient Babylonia speaks volumes for the unique
character and the peculiar vitality of this great civilization,
which started near
the Persian Gulf thousands of years before
our era, and fundamentally influenced the religious ideas
and the intellectual development of the principal Semitic nations,
and through them left its impression even upon Europe
and upon our own civilization.
All the statues represent a human ruler — generally
Gudea — whose name is found in a kind of cartouche on
the right shoulder or in a long inscription engraved upon
a conspicuous part of the body or garment ; and they all