IMMORTAL BEASTS

FOR the procession of tourists that begins this time of year to swarm in ever increasing numbers through London's great British Museum, the famed Elgin Marbles may be the museum's best-known treasure. But equally magnificent in their way are the bas-reliefs (see color pages) from the palace of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria in the 7th century B.C. These shallow tablets recall an empire that once included Egypt on the south and Asia Minor on the north, with all the Fertile Crescent in between.

According to the nameless artists whose duty it was to record his glory, Assurbanipal was as fierce as he was fearless. His chief business was war, and no victory seemed quite complete unless his enemies could be slowly tortured to death before his eyes. The days of victory did not last forever. The king's scribes duly recorded Assurbanipal's thundering lament: "I did well unto god and man, to dead and living. Why have sickness, ill-health, misery and misfortune befallen me?

Scandals oppress me. Misery of mind and flesh bow me down; with cries of woe I bring my days to an end."

The bas-reliefs shown on the following pages portray the king in happier times. For the Assyrians, the hunt was an art in itself. The king's men would release a captive lion from a cage so that the king could first wound him with arrows. At last the monarch would step forward, his left arm wrapped in a heavy cloth (which the artist here omits so as not to disfigure the king). As the lion reared for the last time, the king would plunge his weapon through the great beast's body.

Everything lives and moves across the stone, not with the fluid grace of classical Greece, but to the harsher beat of the darker desert world. But to the artists who shaped the limestone, the lions clearly were heroic. They leap to the attack, roar with indignation; at times they seem to have more humanity than the stiffly muscled and ringleted men who torment them. Always, the lion dies, but his is also the final glory.

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