Who is Sadana Palouse?
In the Western cultural context, this unreal historical figure resembles King You of Zhou in the 8th century BC, or King Shang in the 11th century BC.
Whether in Aristotle's writings, Dante's Paradise, Goethe's Faust or Liszt's opera, Sardanapalus, or spelled Sardanapallus—the name stands for luxury, pleasure, indulgence, decadence, laziness, madness, and destruction.
He is said to have left himself a naked epitaph: "The satisfaction of the flesh is the sole purpose of life."
Pictured: Delacroix "The Death of Sadana Palouse" part 1827 392cmx496cm floating museum collection
A history beyond art
The legendary Sadana Palus, the last monarch of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (934–609 BC), was the one who finally brought all the glory of Assyria to an end.
This theory may first be derived from a historian named Ctesias of Cnidus in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, who served as physician to Artaxerxes II, the 10th king of the Persian Empire (404-358 BC).
Ctesas is famous in Chinese historiography because he was the first to associate China with silk, and in his writings he called China "Seres", which means silk country.
He had detailed monographs on both Persia and India, but most of them have been lost. According to him, the last emperor of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was a dull tyrant named Sadana Palus.
More than 300 years later, Diodorus, an ancient Greek historian born in Sicily, quoted Octeshas to portray Sadana Palus as a self-indulgent, decadent, and ultimately self-destructive last king.
In fact, the last king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire was Ashur-uballit II (reigned 612–609 BC), and at the end of the reign of his predecessor, Sinsharishkun c. 627–612 BC, Neo-Babylon, together with the Medes, captured the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 612 BC.
Sinsarishkun could commit suicide or disappear into chaos, and the Egyptian-backed Assyrian Ubalit II moved the capital to Haran after coming to power, and the last vestiges of the vast empire lasted only three years.
The "Sadana Palous" described by Tesshas and Theodorus should not be Assyrian Ubalit II, nor should it be the last Assyrian prince of Sinsarishkun.
The story is more likely to take place during the reign of Ashurbanipal (reigned 668–627 BC) of Ashurbanipal's father, which was at its most powerful.
And the protagonist of the story may be Shamash, the king's younger brother. Shum. Shamash shum ukin ? —648 BC).
Shamash. Shum. Trying to build a greater cause than his brother, Ugin conquered Babylon around 652 BC, proclaimed himself king of Babylon, and enjoyed widespread support among the Chaldeans, Aramaeans, and Elamites under the Assyrian Empire.
It took years of war for Ashurbanipa to suppress his rebellious brother. In 648 BC, Shamash. Shum. Ugin was besieged in the city of Babylon by the Assyrian army, and he burned himself, his palace, his concubines, and his treasures.
An inscription from Ashurbanipa, later unearthed, also records this event: "They took the enemy who attacked me, my brother Shamash. Shum. Ugin was thrown into the raging fire."
Although there is no record of the creation of the brother against Shamash. Shum. Ugin is a transvestite, lustful and tragic figure who goes to destruction in a carnival, but of the several monarchs and royals of the late Assyrian Empire, only he can barely match the legendary "Sadana Palous".
In the Chinese region's online information, there are still many vague and false rumors about "Sadana Palouse", such as some people believe that "Sadana Palouse" is the Greek name of Ashurbanipa and so on.
After more than 2,000 years of false rumors by Cyshas, Diodorus and others, the image of "Sadana Palouse" has gradually become clear and solid in the long historical years.
In the 19th century, he became a frequent visitor to all kinds of romantic literature and art.
II The romantic image of Byron and Delacroix
In 1821, the English poet Byron who wandered Italy, in order to pay tribute to his idol Goethe, wrote the historical drama "Sadana Palouse" based on the unreliable records of the ancients.
Title page of the first edition of Byron's Sadana Palouse
In Byron's writing, the pathetic Sadana Palus holds an infallible despair for the Assyrian Empire, and he believes that the objective reason for the imminent destruction of the empire is his own loneliness and incomprehension:
"Nineveh's great wealth is squandered on things that may deserve the weeping of his people, and if they hate me, it is because I have no hatred. If they resist, it's because I don't oppress. ”
- I am innocent and lonely.
Till now, no drop from an Assyrian vein
Hath flow'd for me, nor hath the smallest coin
Of Nineveh's vast treasures e'er been lavish'd
On objects which could cost her sons a tear:
If then they hate me, 'tis because I hate not:
If they rebel, 'tis because I oppress not.
This tragic verse resembles Li Yu during the Five Dynasties period, or Wang Yan (899-926), the fallen king of the former Shu state at the same time.
Wang Yan has written some flashy words, and he has done more absurd things. For example, it is said that he was taking a boat tour of Huanhua Creek, and at noon, suddenly thunder and lightning, heavy rain poured, standing on the shore to watch the lively Chengdu melon-eating masses, crowding each other, as a result, many people were squeezed down the river, "drowning thousands." He continued to drink and have fun in the boat. Such a lord who indulged in wine was eventually killed on the way to Luoyang.
Ming dynasty painter Tang Yin (1470-1524) painted this "Picture of Prostitutes in the Palace of Wang Shu", which depicts Wang Yan's absurdity and shamelessness, and it is said that he often took a group of concubines and palace maids to the Qing Palace on Qingcheng Mountain, and let the palace maids wear Taoist clothes and paint their faces with powder, like a group of drunks, which is called "drunken clothing".
Wang Shu Palace Prostitute Tang Yin Collection of the Palace Museum
Wang Shu Palace Prostitute Tang Yin's self-titled poem
Compared with Tang Yin's euphemism, Byron's little fan brother Delacroix is unreserved about the legendary Sadana Palouse more than 2,000 years ago.
In April 1824, Byron died of illness while participating in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire.
At the Salon Exhibition in France in the autumn of that year, Delacroix presented the proud "Massacre of the Island of Chia", which raised the flag for the Greek War of Independence.
Delacroix Part of "The Massacre of Chia"
1824 is of epoch-making significance in the history of Western art.
The first is Delacroix's brother Rico, the French romantic pioneer who created The Raft of Medusa, who fell to his death in January;
secondly, Ingres, who had been living a long hard life in Florence with his new work, "The Oath of Louis XIII", returned to Paris from Italy;
Charles X presented the prize to the artists at the 1824 Salon of the Louvre, François Joseph Heim 1827
Subsequently, the focus of the exhibition in Paris in autumn became the line dispute between Delacroix, who represented romanticism, and Ingres, who represented classicism. It is also worth mentioning that several landscape paintings by Constable in the United Kingdom were also unveiled at this salon exhibition and received high evaluation.
With the strong spring breeze of romanticism, Delacroix proudly continued to interpret Byron's aesthetic symbols.
In 1827, he painted this painting The Death of Sadana Palouse.
Delacroix Details of The Death of Sadana Palouse 1827 Floating Collection
Delacroix Details of The Death of Sadana Palouse 1827 Floating Collection
This is an iconic work of Delacroix's romantic maturity, and in this huge scale nearly four meters high and nearly five meters wide, it is said that the absurd tyrant of more than two thousand years, Sadana Palouse, lies on a huge bed, his head supported by his right hand, hidden in the shadows.
There was still a maid next to him who brought him wine, but he was indifferent, his eyes revealing coldness or numbness.
This reclining, cold, and quiet image is so shocking because in front of his eyes, all kinds of killing are taking place! His beloved woman and war horse are being stabbed to death.
Gold, jewelry, silk, horses, beauty, an elephant head with a broken tooth, these extremely luxurious and beautiful elements, but weave a most cruel, ruthless and crazy scene.
But are Delacroix's depictions accurate?
III Classical and romantic
Romantic artists such as Byron and Delacroix, the imagination of the ancient country of the East, whether in the historical dimension or the geographical dimension, did not go beyond the scope of Ingres' depiction of the Ottoman Turkish palace maidens. Delacroix did not have historical material to refer to when creating these images.
Compared with Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), who had begun to tinker with neoclassicism, the later romantics did suffer a bit of a loss.
Neoclassical painters, if they want to create large-scale paintings with historical themes, can see many existing monuments directly to Rome, and from the mid-18th century, Pompeii began to be systematically excavated.
The discovery of the Pompeii frescoes shook the entire art world, and Goethe, Schiller and others were very excited about it. A Prusian named Winckelmann (1717-1768) went to Rome to personally conduct field research in Pompeii and Hercules.
Winckelmann inherited the ideas of the ancient Greek aesthetes on the principle that art imitates nature, and regarded the "perfect beauty" achieved by the perfect combination of nature and creation as his highest artistic ideal. His summary of the highest ideal of classical art—"noble simplicity, quiet greatness," captivated the entire European intelligentsia, and Goethe compared him to another Columbus who discovered the New World. His History of Ancient Art, published in 1764, thoroughly studied the overall contours of Greek mythology and became a guide to neoclassicism.
Enlightenment ideas, classical artistic ideals, coupled with the aesthetic needs of the emerging class during the French Revolution, made Europeans regain classicism, because it is new to the "classicism" of the ancient Roman era, so it is called "neoclassicism".
On the one hand, it began as a reaction to Baroque and Rococo art, and on the other hand, it wanted to revive the art of ancient Greece and Rome.
In contrast, in the time of Byron, Ingres (who also had romantic impulses in his old man's youth), Ricco and Delacroix, if there was to be a bit of a romantic pursuit, it was necessary to go beyond the classicism and rationality inherent in Western culture, and they needed to find a new element that was other, exotic, rebellious, transcendental, imaginative.
Assyria, 2,500 years ago, is an excellent aesthetic symbol.
But what did the Assyrians and the buildings and fine arts they created really look like? Did the legendary ancient capital of Assyria Nineveh really exist?
The answer to everything will take another 20 years with the discovery of the Englishman Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894).
(This article is part of the series "The Puzzle of Civilizations Between Two Rivers: A History of Mesopotamian Art" to be continued)