The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature Part 4

Far more beautiful to the homely eye are such gardens than those of Shalimar and Pinjore, with their costly marble terraces, geometrical walks, fountains and cascades falling over sculptured slabs.

Nor are we in India confined to the enjoyment of Nature. Art[22] finds its way to us from Europe, and literature here receives the warmest welcome.

Our pianos, our musical-boxes--our costly and richly bound ill.u.s.trated works, fresh from England--the most thrilling romances of fiction, and all the periodicals of the day, are regularly acc.u.mulated in these charming Indian retreats, and keep up the culture of the mind in a valley whose "glorious beauty" is, as I have said, no "fading flower," but the home of the missionary, and the resort of the war-worn soldier or truth-loving artist.

Nor is this all. Around Deyrah is some of the most exquisitely beautiful cave scenery, comparatively unknown even to Europeans; such, for example, as the wondrous natural tunnel, whose sides shine with the varied beauty of the most delicate mosaics, and are lit up by rents in the hill above; the "dropping cave" of Sansadhara, "bosomed high in tufted trees;" and the strange ancient shrines sculptured in the romantic glen of Tope-Kesur-Mahadeo.

Of these, Sansadhara has lately been made the subject of a beautiful photograph, which, however, fails to convey the exquisite charm of the original; but the natural tunnel and Tope-Kesur-Mahadeo have never been presented by the artist to the public, although there are unique sketches of them in the fine collection of a lady[23] who, as the wife of a former Indian Commander-in-Chief, had opportunities afforded to few of indulging her taste.

One might exhaust volumes in attempting to describe such scenes, and even then fail to do them the faintest justice. The Alps, with all their beauty, lose much of their grandeur after one has been in daily contemplation of the majestic snowy range of the Himalayas, while the forests and valleys that skirt its base have no counterpart in Europe. In these partial solitudes we lose much of our conventionality. The mind is to a certain extent elevated by the grand scale on which Nature around is presented. The occasional alarm of war teaches the insecurity of all earthly happiness. Our life is subject to daily introspection, and before the mind's eye is the sublime prospect, perhaps at no very distant period, of a Christian India rising from the ruins of a sensuous idolatry in immortal beauty.

L. A., _in London Society_.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] "Wild beast! Big wild beast, sir!"

L. M.--I.--2.

[17] A remarkable plant. It is in constant bloom. On every spray there is a central crimson blossom, which only lasts one day, surrounded by five or six pink ones, which remain for many days.

[18] Dominant cla.s.s.

[19] House-rent is paid monthly in India, in arrear.

[20] My lady.

[21] Potato, spinach, fig, mint, egg-plant, onion, cuc.u.mber, turnip, cabbage, parsley, melon, mango, guava, pomegranate, orange.

[22] There is no intention of disparaging beautiful native art.

[23] Lady Gomm.

THE PHOENICIANS IN GREECE.

Herodotus begins his history by relating how Phoenician traders brought "Egyptian and a.s.syrian wares" to Argos and other parts of Greece, in those remote days when the Greeks were still waiting to receive the elements of their culture from the more civilized East. His account was derived from Persian and Phoenician sources, but, it would seem, was accepted by his contemporaries with the same unquestioning confidence as by himself. The belief of Herodotus was shared by the scholars of Europe after the revival of learning, and there were none among them who doubted that the civilization of ancient Greece had been brought from Asia or Egypt, or from both. Hebrew was regarded as the primval language, and the Hebrew records as the fountain-head of all history; just as the Greek vocabulary, therefore, was traced back to the Hebrew lexicon, the legends of primitive Greece were believed to be the echoes of Old Testament history. _Ex Oriente lux_ was the motto of the inquirer, and the key to all that was dark or doubtful in the mythology and history of h.e.l.las was to be found in the monuments of the Oriental world.

But the age of Creuzer and Bryant was succeeded by an age of scepticism and critical investigation. A reaction sat in against the attempt to force Greek thought and culture into an Asiatic mould. The Greek scholar was repelled by the tasteless insipidity and barbaric exuberance of the East; he contrasted the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Sophocles and Plato, with the monstrous creations of India or Egypt, and the conviction grew strong within him that the Greek could never have learnt his first lessons of civilization in such a school as this. Between the East and the West a sharp line of division was drawn, and to look for the origin of Greek culture beyond the boundaries of Greece itself came to be regarded almost as sacrilege. Greek mythology, so far from being an echo or caricature of Biblical history and Oriental mysticism, was p.r.o.nounced to be self-evolved and independent, and K. O. Mller could deny without contradiction the Asiatic origin even of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, where the name of the Semitic sun-G.o.d seems of itself to indicate its source. The Phoenician traders of Herodotus, like the royal maiden they carried away from Argos, were banished to the nebulous region of rationalistic fable.

Along with this reaction against the Orientalizing school which could see in Greece nothing but a deformed copy of Eastern wisdom went another reaction against the conception of Greek mythology on which the labours of the Orientalizing school had been based. Key after key had been applied to Greek mythology, and all in vain; the lock had refused to turn. The light which had been supposed to come from the East had turned out to be but a will-o'-the-wisp; neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the Egyptian hieroglyphics had solved the problem presented by the Greek myths. And the Greek scholar, in despair, had come to the conclusion that the problem was insoluble; all that he could do was to accept the facts as they were set before him, to cla.s.sify and repeat the wondrous tales of the Greek poets, but to leave their origin unexplained. This is practically the position of Grote; he is content to show that all the parts of a myth hang closely together, and that any attempt to extract history or philosophy from it must be arbitrary and futile. To deprive a myth of its kernel and soul, and call the dry husk that is left a historical fact, is to mistake the conditions of the problem and the nature of mythology.

It was at this point that the science of comparative mythology stepped in.

Grote had shown that we cannot look for history in mythology, but he had given up the discovery of the origin of this mythology as a hopeless task.

The same comparative method, however, which has forced nature to disclose her secrets has also penetrated to the sources of mythology itself. The Greek myths, like the myths of the other nations of the world, are the forgotten and misinterpreted records of the beliefs of primitive man, and of his earliest attempts to explain the phenomena of nature. Restore the original meaning of the language wherein the myth is clothed, and the origin of the myth is found. Myths, in fact, are the words of a dead language to which a wrong sense has been given by a false method of decipherment. A myth, rightly explained, will tell us the beliefs, the feelings, and the knowledge of those among whom it first grew up; for the evidences and monuments of history we must look elsewhere.

But there is an old proverb that "there is no smoke without fire." The war of Troy or the beleaguerment of Thebes may be but a repet.i.tion of the time-worn story of the battle waged by the bright powers of day round the battlements of heaven; but there must have been some reason why this story should have been specially localized in the Troad and at Thebes. Most of the Greek myths have a background in s.p.a.ce and time; and for this background there must be some historical cause. The cause, however, if it is to be discovered at all, must be discovered by means of those evidences which will alone satisfy the critical historian. The localization of a myth is merely an indication or sign-post pointing out the direction in which he is to look for his facts. If Greek warriors had never fought in the plains of Troy, we may be pretty sure that the poems of Homer would not have brought Akhilles and Agamemnon under the walls of Ilium. If Phoenician traders had exercised no influence on primval Greece, Greek legend would have contained no references to them.

But even the myth itself, when rightly questioned, may be made to yield some of the facts upon which the conclusions of the historian are based.

We now know fairly well what ideas, usages, and proper names have an Aryan stamp upon them, and what, on the other hand, belong rather to the Semitic world. Now there is a certain portion of Greek mythology which bears but little relationship to the mythology of the kindred Aryan tribes, while it connects itself very closely with the beliefs and practices of the Semitic race. Human sacrifice is very possibly one of these, and it is noticeable that two at least of the legends which speak of human sacrifice--those of Athamas and Busiris--are a.s.sociated, the one with the Phoenicians of Thebes, the other with the Phoenicians of the Egyptian Delta. The whole cycle of myths grouped about the name of Herakles points as clearly to a Semitic source as does the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis; and the extravagant lamentations that accompanied the worship of the Akhan Demeter (Herod. v. 61) come as certainly from the East as the olive, the pomegranate, and the myrtle, the sacred symbols of Athena, of Hera, and of Aphrodite.[24]

Comparative mythology has thus given us a juster appreciation of the historical inferences we may draw from the legends of prehistoric Greece, and has led us back to a recognition of the important part played by the Phoenicians in the heroic age. Greek culture, it is true, was not the mere copy of that of Semitic Asia, as scholars once believed, but the germs of it had come in large measure from an Oriental seed-plot. The conclusions derived from a scientific study of the myths have been confirmed and widened by the recent researches and discoveries of archology. The spade, it has been said, is the modern instrument for reconstructing the history of the past, and in no department in history has the spade been more active of late than in that of Greece. From all sides light has come upon that remote epoch around which the mist of a fabulous antiquity had already been folded in the days of Herodotus; from the islands and sh.o.r.es of the gean, from the tombs of Asia Minor and Palestine, nay, even from the temples and palaces of Egypt and a.s.syria, have the materials been exhumed for sketching in something like clear outline the origin and growth of Greek civilization. From nowhere, however, have more important revelations been derived than from the excavations at Myken and Spata, near Athens, and it is with the evidence furnished by these that I now propose mainly to deal. A personal inspection of the sites and the objects found upon them has convinced me of the groundlessness of the doubts which have been thrown out against their antiquity, as well as of the intercourse and connection to which they testify with the great empires of Babylonia and a.s.syria. Mr. Poole has lately pointed out what materials are furnished by the Egyptian monuments for determining the age and character of the antiquities of Myken.[25] I would now draw attention to the far clearer and more tangible materials afforded by a.s.syrian art and history.

Two facts must first be kept well in view. One of these is the Semitic origin of the Greek alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet, originally derived from the alphabet of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and imported into their mother-country by the Phoenician settlers of the Delta, was brought to Greece, not probably by the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, but by the Aramans of the Gulf of Antioch, whose nouns ended with the same "emphatic aleph" that we seem to find in the Greek names of the letters, _alpha_, _beta_, _gamma_, (_gamla_). Before the introduction of the simpler Phoenician alphabet, the inhabitants of Asia Minor and the neighbouring islands appear to have used a syllabary of some seventy characters, which continued to be employed in conservative Cyprus down to a very late date; but, so far as we know at present, the Greeks of the mainland were unacquainted with writing before the Aramo-Phoenicians had taught them their phonetic symbols. The oldest Greek inscriptions are probably those of Thera, now Santorin, where the Phoenicians had been settled from time immemorial; and as the forms of the characters found in them do not differ very materially from the forms used on the famous Moabite Stone, we may infer that the alphabet of Kadmus was brought to the West at a date not very remote from that of Mesha and Ahab, perhaps about 800 B.C. We may notice that Thera was an island and a Phoenician colony, and it certainly seems more probable that the alphabet was carried to the mainland from the islands of the gean than that it was disseminated from the inland Phoenician settlement at Thebes, as the old legends affirmed.

In any case, the introduction of the alphabet implies a considerable amount of civilizing force on the part of those from whom it was borrowed; the teachers from whom an illiterate people learns the art of writing are generally teachers from whom it has previously learnt the other elements of social culture. A barbarous tribe will use its muscles in the service of art before it will use its brains; the smith and engraver precede the scribe. If, therefore, the Greeks were unacquainted with writing before the ninth century, B.C., objects older than that period may be expected to exhibit clear traces of Phoenician influence, though no traces of writing.

The other fact to which I allude is the existence of pottery of the same material and pattern on all the prehistoric sites of the Greek world, however widely separated they may be. We find it, for instance, at Myken and Tiryns, at Tanagra and Athens, in Rhodes, in Cyprus, and in Thera, while I picked up specimens of it in the neighbourhood of the Treasury of Minyas and on the site of the Acropolis at Orchomenus. The clay of which it is composed is of a drab colour, derived, perhaps in all instances, from the volcanic soil of Thera and Melos, and it is ornamented with geometrical and other patterns in black and maroon-red. After a time the patterns become more complicated and artistic; flowers, animal forms, and eventually human figures, take the place of simple lines, and the pottery gradually pa.s.ses into that known as Corinthian or Phoeniko-Greek. It needs but little experience to distinguish at a glance this early pottery from the red ware of the later h.e.l.lenic period.

Phoenicia, Keft as it was called by the Egyptians, had been brought into relation with the monarchy of the Nile at a remote date, and among the Semitic settlers in the Delta or "Isle of Caphtor" must have been natives of Sidon and the neighbouring towns. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties carried their arms as far as Mesopotamia and placed Egyptian garrisons in Palestine. A tomb-painting of Thothmes III. represents the Kefa or Phoenicians, clad in richly-embroidered kilts and buskins, and bringing their tribute of gold and silver vases and earthenware cups, some in the shape of animals like the vases found at Myken and elsewhere. Phoenicia, it would seem, was already celebrated for its goldsmiths' and potters' work, and the ivory the Kefa are sometimes made to carry shows that their commerce must have extended far to the east. As early as the sixteenth century B.C., therefore, we may conclude that the Phoenicians were a great commercial people, trading between a.s.syria and Egypt and possessed of a considerable amount of artistic skill.

It is not likely that a people of this sort, who, as we know from other sources, carried on a large trade in slaves and purple, would have been still unacquainted with the seas and coasts of Greece where both slaves and the murex or purple-fish were most easily to be obtained. Though the Phoenician alphabet was unknown in Greece till the ninth century B.C., we have every reason to expect to find traces of Phoenician commerce and Phoenician influence there at least five centuries before. And such seems to be the case. The excavations carried on in Thera by MM. Fouqu and Gorceix,[26] in Rhodes by Mr. Newton and Dr. Saltzmann, and in various other places such as Megara, Athens, and Melos, have been followed by the explorations of Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Myken, of General di Cesnola in Cyprus, and of the Archological Society of Athens at Tanagra and Spata.

The acc.u.mulations of prehistoric objects on these sites all tell the same tale, the influence of the East, and more especially of the Phoenicians, upon the growing civilization of early Greece. Thus in Thera, where a sort of Greek Pompeii has been preserved under the lava which once overwhelmed it, we find the rude stone hovels of its primitive inhabitants, with roofs of wild olive, filled with the bones of dogs and sheep, and containing stores of barley, spelt, and chickpea, copper and stone weapons, and abundance of pottery. The latter is for the most part extremely coa.r.s.e, but here and there have been discovered vases of artistic workmanship, which remind us of those carried by the Kefa, and may have been imported from abroad. We know from the tombs found on the island that the Phoenicians afterwards settled in Thera among a population in the same condition of civilization as that which had been overtaken by the great volcanic eruption. It was from these Phoenician settlers that the embroidered dresses known as Theran were brought to Greece; they were adorned with animals and other figures, similar to those seen upon Corinthian or Phoeniko-Greek ware.

Now M. Fr. Lenormant has pointed out that much of the pottery used by the aboriginal inhabitants of Thera is almost identical in form and make with that found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, in the Troad, and he concludes that it must belong to the same period and the same area of civilization.

There is as yet little, if any, trace of Oriental influence; a few of the clay vases from Thera, and some of the gold workmanship at Hissarlik, can alone be referred, with more or less hesitation, to Phoenician artists.

We have not yet reached the age when Phoenician trade in the West ceased to be the sporadic effort of private individuals, and when trading colonies were established in different parts of the Greek world; Europe is still unaffected by Eastern culture, and the beginnings of Greek art are still free from foreign interference. It is only in certain designs on the terra-cotta discs, believed by Dr. Schliemann to be spindle-whorls, that we may possibly detect rude copies of Babylonian and Phoenician intaglios.

Among all the objects discovered at Hissarlik, none have been more discussed than the vases and clay images in which Dr. Schliemann saw a representation of an owl-headed Athena. What Dr. Schliemann took for an owl's head, however, is really a rude attempt to imitate the human face, and two b.r.e.a.s.t.s are frequently moulded in the clay below it. In many examples the human countenance is unmistakable, and in most of the others the representation is less rude than in the case of the small marble statues of Apollo (?) found in the Greek islands, or even of the early h.e.l.lenic vases where the men seem furnished with the beaks of birds. But we now know that these curious vases are not peculiar to the Troad.

Specimens of them have also been met with in Cyprus, and in these we can trace the development of the owl-like head into the more perfect portraiture of the human face.[27] In conservative Cyprus there was not that break with the past which occurred in other portions of the Greek world.

Cyprus, in fact, lay midway between Greece and Phoenicia, and was shared to the last between an Aryan and a Semitic population. The Phoenician element in the island was strong, if not preponderant; Paphos was a chief seat of the worship of the Phoenician Astarte, and the Phoenician Kitium, the Chittim of the Hebrews, took first rank among the Cyprian towns. The antiquities brought to light by General di Cesnola are of all ages and all styles--prehistoric and cla.s.sical, Phoenician and h.e.l.lenic, a.s.syrian and Egyptian--and the various styles are combined together in the catholic spirit that characterized Phoenician art.

But we must pause here for a moment to define more accurately what we mean by Phoenician art. Strictly speaking, Phoenicia had no art of its own; its designs were borrowed from Egypt and a.s.syria, and its artists went to school on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. The Phoenician combined and improved upon his models; the impulse, the origination came from abroad; the modification and elaboration were his own. He entered into other men's labours, and made the most of his heritage. The sphinx of Egypt became Asiatic, and in its new form was transplanted to Nineveh on the one side and to Greece on the other. The rosettes and other patterns of the Babylonian cylinders were introduced into the handiwork of Phoenicia, and so pa.s.sed on to the West, while the hero of the ancient Chaldean epic became first the Tyrian Melkarth, and then the Herakles of h.e.l.las. It is possible, no doubt, that with all this borrowing there was still something that was original in Phoenician work; such at any rate seems to be the case with some of the forms given to the vases; but at present we have no means of determining how far this originality may have extended. In a.s.syria, indeed, Phoenician art exercised a great influence in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.; but it had itself previously drawn its first inspiration from the empire of the Tigris, and did but give back the perfect blossom to those from whom it had received the seed.

The workmanship of the ivories and bronze bowls found at Nineveh by Mr.

Layard is thoroughly Phoenician; but it cannot be separated from that of the purely a.s.syrian pavements and bas-reliefs with which the palaces were adorned. The Phoenician art, in fact, traces of which we find from a.s.syria to Italy, though based on both Egyptian and a.s.syrian models, owed far more to a.s.syria than it did to Egypt. In art, as in mythology and religion, Phoenicia was but a carrier and intermediary between East and West; and just as the Greek legends of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Herakles and his twelve labours, and of the other borrowed heroes of Oriental story came in the first instance from a.s.syria, so did that art and culture which Kadmus the Phoenician handed on to the Greek race.

But a.s.syria itself had been equally an adapter and intermediary. The Semites of a.s.syria and Babylonia had borrowed their culture and civilization from the older Accadian race, with its agglutinative language, which had preceded them in the possession of Chaldea. So slavishly observant were the a.s.syrians of their Chaldean models that in a land where limestone was plentiful they continued to build their palaces and temples of brick, and to ornament them with those columns and pictorial representations which had been first devised on the alluvial plains of Babylonia. To understand a.s.syrian art, and track it back to its source, we must go to the engraved gems and ruined temples of primval Babylonia. It is true that Egypt may have had some influence on a.s.syrian art, at the time when the eighteenth dynasty had pushed its conquests to the banks of the Tigris; but that influence does not seem to have been either deep or permanent. Now the art of a.s.syria is in great measure the art of Phoenicia, and that again the art of prehistoric Greece. Modern research has discovered the prototype of Herakles in the hero of a Chaldean epic composed it may be, four thousand years ago; it has also discovered the beginnings of Greek columnar architecture and the germs of Greek art in the works of the builders and engravers of early Chaldea.

When first I saw, five years ago, the famous sculpture which has guarded the Gate of Lions at Myken for so many centuries, I was at once struck by its a.s.syrian character. The lions in form and att.i.tude belong to a.s.syria, and the pillar against which they rest may be seen in the bas-reliefs brought from Nineveh. Here, at all events, there was clear proof of a.s.syrian influence; the only question was whether that influence had been carried through the hands of the Phoenicians or had travelled along the highroad which ran across Asia Minor, the second channel whereby the culture of a.s.syria could have been brought to Greece. The existence of a similar sculpture over a rock-tomb at k.u.mbet in Phrygia might seem to favour the latter view.

The discoveries of Dr. Schliemann have gone far to settle the question.

The pottery excavated at Myken is of the Phoenician type, and the clay of which is composed has probably come from Thera. The terra-cotta figures of animals and more especially of a G.o.ddess with long robe, crowned head, and crescent-like arms, are spread over the whole area traversed by the Phoenicians. The image of the G.o.ddess in one form or another has been found in Thera and Melos, in Naxos and Paros, in Ios, in Sikinos, and in Anaphos, and M. Lenormant has traced it back to Babylonia and to the Babylonian representation of the G.o.ddess Artemis-Nana.[28] At Tanagra the image has been found under two forms, both, however, made of the same clay and in the same style as the figures from Myken. In one the G.o.ddess is upright, as at Myken, with the _polos_ on her head, and the arms either outspread or folded over the breast; in the other she is sitting with the arms crossed. Now among the gold ornaments exhumed at Myken are some square pendants of gold which represent the G.o.ddess in this sitting posture.[29]

The animal forms most commonly met with are those of the lion, the stag, the bull, the cuttle-fish, and the murex. The last two point unmistakably to a seafaring race, and more especially to those Phoenician sailors whose pursuit of the purple-trade first brought them into Greek seas. So far as I know, neither the polypus nor the murex, nor the b.u.t.terfly which often accompanies them have been found in a.s.syria or Egypt, and we may therefore see in them original designs of Phoenician art. Mr. Newton has pointed out that the cuttle-fish (like the dolphin) also occurs among the prehistoric remains from Ialysos in Rhodes, where, too, pottery of the same shape and material as that of Myken has been found, as well as beads of a curious vitreous substance, and rings in which the back of the chaton is rounded so as to fit the finger. It is clear that the art of Ialysos belongs to the same age and school as the art of Myken; and as a scarab of Amenophis III. has been found in one of the Ialysian tombs, it is possible that the art may be as old as the fifteenth century B.C.

Now Ialysos is not the only Rhodian town which has yielded prehistoric antiquities. Camirus also has been explored by Messrs. Biliotti and Saltzmann; and while objects of the same kind and character as those of Ialysos have been discovered there, other objects have been found by their side which belong to another and more advanced stage of art. There are vases of clay and metal, bronze bowls, and the like, which not only display high finish and skill, but are ornamented with the designs characteristic of Phoenician workmanship at Nineveh and elsewhere. Thus we have zones of trees and animals, attempts at the representation of scenery, and a profusion of ornament, while the influence of Egypt is traceable in the sphinxes and scarabs, which also occur plentifully. Here, therefore, at Camirus, there is plain evidence of a sudden introduction of finished Phoenician art among a people whose art was still rude and backward, although springing from the same germs as the art of Phoenicia itself. Two distinct periods in the history of the gean thus seem to lie unfolded before us; one in which Eastern influence was more or less indirect, content to communicate the seeds of civilization and culture, and to import such objects as a barbarous race would prize; and another in which the East was, as it were, transported into the West, and the development of Greek art was interrupted by the introduction of foreign workmen and foreign beliefs. This second period was the period of Phoenician colonization as distinct from that of mere trading voyages--the period, in fact, when Thebes was made a Phoenician fortress, and the Phoenician alphabet diffused throughout the Greek world. It is only in relics of the later part of this period that we can look for inscriptions and traces of writing, at least in Greece proper; in the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, the Cypriote syllabary seems to have been in use, to be superseded afterwards by the simpler alphabet of Kadmus. For reasons presently to be stated, I would distinguish the first period by the name of Phrygian.

Throughout the whole of it, however, the Phoenician trading ships must have formed the chief medium of intercourse between Asia and Europe. Proof of this has been furnished by the rock tombs of Spata, which have been lighted on opportunely to ill.u.s.trate and explain the discoveries at Myken. Spata is about nine miles from Athens, on the north-west spur of Hymettos, and the two tombs. .h.i.therto opened are cut in the soft sandstone rock of a small conical hill. Both are approached by long tunnel-like entrances, and one of them contains three chambers, leading one into the other, and each fashioned after the model of a house. No one who has seen the objects unearthed at Spata can doubt for a moment their close connection with the Mykenan antiquities. The very moulds found at Myken fit the ornaments from Spata, and might easily have been used in the manufacture of them. It is more especially with the contents of the sixth tomb, discovered by Mr. Stamatki in the _enceinte_ at Myken after Dr.

Schliemann's departure, that the Spata remains agree so remarkably. But there is a strong resemblance between them and the Mykenan antiquities generally, in both material, patterns, and character. The cuttle-fish and the murex appear in both; the same curious spiral designs, and ornaments in the shape of sh.e.l.ls or rudely-formed oxheads; the same geometrical patterns; the same cla.s.s of carved work. An ivory in which a lion, of the a.s.syrian type, is depicted as devouring a stag, is but a reproduction of a similar design met with among the objects from Myken, and it is interesting to observe that the same device, in the same style of art, may be also seen on a Phoenician gem from Sardinia.[30] Of still higher interest are other ivories, which, like the antiquities of Camirus, belong rather to the second than to the first period of Phoenician influence.

One of these represents a column, which, like that above the Gate of Lions, carries us back to the architecture of Babylonia, while others exhibit the Egyptian sphinx, as modified by Phoenician artists. Thus the handle of a comb is divided into two compartments--the lower occupied by three of these sphinxes, the upper by two others, which have their eyes fixed on an a.s.syrian rosette in the middle. Similar sphinxes are engraved on a silver cup lately discovered at Palestrina, bearing the Phoenician inscription, in Phoenician letters, "Eshmun-ya'ar, son of Ashta'."[31]

Another ivory has been carved into the form of a human side face, surmounted by a tiara of four plaits. On the one hand the arrangement of the hair of the face, the whisker and beard forming a fringe round it, and the two lips being closely shorn, reminds us of what we find at Palestrina; on the other hand, the head-dress is that of the figures on the sculptured rocks of Asia Minor, and of the Hitt.i.te princes of Carchemish. In spite of this Phoenician colouring, however, the treasures of Spata belong to the earlier part of the Phoenician period, if not to that which I have called Phrygian: there is as yet no sign of writing, no trace of the use of iron. But we seem to be approaching the close of the bronze age in Greece--to have reached the time when the lions were sculptured over the chief gateway of Myken, and the so-called treasuries were erected in honour of the dead.

Can any date be a.s.signed, even approximately, to those two periods of Phoenician influence in Greece? Can we localize the era, so to speak, of the antiquities discovered at Myken, or fix the epoch at which its kings ceased to build its long-enduring monuments, and its glory was taken from it? I think an answer to these questions may be found in a series of engraved gold rings and prisms found upon its site--the prisms having probably once served to ornament the neck. In these we can trace a gradual development of art; which in time becomes less Oriental and more Greek, and acquires a certain facility in the representation of the human form.

Let us first fix our attention on an engraved gold chaton found, not in the tombs, but outside the _enceinte_ among the ruins, as it would seem, of a house.[32] On this we have a rude representation of a figure seated under a palm-tree, with another figure behind and three more in front, the foremost being of small size, the remaining two considerably taller and in flounced dresses. Above are the symbols of the sun and crescent-moon, and at the side a row of lions' heads. Now no one who has seen this chaton, and also had any acquaintance with the engraved gems of the archaic period of Babylonian art, can avoid being struck by the fact that the intaglio is a copy of one of the latter. The characteristic workmanship of the Babylonian gems is imitated by punches made in the gold which give the design a very curious effect. The att.i.tude of the figures is that common on the Chaldean cylinders; the owner stands in front of the deity, of diminutive size, and in the act of adoration, while the priests are placed behind him. The latter wear the flounced dresses peculiar to the early Babylonian priests; and what has been supposed to represent female b.r.e.a.s.t.s, is really a copy of the way in which the breast of a man is frequently portrayed on the cylinders.[33] The palm-tree, with its single fruit hanging on the left side, is characteristically Babylonian; so also are the symbols that encircle the engraving, the sun and moon and lions'

heads. The chaton of another gold ring, found on the same spot, is covered with similar animal heads. This, again, is a copy of early Babylonian art, in which such designs were not unfrequent, though, as they were afterwards imitated by both a.s.syrian and Cyprian engravers, too much stress must not be laid on the agreement.[34] The artistic position and age of the other ring, however, admits of little doubt. The archaic period of Babylonian art may be said to close with the rise of a.s.syria in the fourteenth century B.C.; and though archaic Babylonian intaglios continued to be imported into the West down to the time of the Romans, it is not likely that they were imitated by Western artists after the latter had become acquainted with better and more attractive models. I think, therefore, that the two rings may be a.s.signed to the period of archaic Babylonian power in western Asia, a period that begins with the victories of Naram-Sin in Palestine in the seventeenth century B.C. or earlier, and ends with the conquest of Babylon by the a.s.syrians and the establishment of a.s.syrian supremacy. This is also the period to which I am inclined to refer the introduction among the Phoenicians and Greeks of the column and of certain geometrical patterns, which had their first home in Babylonia.[35] The lentoid gems with their rude intaglios, found in the islands, on the site of Herum, in the tombs of Myken and elsewhere, belong to the same age, and point back to the loamy plain of Babylonia where stone was rare and precious, and whence, consequently, the art of gem-cutting was spread through the ancient world. We can thus understand the existence of artistic designs and other evidences of civilizing influence among a people who were not yet acquainted with the use of iron.