The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson

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СКАЧАТЬ in the middle of his shield. He probably represents a Persian, and appears to have received a wound from his antagonist, which is causing him to sink to the ground. This gem was found at Curium in Cyprus by General Di Cesnola.

Another, found at the same place, exhibits a warrior, or a hunter, going forth to battle or to the chase in his chariot.7112 A large quiver full of arrows is slung at each side of his car. The warrior and his horse (one only is seen) are rudely drawn, but the chariot is very distinctly made out, and has a wheel of an Assyrian type. The Salaminians of Cyprus were famous for their war chariots,7113 of which this may be a representation.

The island of Sardinia has furnished a prodigious number of Phoenician seals. A single private collection contains as many as six hundred.7114 They are mostly scarabs, and the type of them is mostly Egyptian. Sometimes they bear the forms of Egyptian gods, as Horus, or Thoth, or Anubis;7115 sometimes cartouches with the names of kings as Menkara, Thothmes III., Amenophis III., Seti I., &c.;7116 sometimes mere sacred emblems, as the winged uræus, the disk between two uræi,7117 and the like. Occasionally there is the representation of a scene with which the Egyptian bas-reliefs have made us familiar:7118 a warrior has caught hold of his vanquished and kneeling enemy by a lock of his hair, and threatens him with an axe or mace, which he brandishes above his head. Or a lion takes the place of the captive man, and is menaced in the same way. Human figures struggling with lions, and lions killing wild bulls, are also common;7119 but the type in these cases is less Egyptian than Oriental.

Phoenician painting was not, like Egyptian, displayed upon the walls of temples, nor was it, like Greek, the production of actual pictures for the decoration of houses. It was employed to a certain extent on statues, not so as to cover the entire figure, but with delicacy and discretion, for the marking out of certain details, and the emphasising of certain parts of the design.7120 The hair and beard were often painted a brownish red; the pupil of the eye was marked by means of colour; and robes had often a border of red or blue. Statuettes were tinted more generally, whole vestments being sometimes coloured red or green,7121 and a gay effect being produced, which is said to be agreeable and harmonious.7122 But the nearest approach to painting proper which was made by the Phoenicians was upon their vessels in clay, in terra-cotta, and in alabaster. Here, though, the ornamentation was sometimes merely by patterns or bands,7123 there were occasionally real attempts to depict animal and human forms, which, if not very successful, still possess considerable interest. The noble amphora from Curium, figured by Di Cesnola,7124 contains above forty representations of horses, and nearly as many of birds. The shape of the horse is exceedingly conventional, the whole form being attenuated in the highest degree; but the animal is drawn with spirit, and the departure from nature is clearly intentional. In the animals that are pasturing, the general attitude is well seized; the movement is exactly that of the horse when he stretches his neck to reach and crop the grass.7125 In the birds there is equal spirit and greater truth to nature: they are in various attitudes, preening their feathers, pecking the ground, standing with head erect in the usual way. Other vases contain figures of cows, goats, stags, fish and birds of various kinds, while one has an attempt at a hippopotamus. The attempts to represent the human form are certainly not happy; they remind us of the more ambitious efforts of Chinese and Japanese art.

Chapter VIII—Industrial Art and Manufactures

       Table of Contents

      Phoenician textile fabrics, embroidered or dyed—Account of the chief Phoenician dye—Mollusks from which the purple was obtained—Mode of obtaining them—Mode of procuring the dye from them—Process of dyeing—Variety of the tints— Manufacture of glass—Story of its invention—Three kinds of Phoenician glass—1. Transparent colourless glass—2. Semi- transparent coloured glass—3. Opaque glass, much like porcelain—Description of objects in glass—Methods pursued in the manufacture—Phoenician ceramic art—Earliest specimens—Vases with geometrical designs—Incised patterning—Later efforts—Use of enamel—Great amphora of Curium—Phoenician ceramic art disappointing—Ordinary metallurgy—Implements—Weapons—Toilet articles—Lamp- stands and tripods—Works in iron and lead.

Phoenicia was celebrated from a remote antiquity for the manufacture of textile fabrics. The materials which she employed for them were wool, linen yarn, perhaps cotton, and, in the later period of her commercial prosperity, silk. The “white wool” of Syria was supplied to her in abundance by the merchants of Damascus,81 and wool of lambs, rams, and goats seems also to have been furnished by the more distant parts of Arabia.82 Linen yarn may have been imported from Egypt, where it was largely manufactured, and was of excellent quality;83 while raw silk is said to have been “brought to Tyre and Berytus by the Persian merchants, and there both dyed and woven into cloaks."84 The price of silk was very high, and it was customary in Phoenicia to intermix the precious material either with linen or with cotton;85 as is still done to a certain extent in modern times. It is perhaps doubtful whether, so far as the mere fabric of stuffs was concerned, the products of the Phoenician looms were at all superior to those which Egypt and Babylonia furnished, much less to those which came from India, and passed under the name of Sindones. Two things gave to the Phoenician stuffs that high reputation which caused them to be more sought for than any others; and these were, first, the brilliancy and beauty of their colours, and, secondly, the delicacy with which they were in many instances embroidered. We have not much trace of Phoenician embroidery on the representations of dresses that have come down to us; but the testimony of the ancients is unimpeachable,86 and we may regard it as certain that the art of embroidery, known at a very early date to the Hebrews,87 was cultivated with great success by their Phoenician neighbours, and under their auspices reached a high point of perfection. The character of the decoration is to be gathered from the extant statues and bas-reliefs, from the representations on pateræ, on cups, dishes, and gems. There was a tendency to divide the surface to be ornamented into parallel stripes or bands, and to repeat along the line a single object, or two alternately. Rosettes, monsters of various kinds, winged globes with uræi, scarabs, sacred trees, and garlands or blossoms of the lotus were the ordinary “motives."88 Occasionally human figures might be introduced, and animal forms even more frequently; but a stiff conventionalism prevailed, the same figures were constantly repeated, and the figures themselves had in few cases much beauty.

The brilliancy and beauty of the Phoenician coloured stuffs resulted from the excellency of their dyes. Here we touch a second branch of their industrial skill, for the principal dyes used were originally СКАЧАТЬ