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 to the set of chambers which it covers.678 The monument is a simple one. A square monolith, crowned by a strong cornice, stands upon a base consisting of two steps. Above the cornice is another monolith, the lower part squared and the upper shaped into a pyramid. The upper part of the pyramid has crumbled away, but enough remains to show the angle of the slope, and to indicate for the original erection a height of about twenty feet. At the distance of about ten yards from the base of the monument is a second erection, consisting of two tiers of large stones, which roof in the entrance to a flight of eighteen steps. These steps lead downwards to a sloping passage, in which are sepulchral niches, and thence into two chambers, the inner one of which is almost directly under the main monument. Probably, a block of stone, movable but removed with difficulty, originally closed the entrance at the point where the steps begin. This stone ordinarily prevented ingress, but when a fresh corpse was to be admitted, or funeral ceremonies were to be performed in one of the chambers, it could be “rolled"679 or dragged away.

Phoenician architects were, as a general rule, exceedingly sparing in the use of ornament. Neither the pillar, nor the arch, much less the vault, was a feature in their principal buildings, which affected straight lines, right-angles, and a massive construction, based upon the Egyptian. The pillar came ultimately to be adopted, to a certain extent, from the Greeks; but only the simplest forms, the Doric and Ionic, were in use, if we except certain barbarous types which the people invented for themselves. The true arch was scarcely known in Phoenicia, at any rate till Roman times, though false arches were not infrequent in the gateways of towns and the doors of houses.680 The external ornamentation of buildings was chiefly by cornices of various kinds, by basement mouldings, by carvings about doorways,681 by hemispherical or pyramidical roofs, and by the use of bevelled stones in the walls. The employment of animal forms in external decoration was exceedingly rare; and the half lions of the circular Méghâzil of Amrith are almost unique.

In internal ornamentation there was greater variety. Pavements were sometimes of mosaic, and glowed with various colours;682 sometimes they were of alabaster slabs elaborately patterned. Alabaster slabs also, it is probable, adorned the walls of temples and houses, excepting where woodwork was employed, as in the Temple of Solomon. There is much richness and beauty in many of the slabs now in the Phoenician collection of the Louvre,683 especially in those which exhibit the forms of sphinxes or griffins. Many of the patterns most affected are markedly Assyrian in character, as the rosette, the palm-head, the intertwined ribbons, and the rows of gradines which occur so frequently. Even the Sphinxes are rather Assyrian than Egyptian in character; and exhibit the recurved wings, which are never found in the valley of the Nile. In almost all the forms employed there is a modification of the original type, sufficient to show that the Phoenician artist did not care merely to reproduce.

On the whole the architecture must be pronounced wanting in originality and in a refined taste. What M. Renan says of Phoenician art in general684 is especially true of Phoenician architecture. “Phoenician art, which issued, as it would seem, originally from mere troglodytism, was, from the time when it arrived at the need of ornament, essentially an art of imitation. That art was, above all, industrial; that art never raised itself for its great public monuments to a style that was at once elegant and durable. The origin of Phoenician architecture was the excavated rock, not the column, as was the case with the Greeks. The wall replaced the excavated rock after a time, but without wholly losing its character. There is nothing that leads us to believe that the Phoenicians knew how to construct a keyed vault. The monolithic principle which dominated the Phoenician and Syrian art, even after it had taken Greek art for its model, is the exact contrary of the Hellenic style. Greek architecture starts from the principle of employing small stones, and proclaims the principal loudly. At no time did the Greeks extract from Pentelicus blocks at all comparable for size with those of Baalbek or of Egypt; they saw no use in doing so; on the contrary, with masses of such enormity, which it is desired to use in their entirety, the architect is himself dominated; the material, instead of being subordinate to the design of the edifice, runs counter to the design and contradicts it. The monuments on the Acropolis of Athens would be impossible with blocks of the size usual in Syria."685 Thus there is always something heavy, rude, and coarse in the Phoenician buildings, which betray their troglodyte origin by an over-massive and unfinished appearance.

      There is also a want of originality, more especially in the ornamentation. Egypt, Assyria, and Greece have furnished the “motives” which lie at the root of almost all the decorative art that is to be met with, either in the mother country or in the colonies. Winged disks, uræi, scarabs, sphinxes, have been adopted from Egypt; Assyria has furnished gradines, lotus blossoms, rosettes, the palm-tree ornament, the ribbon ornament, and the form of the lion; Greece has supplied pillars, pediments, festoons, and chimæras. Native talent has contributed little or nothing to the ornamentation of buildings, if we except the modification of the types which have been derived from foreign sources.

Finally, there is a want of combination and general plan in the Phoenician constructions where they fall into groups. “This is sensibly felt,” according to M. Renan, “at Amrith, at Kabr-Hiram, and at Um-el-Awamid. In the remains still visible in these localities there are many fine ideas, many beautiful details; but they do not fall under any general dominant plan, as do the buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. One seems to see a set of people who are fond of working in stone for its own sake, but who do not care to arrive at a mutual understanding in order to produce in common a single work, since they do not know that it is the conception of a grand whole which constitutes greatness in art. Hence the incompleteness of the monuments; there is not a tomb to which the relations of the deceased have deemed it fitting to give the finishing touches; there is everywhere a certain egotism, like that which in later times prevented the Mussulman monuments from enduring. A passing pleasure in art does not induce men to finish, since finishing requires a certain stiffness of will. In general, the ancient Phoenicians appear to have had the spirit of sculptors rather than of architects. They did not construct in great masses, but every one laboured on his own account. Hence there was no exact measurement, and no symmetry. Even the capitals of the columns at Um-el-Awamid are not alike; in the portions which most evidently correspond the details are different."686

      Chapter VII—Æsthetic Art

       Table of Contents

      Recent discoveries of Phoenician artistic remains— Phoenician sculpture—Statues and busts—Animal forms—Bas- reliefs—Hercules and Geryon—Scenes on sarcophagi— Phoenicians metal castings—Jachin and Boaz—Solomon’s “Molten Sea”—Solomon’s lavers—Statuettes in bronze— Embossed work upon cups and pateræ—Cup of Præneste— Intaglios on cylinders and gems—Phoenician painting—Tinted statues—Paintings on terra-cotta and clay.

      Phoenician æsthetic art embraced sculpture, metal-casting, intaglio, and painting to a small extent. Situated as the Phoenicians were, in the immediate neighbourhood of nations which had practised from a remote antiquity the imitation of natural forms, and brought into contact by their commercial transactions with others, with whom art of every kind was in the highest esteem—adroit moreover with their hands, clever, active, and above all else practical—it was scarcely possible that they should not, at an early period in their existence as a nation, interest themselves in what they found so widely appreciated, and become themselves ambitious of producing such works as they saw everywhere СКАЧАТЬ