[432]. Ohnefalsch-Richter, ‘Cypern, die Bibel, und Homer,’ Das Ausland, Nos. 28, 29, 1891.
Cyanus is, then, in the Iliad employed exclusively as an adjunct to the metallic inlaying of armour, and it is made similarly available in the Hesiodic poems. But in the Odyssey its sole actual use is in a frieze surmounting the bronze-clad walls of the Phæacian banqueting-hall. Hence many futile debates and perplexities. The Homeric ‘cyanus,’ most critics asserted, could not, since it was uniformly described as black, be a mineral of cærulean hue, such as the cyanus of Theophrastus unquestionably was; and it must be presumed to have been a metal, as obtaining a place among metals in the decorative industry of the time. It was hence variously held to be steel, bronze, even lead, while Mr. Gladstone at one time thought of native blue carbonate of copper,[[433]] later, however, preferring bronze. Lepsius alone recognised what is now generally admitted to be the truth—namely, that the word retained its significance unchanged from the time of Agamemnon to the time of Theophrastus.
[433]. Studies in Homer, vol. iii. p. 496.
The Assyrians fabricated out of lapis lazuli, not only personal, but architectural ornaments. Bactria was its sole available source, and thence through the Mesopotamian channel it reached Egypt. Among the Babylonian spoils of Thothmes III. were a necklace of ‘true’ chesbet, and a gold staff jewelled with the same beautiful mineral. Artificial chesbet was manufactured in Egypt from about the fourteenth century B.C. It was composed of a kind of glassy paste, tinted blue with salts of copper or cobalt, and it lay piled, like bricks for building, in the storehouses of successive monarchs.[[434]] Clay-bricks, too, were enamelled with it for use in decorative constructions, still exemplified in the entrance to a chamber in the Sakkarah pyramid; and the same fashion prevailed in Chaldea and Assyria.[[435]] The Egyptian admiration for chesbet spread to the Peloponnesus, where an architectural function was assigned to it agreeing most curiously with the Odyssean use of cyanus. The spade has, on this point, surpassed itself as an engine of research; nothing is left to speculation; we seem to find at Tiryns the very arrangement which caught the quick eye of the eminent castaway in Phæacia. For in the palace[[436]] explored by Dr. Schliemann within the citadel of Perseus, fragments of an alabaster frieze, inlaid with dark blue smalt, were found strewn over the floor of a vestibule, having fallen from their place on its walls; and the smalt appears to be of precisely the same nature with the manufactured chesbet of Thothmes III., and the Cyprian and Egyptian cyanus described by Theophrastus.[[437]] That it was also identical with the substance turned to just the same architectural account in the palace of Alcinous, may be taken as certain; and the discovery constitutes one of the most telling verifications of Homeric archæology. The particular prominence of cyanus, besides, in the Cyprian armour of Agamemnon falls in admirably with what is known of the history of imitation lapis lazuli; Cyprus, owing to the abundant presence of the needful ores of copper, having become early celebrated for its production. In addition to some tubes of cobalt-glass, blue smalt trinkets in large quantities have been brought to light at Mycenæ. But if Homer took no notice of such small objects, it was probably because he deemed them too common for association with the noble or divine heroines of his song.
[434]. Lepsius, Les Métaux, &c. p. 61.
[435]. Helbig, Das Homerische Epos, p. 81.
[436]. Schuchhardt, op. cit. p. 117.
[437]. De Lapidibus, lv. The Scythian kind of cyanus was genuine lapis lazuli.
That the Homeric cyanus was really a kind of ultramarine enamel, seems, then, thoroughly established. And it is the only form of glass recognised in the poems. Yet the colour-difficulty survives. Our poet remains under the imputation of inability to distinguish black from blue—unless, indeed, we admit with Helbig that the word ‘cyanus’ comprised a jetty as well as an azure smalt. There is a good deal to be said for the opinion. Theophrastus plainly distinguishes a dark and a light variety, and even speaks of one of the derived pigments as being black; and a black enamel formed part of the materials for the Mycenæan inlaid-work. The stripes of Agamemnon’s cuirass were, according to this hypothesis, of black, the curling snakes on either side of blue cyanus. And this might help to explain the comparison of the latter to rainbows. Not, to be sure, altogether satisfactorily, since the likening to a simply blue object of the brilliant arch
Mille trahens varios adverso sole colores,