My next and last illustration is taken from the relics of Troy, recently brought to light by Dr. Schliemann.[12] In the valuable work lately published by him he gives illustrations of a number of earthenware vases and other objects, called by him idols, having on them the representation of what he conceives to be the face of an owl, and which he believes to represent Athena, the tutelary goddess of Troy, called by Homer ‘Glaukopis Athene’, which signifies, according to him, ‘with the face of an owl.’ Professor Max Müller has given his opinion that the word ‘glaukopis’ cannot possibly be taken to mean owl-faced, but can only mean large- or bright-eyed. On this point I will venture no opinion, but accepting Professor Müller’s high authority for the usually received interpretation of it being correct, I shall in no way weaken the evidence in favour of Dr. Schliemann’s discovery of the true site of Troy if I succeed in proving that, according to the true principle of realistic degeneration, this figure does not represent an owl but a human face.
Plate V.
REALISTIC DEGENERATION.
ILLUSTRATED BY REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HUMAN FACE, FOUND BY DR. SCHLIEMANN AT TROY.
[The numerals in brackets give—(1) the number of the figure in Schliemann’s Troy and its Remains, (2) the depth at which the figure was found, in metres.]
The figures on Plate V are all taken from Dr. Schliemann’s representations, and as the depth of each is given it will be seen that the different varieties of face occur in all the different strata excavated by him except the highest, and therefore no argument as to antiquity can be based upon the depth at which they were found. The two first figures, it will be seen, are clearly intended to represent a human face, all the features being preserved. In the two next figures (3, 4) the mouth has disappeared, but the fact of the principal feature being still a nose and not a beak, is shown by the breadth of the base and also by the representation of the breasts. In the two succeeding figures (5, 6) the nose is narrowed at the base, which gives it the appearance of a beak, but the fact of its being still a human form is still shown by the breasts. Had the idea of an owl been developed through realistic degeneration in these last figures, it would have retained this form, but in the two succeeding figures (7, 8) it will be seen that the nose goes on diminishing.
In the remaining figures, some of which are (12-16) of solid stone, not earthenware, and are believed by Dr. Schliemann to be gods, it is clearly shown by the rude scratches representing the eyebrows, and their want of symmetry, that this degeneration of form is the result of haste.
What then are these solid stone objects? I cannot for a moment doubt, from their resemblance to the vases, from the marks denoting the junction of the cover with the vase, and from the representations of handles, that they are votive urns of some kind, similar to those Egyptian stone models of urns represented in the two figures above. Urns of this kind were used by the Egyptians to contain the viscera of the mummies; but with the cheaper form of burial, in which the viscera were retained in the body, stone models of urns, of which these figures are drawings from originals in the British Museum, were deposited in the graves as vestiges of the earlier and more expensive process; these objects therefore cannot be idols, but votive urns. The fact of human remains having been found in some of the human-headed urns, and the hasty scratches on the stone models, show that they are merely models appertaining to the conventionalized survival of some earlier or more elaborate system of urn burial.
We see from these facts that both growth and decay, the two component elements of evolution, are represented in the study of the material arts.