The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

A few days after my visit to Carteia, I was looking over some coins which a gentleman at Gibraltar had collected, and was astounded to come upon one which is not copied, but which is represented in the accompanying wood-cut.[124] This told the whole story of the glass-houses and the tin. I wonder if the coin was censured as indiscreet at Tyre. How is it that by putting the hand in this fashion to the nose the fancy should be tickled? Whence did the custom come? how did it travel to Britain? One is not prepared to have to search for such a gesture in the Hebrew Talmudists, or the Greek scholiasts; but here it is raised to numismatic dignity, and is worthy of the philosopher.

There is a ludicrously supercilious animal, very strong and very stupid, with a horn on his nose, belonging to Africa, the Holy Land, Mesopotamia—in fact, all the Phœnician countries. He was the Behemoth, for of no other animal could Job be thinking when he said, “With his nose he pierceth through snares”—the horn, emblem of victorious strength, denoting by its exaltation its own achievements, and the proud bearing of the brow on which it is planted. Each year gives to it increase, and each increase is marked by a wrinkle which comes to signify acquirement. There are false acquirements as there are true; and the horn of the nose is the burlesque of the horn of the forehead. The motion that is given to the hand shows that it is the spiral wreathings of a horn that are imitated: the rhinoceros represents the one, the unicorn the other.

Of the two images, the African has preserved the grave one, we the grotesque. The Abyssinian warrior, when he has gained a victory, adorns his forehead with a horn. The London coalheaver, when he has made a hit, puts his thumb to his nose.

This gesture in its grotesque form was known not long ago in Spain, although at present it appears to have died out. Cervantes unmistakably describes it, and in the person of Sancho Panza; the English have therefore the sole honour and distinction of preserving this peculiarity of the Phœnicians and Etruscans.[125]

I might be inclined to place beside this, the groups of lions and unicorns at Persepolis, which so closely resemble the supporters of the English arms, as scarcely to be referable to coincidence. They are, indeed, of recent adoption as the arms of England, but of ancient date in those of Scotland. The emblematic plants of England were, however, those of Phœnicia—the oak and the ivy; and the rose of England is still the flower of Spain. The blood-red hand of Ulster is in Morocco stuck above every door. It wants not so much to raise the thought, or justify the association. Instinctively one seeks for some sympathetic deed, which shall link us to the Phœnicians; and Spain lies between, and is bound therewith: she too at length prides herself on her Moorish blood, and exalts herself (or at least did so till we robbed her fortress) on her British friendship recorded in the proverb:—

Guerra con toda la tierra,
Pero par con Ynglaterra.

The extinction of written records has given importance in these countries to every trifling usage or tradition, as will be best felt by reviewing the catalogue of mischances which have befallen the literature of Africa, and of the great people, who in the West have given to it its celebrity.

Alexander destroyed the libraries of Tyre: those of Sidon perished in the flames with their wealth and themselves. The whole mass of the literature of Carthage was destroyed by the Romans, except a small portion given to Massinissa.

The Alexandrian library was burnt by the troops of Julius Cæsar. The various collections made at Rome by Asinius Pollio, Augustus, and Tiberius, were lost in the fires under Nero and Titus. Domitian endeavoured to repair the disaster by getting the manuscripts of private collections copied, and ransacking Africa for the lost works: these were deposited in the Temple of Peace, and destroyed by fire under Commodus.

Finally, the gleanings of Rome were carried off by Genseric and lost at sea. The persecution of the Donatists led to the burning, all over Africa, of books and manuscripts. The Mussulman conquests led to fresh burnings, and the great African collections of Alexandria again perished under Omar.