Fig. 229.—Terra-cotta mask from Carthage. (Cabinet des Médailles.)
The terra-cottas found at Tharras and at Sulci in Sardinia, present the same types and the same hybrid character as those of all Phœnician countries. Even the Chaldæan goddess has been observed among them, nude, in full face, holding her hands to her breast, and sometimes disguised in an Egyptian head-dress; figures of Pygmies, and of Astarte sitting on a throne, holding a pigeon or a lunar disk, have also been found.
Thus, from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, wherever the Phœnicians established their factories, they carried with them their hybrid art, in which the fusion of the elements is not sufficiently marked to prevent those that are borrowed from being recognised. The dissection and analysis of each of the products of Phœnician art, both in the terra-cottas and in sculpture, enable us to restore to Assyria, Egypt, and Greece what belongs to each of them; this work done, nothing is left which is the property of the Phœnicians except the execution.
§ VII. Phœnician Glass.
According to Pliny’s testimony the invention of glass has long been attributed to the Phœnicians. The following is a translation of his account: “In that part of Syria which is called Phœnicia, and which lies next to Judæa, a marsh named Cendevia exists at the foot of Mount Carmel. It is regarded as the source of the river Belus (Nahr-Halu), which, after a course of five miles, falls into the Mediterranean not far from the colony of Ptolemais. The waters of this river flow slowly; they are deep, muddy and unhealthy, but religious rites have made them sacred. The Belus only deposits sand at its mouth; and this sand, formerly unfit for any use, becomes white and pure as soon as the waves of the sea have rolled and washed it. The bank measures at the most five hundred paces, and yet for many centuries this small space has sufficed for the manufacture of glass. It is related that nitre-merchants, alighting on this shore, were about to prepare their meal, when they perceived that there were no stones to support the pots. They ran in all directions without finding any, and then in despair they took the blocks of nitre with which the vessels were laden and made an impromptu furnace. But scarcely was the fire lighted, when the salt melting mixed with the sand, and streams of a transparent liquid, unknown till then, were seen to flow. Such was the origin of glass.”[96]
It is easy enough to recognise the kernel of historical truth contained in the fable echoed by Pliny. The Phœnician merchants having lighted their fire by chance in the cavity of a rock which concentrated the heat, obtained a commencement of vitrification of nitric salt: in this no doubt the invention of the Phœnicians consisted. They had discovered white transparent glass, while before them the Egyptians and the Assyrians only knew an opaque glass produced by the combustion of certain plants.
Opaque glass, or rather glass paste, seems to be of Egyptian origin. The vitreous substance serves as a varnish to terra-cotta from the time of the first dynasty, and it is found thus employed on the posts of the sepulchral door of the step-pyramid at Sakkara. In later times it is applied as a glaze to scarabæi, sepulchral figurines, and paintings. Soon it was perceived that this material had consistency enough to be used by itself: “From that time,” says M. Frœhner, “the manufacture of what we call glass-ware, that is to say, of small ornaments, beads, armlets, and figurines of opaque glass, isochrome, or of several colours, was invented; it did not stop here, and commerce spread its products everywhere.”[97] The invention of glass-blowing soon followed: the oldest coloured glass vase known bears the name of Thothmes III. (Eighteenth Dynasty). White glass appears in Egypt much later; bottles of transparent glass, preserved at the British Museum, are of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.