Fig. 235—Handle of a bronze crater. (New York Museum.)
The treasury of Curium furnished Cesnola with a large number of these pateræ in silver or electrum, on which appeared engraved subjects of the same inspiration and the same style: figures with four wings, struggling with a lion; Astarte with her hand upon her breast, beside hideous patæci, Isis-Hathor, Egyptian sphinxes and sparrow-hawks; hunts, battles, religious sacrifices. Everywhere on these monuments, which, as the Homeric poems show us, were so greatly sought for by the Greeks of the heroic age, and imported by Sidonian merchants, we find copies of the usual designs on the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, an unconscious mixture of hybrid scenes, which have nothing original except this quaint amalgam itself, even more striking here than in the other manifestations of Phœnician and Cypriote art. If we had a larger number of these curious dishes, we should find, no doubt, that the motives are little varied, often repeated, even in subjects as interesting as the Hunting Day, and that the effort of imagination here made by the Phœnician artist has been little inventive. Fortunately for the reputation of Phœnician and Cypriote goldsmiths, other monuments show that their metallurgy was not limited to these interesting pateræ. Thus, for instance, Cesnola brought from his excavations in Cyprus a fragment of a large bronze crater, the handles of which are decorated in the most original fashion. We here find lions standing on their hind legs holding œnochoæ, and clothed in fishes’ scales, like the god Anu in Assyro-Chaldæan symbolism.
Fig. 236.—Phœnician gold ornament.
In Cypriote furniture and ornaments we observe the same characteristics of a hybrid art. There are little silver vases chiselled in the Assyrian style with rare elegance, handles of sceptres, and other precious utensils like those of Nineveh. Certain ornaments, intended for women’s head-dresses, are of exquisite workmanship; so are the ear-rings, the necklaces of gold, gems and glass; with figures of lions, rams, deer, masks with curled beards in the Assyrian fashion, heads of Isis-Hathor and lotus-flowers. Some of these necklaces and bracelets end in lions’ or serpents’ heads, and form models which Greek artists needed only to copy, for they are masterpieces in their kind. We have seen that the Ninevite excavations brought to light ivory tablets carved by Phœnician artists, and imported into Mesopotamia by commerce: plaques of the same style have been obtained from Phœnicia itself: they were ornaments of precious caskets. These products of Phœnician industry were imported into all the coasts of the Mediterranean; and, at Palestrina, in Latium, an ivory tablet was found, on which a vessel manned by rowers is engraved, similar to those in the Egyptian paintings. Ostrich-eggs, found in Etruria, arranged to serve as vases, are adorned with engraved figures, the Phœnician character of which could scarcely be disputed: there are zones of warriors on foot, on horseback, and in their war-chariots; files of animals, fights of lions with bulls in semi-Egyptian style; the frame of these scenes is borrowed from Assyria; the whole is relieved by iridescent colours.[100]