May we take it that these inscriptions afford a key to the mystery? that they prove the vases upon which they occur at least to have been made in Phœnicia? We could only answer such a question in the affirmative if peculiarities of writing and language belonging only to Phœnicia properly speaking were to be recognized on them; but the texts are too short to enable us to decide to which of the Semitic idioms they should be referred, while the forms of the letters do not differ from those on some of the intaglios (Figs. 156 and 157) and earthenware vases (Fig. 183), and upon the series of weights bearing the name of Sennacherib.[418] The characters belong to that ancient Aramæan form of writing which seems to have been practised in Mesopotamia in very early times as a cursive and popular alphabet.
The inscriptions, then, do little to help us out of our embarrassment, and we are obliged to turn to the style of the vessels and their decoration for a solution to our doubts. The conviction at which we soon arrive after a careful study of their peculiarities is that even those on which Egyptian motives are most numerous and most frankly employed were not made in Egypt. In the first place we remember that the Egyptians do not seem to have made any extensive use of such platters; their libations were poured from vases of a different shape, and the cups sometimes shown in the hands of a Pharaoh always have a foot.[419] Moreover, in the paintings and bas-reliefs of Egypt, where so many cups and vases of every kind are figured, and especially the rich golden vessel that must have occupied such an important place in the royal treasure, we only find the shape in question in a few rare instances.[420]
After this general statement we may go into the details. In these the hand of the imitator is everywhere visible; he borrows motives and adapts them to his own habits and tastes. Take as an example the platter to which a double frieze of hieroglyphs gives a peculiarly Egyptian physiognomy (Fig. 215). An Egyptian artist would never employ hieroglyphs in such a position without giving them some real significance, such as the name of a king or deity. Here, on the other hand, an Egyptologist has only to glance at the cartouches to see that their hieroglyphs are brought together at haphazard and that no sense is to be got out of them. This is obvious even by the arrangement of the several characters in the oval without troubling to examine them one by one. They are divided into groups by straight lines, like those of a copy book. The Egyptian scribe never made use of such divisions; he distributed his characters over the field of the oval according to their sense and shape. The arrangement here followed is only to be explained by habits formed in the use of a writing that goes in horizontal lines from left to right or right to left. There is, in fact, nothing Egyptian but the shape of the ovals, and the motive with which they are crowned. The pretended hieroglyphs are nothing but rather clumsily executed pasticcios. And it must be noticed that even this superficial Egyptianism is absent from the centre of the dish. In those Theban ceilings which display such a wealth of various decoration we may find a simple rosette here and there, or rather a flower with four or eight petals, but these petals are always rounded at the end; nowhere do we find anything that can be compared to the great seven-pointed star which is here combined so ingeniously with eight more of the same pattern but of smaller size. On the other hand this motive is to be found on a great number of cups where no reminiscence of Egypt can be traced. The ruling idea is the same as that of the diaper-work in the thresholds from Khorsabad and Nimroud (see Vol. I., Fig. 135).
After such an example we might look upon the demonstration as made, but it may be useful to complete it by analyzing the other cups we have placed in the same class. That on which the scarabs on standards and the opposed sphinxes appear (Fig. 209) seems pure Egyptian at first sight; but if we take each motive by itself we find variations that are not insignificant. In Egyptian paintings, when the scarab is represented with extended wings they are spread out horizontally, and not crescent-wise over its head.[421] We may say the same of the sphinx. The griffin crowned with the pschent is to be found in Egypt as well as the winged sphinx,[422] but the Egyptian griffins had no wings,[423] and those of the sphinxes were folded so as to have their points directed to the ground. In the whole series of Egyptian monuments I cannot point to a fictitious animal like this griffin. It is in the fanciful creations of the Assyrians alone that these wings, standing up and describing a curve with its points close to the head of the beast that wears them (see Fig. 87), is to be seen. It is an Assyrian griffin masquerading under the double crown of Egypt, but a trained eye soon penetrates the disguise.
The arrangement, too, of the group is Assyrian. When the Egyptians decorated a jewel, a vessel, or a piece of furniture by combining two figures in a symmetrical fashion, they put them back to back rather than face to face.[424] Very few examples can be quoted of the employment in Egypt of an arrangement that is almost universal in Assyria. In the latter country this opposition of two figures is so common as to be common-place; they are usually separated from each other by a palmette, a rosette, a column or even a human figure (see Vol. I., Figs. 8, 124, 138, 139; and above, Figs. 75, 90, 141, 152, 153, 158, etc.), and it was certainly from Mesopotamia that Asia Minor borrowed the same motive, which is so often found in the tombs of Phrygia and in Greece as far as Mycenæ, whither it was carried from Lydia by the Tantalides.[425]
The same remarks will apply to the cup partially reproduced in our Fig. 216. The ornament of the centre and of the outer band is Egyptian in its origin, but the mountainous country with its stags and its trees, that lies between—have we found anything like it in Egypt? The mountains are suggested in much the same fashion as in the palace reliefs, and we know how much fonder the sculptors of Mesopotamia were of introducing the ibex, the stag, the gazelle, etc., into their work than those of Egypt. The rocky hills and sterile deserts that bounded the Nile valley were far less rich in the wilder ruminants than the wooded hills of Kurdistan and the grassy plains of the double valley.
There is one last fact to be mentioned which will, we believe, put the question beyond a doubt. Of all antique civilization, that which has handed down to us the most complete material remains is the civilization of Egypt. Thanks to the tomb there is but little of it lost. Granting that these cups were made in Egypt, how are we to explain the fact that not a single specimen has been found in the country? About sixty in all have been recovered; their decoration is distinguished by much variety, but when we compare them one with another we find an appreciable likeness between any two examples. The forms, the execution, the ornamental motives are often similar, or, at least, are often treated in the same spirit. The majority come from Assyria, but some have been found in Cyprus, in Greece, in Campania, Latium, and Etruria. Over the whole area of the ancient world there is but one country from which they are totally absent, and that country is Egypt.
We may, then, consider it certain that it was not Egyptian industry that scattered these vessels so widely, from the banks of the Euphrates to those of the Arno and the Tiber, not even excepting from this statement those examples on which Egyptian taste has left the strongest mark. Egypt thus put out of the question, we cannot hesitate between Mesopotamia and Phœnicia. If the cups of Nimroud were not made where they were found, it was from Phœnicia that they were imported. The composite character of the ornamentation with which many of them were covered is consistent with all we know of the taste and habits of Phœnician industry, as we shall have occasion to show in the sequel. On the other hand we must not forget at how early a date work in metal was developed in the workshops of Mesopotamia. Exquisite as it is, the decoration of the best of these vases would be child’s play to the master workmen who hammered and chiselled such pictures in bronze as those that have migrated from Balawat to the British Museum.
We are inclined to believe that the fabrication of these cups began in Mesopotamia; that the first models were issued from the workshops of Babylon and Nineveh, and exported thence into Syria; and that the Phœnicians, who imitated everything—everything, at least, that had a ready sale—acclimatized the industry among themselves and even carried it to perfection. In order to give variety to the decoration of the vases sent by them to every country of Western Asia and Southern Europe, they drew more than once from that storehouse of Egyptian ideas into which they were accustomed to dive with such free hands; and this would account for the combination of motives of different origin that we find on some of the cups. Vases thus decorated must have become very popular, and both as a result of commerce and of successful wars, must have entered the royal treasures of Assyria in great numbers. We know how often, after the tenth century, the sovereigns of Calah and Nineveh overran Palestine, as well as Upper and Lower Syria. After each campaign long convoys of plunder wended their way through the defiles of the Amanus and Anti-Lebanon, and the fords of the Euphrates, to the right bank of the Tigris. The Assyrian conquerors were not content with crowding the store-rooms of their palaces with the treasures thus won, they often transported the whole population of a town or district into their own country. Among the Syrians thus transplanted there must have been artizans, some of whom endeavoured to live by the exercise of their calling and by opening shops in the bazaars of Babylon, Calah, and Nineveh. Clients could be easily gained by selling carved ivories and these engraved cups at prices much smaller than those demanded when the cost of transport from the Phœnician coast had to be defrayed.
In one of these two ways it is, then, easy to explain the introduction of these foreign motives into Assyria, where they would give renewed life to a system of ornament whose resources were showing signs of exhaustion. This tendency must have become especially pronounced about the time of the Sargonids, when Assyria was the mistress of Phœnicia and invaded the Nile valley more than once. To this period I should be most ready to ascribe the majority of the bronze cups; the landscapes, hunts and processions of wild animals with which many of them are engraved, seem to recall the style and taste of the bas-reliefs of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal rather than the more ancient schools of sculpture.