Fig. 225.—Votive shield. Diameter about 34½ inches. Drawn by R. Elson.
For us the most interesting point about them is their decoration, which is identical in principle with several of the bronze platters lately discussed (see Fig. 217). This may be clearly seen in our reproduction of the shield which has suffered least from rust (Fig. 225).[438] In the centre there is a rosette with many radiations; next come three circular bands separated from each other and from the central boss by a double cable ornament. The innermost and outermost zones are filled with lions passant, the one between with bulls in the same attitude. And here we find a curious arrangement of which we can point to no other example: both lions and bulls have their feet turned sometimes to the centre of the shield, sometimes to its outer edge. The general character of the form is well grasped in both cases; but the design has neither the breadth nor firmness of that upon the cup to which we have already compared this shield (Fig. 217). The armourers were inferior in skill to the gold and silversmiths—we can think of no more appropriate name for them—by whom the metal cups were beaten and chased, although they made use of the same models and motives. No one would attribute a Phœnician origin to these bucklers; they were found in Armenia and were covered with cuneiform inscriptions. They must have been made either in Assyria, or in a neighbouring country that borrowed all from Assyria, its arts and industries as well as its written characters. The Assyrians attached too much importance to their arms and made too great a consumption of them to be content with importing them from a foreign country.
Fig. 226.—Knife-handle. Bone. Louvre.
When we turn to objects of less importance, such as daggers and knives, we find their handles also often modelled after animals’ heads. We have already figured more than one example (Vol. I., tail-piece to chapter II., and Vol. II., tail-piece to chapter I.). But sometimes they were content with a more simple form of decoration belonging to the class of ornament we call geometrical, which they combined with those battlement shapes that, as we have seen, the enameller also borrowed from the architect (Vol. I. Fig. 118). A by no means ungraceful result was obtained by such simple means (Figs. 202 and 226). These knife-handles are interesting not so much on account of their workmanship as for their tendency and the taste they display. They were objects of daily use and manufacture. Cut from ivory and bone, they were sold in hundreds in the bazaars. But in every detail we can perceive a desire to make the work please the eye. The evidence of this desire has already struck us in Egypt; it will be no less conspicuous in Greece. In these days, how many useful objects turned out by our machines have no such character. Those who design them think only of their use. They are afraid of causing complications by any attempt to make one different from the other or to give varied shapes to tools all meant for the same service. They renounce in advance the effort of personal invention and the love for ornament that gives an interest of its own to the slightest fragments from an ancient industry, and raises it almost to the dignity of a work of art.
§ 6. Instruments of the Toilet and Jewelry.
The preoccupation to which we have just alluded, the love for an agreeable effect, is strongly marked in several things which are now always left without ornament. A single example will be enough to show the difference. Nowadays all that we ask of a comb is to do its duty without hurting the head or pulling out the hair; that its teeth shall be conveniently spaced and neither too hard nor too pliant. These conditions fulfilled, it would not be out of place in the most luxurious dressing-room. The ancients were more exacting, as a series of ebony combs in the Louvre is sufficient to show (Figs. 227–229).[439] They have two rows of teeth, one coarse, the other fine, and each is ornamented in the middle with a figure in open-work (Figs. 228–229) or raised in relief on a flat bed (Fig. 227). Only a part of the latter comb is preserved. The frame round the figures is cut into the shape of a cable above and below, and into rosettes at the ends. On one side of the comb there is a walking lion, on the other the winged sphinx shown in our engraving. Its body is that of a lion, it is mitred and wears a pointed beard. In the second example we have a lion with lowered head within a frame with a kind of egg moulding. The forms are so heavy that at first we have some difficulty in recognizing the species. In our last specimen both design and execution are much better. A lion is carved in the round within a frame ornamented with a double row of zig-zag lines. The modelling has been carried out by a skilful artist and is not unworthy of a place beside the Ninevite reliefs.
Fig. 227.—Comb. Actual size. Louvre.