[420] See in Prisse’s Histoire, the plates classed under the head Arts industriels, and especially the four entitled Vases en Or émaillé et cloisonné. In all these I can only find one patera, in the plate called Collection de Vases du Règne de Ramesés III. There is nothing to show that the vases here figured were not earthenware.
[421] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. figs. 287, 288. See also the great vultures on the ceilings (ibid. fig. 282), and winged females (ibid. fig. 287).
[422] Prisse, Histoire de l’Art egyptien, vol. ii., the plate entitled Types de Sphinx.
[423] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. fig. 239, and Prisse, in the plate above quoted.
[424] A cursory glance through the pages dedicated by Prisse to the industrial arts is conclusive on this point, the heads of snakes and horses, the figures of negroes and prisoners of war are almost invariably placed back to back on the objects they are used to adorn. Examples of this abound, but in order to understand what we may call the principle of this ornamentation it will suffice to refer to figs. 314, 327, and 328 of the second volume of our History of Art in Ancient Egypt.
[425] In Prisse’s plate entitled Choix de Bijoux de diverses Époques, there is a bracelet with a central motive recalling that of our cup. It shows us two griffins separated by a palmette from which rises a tall stem of papyrus between several pairs of volutes. This object is, however, almost unique of its kind, and we do not exactly know to what epoch it belongs. May it not belong to a period when Egyptian art began to be affected by that of Mesopotamia, an influence that is betrayed in more than one particular? According to Herr Von Sybel, who has studied Egyptian ornament with so much care, this motive of two animals facing each other did not appear before the nineteenth dynasty, and he looks upon it as purely Asiatic in its origin (Kritik des Ægyptischen Ornaments, pp. 37, 38). We may also quote a small box of Egyptian faïence inscribed with the oval of Ahmes II, the Amasis of Herodotus. It bears two griffins quite similar to those of our group, separated by a cypress. But Dr. Birch, who was the first to publish this monument, recognizes that, in spite of the cartouch, its physiognomy is more Assyrian than Egyptian (Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Series II. p. 177).
[426] See on this subject an ingenious and learned paper to which we shall more than once have occasion to refer, namely, M. Clermont-Ganneau’s Étude d’Archéologie orientale, l’Imagerie phénicienne et la Mythologie iconologique chez les Grecs. First part: La Coupe phénicienne de Palestina (1880, 8vo, 8 plates).
[427] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 66.
[428] Houghton, On the Mammalia of Assyrian Sculptures, p. 382.
[429] Layard, Monuments, second series, plate 67.