| Fig. 7—Scarabaeioid by Syries. (Brit. Mus.) |
Early Inscribed Gems.—Various early gems are inscribed with proper names, which may be supposed to indicate either the artist or the owner of the gem. In some cases there is no ambiguity, e.g. on a scarab is inscribed, “I am the seal of Thersis. Do not open me”; and a scarabaeoid (fig. 7) is inscribed, “Syries made me.” But when we have the name alone, the general principle on which we must distinguish between owner and artist is that the name of the owner is naturally meant to be conspicuous (as in a gem in the British Museum inscribed in large letters with the name of Isagor[as]), while the name of an artist is naturally inconspicuous and subordinate to the design.
The early engravers known to us by their signatures are: Syries, who was author of the modified scarab in the British Museum, mentioned above, with a satyr’s head in place of the beetle, and a citharist on the base—a work of the middle of the 6th century; Semon, who engraved a black jasper scarab now at Berlin, with a nude woman kneeling at a fountain filling her pitcher, of the close of the 6th century; Epimenes, who was the author of an admirable chalcedony scarabaeoid of a nude youth restraining a spirited horse—formerly in the Tyszkiewicz Collection, and of about the beginning of the 5th century. But better known to us than any of these artists is the 5th-century engraver, Dexamenus of Chios, of whose work four examples[1] survive, viz.:—
1. A chalcedony scarabaeoid from Greece, in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, with a lady at her toilet, attended by her maid. Inscribed ΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ, and with the name of the lady, ΜΙΚΗΣ.
2. An agate with a stork standing on one leg, inscribed ΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ simply.
3. A chalcedony with the figure of a stork flying, and inscribed in two lines, the letters carefully disposed above each other, ΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΕ ΧΙΟΣ.
| Fig. 8.—Greek Sard. 5th Cent. B.C. (Brit. Mus.) |
4. A gem, apparently by the same Dexamenus, is a cornelian formerly belonging to Admiral Soteriades in Athens, and subsequently in the collection of Dr Arthur Evans. It has a portrait head, bearded and inscribed ΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΕ.
The design of a stork flying occurs on an agate scarab in the British Museum, from the old Cracherode Collection, and therefore beyond all suspicion of having been copied from the more recently discovered Kertch gem.