The accumulations of prehistoric objects on these sites all tell the same tale, the influence of the East, and more especially of the Phœnicians, upon the growing civilization of early Greece. Thus in Thera, where a sort of Greek Pompeii has been preserved under the lava which once overwhelmed it, we find the rude stone hovels of its primitive inhabitants, with roofs of wild olive, filled with the bones of dogs and sheep, and containing stores of barley, spelt, and chickpea, copper and stone weapons, and abundance of pottery. The latter is for the most part extremely coarse, but here and there have been discovered vases of artistic workmanship, which remind us of those carried by the Kefa, and may have been imported from abroad. We know from the tombs found on the island that the Phœnicians afterwards settled in Thera among a population in the same condition of civilization as that which had been overtaken by the great volcanic eruption. It was from these Phœnician settlers that the embroidered dresses known as Theræan were brought to Greece; they were adorned with animals and other figures, similar to those seen upon Corinthian or Phœniko-Greek ware.
Now M. Fr. Lenormant has pointed out that much of the pottery used by the aboriginal inhabitants of Thera is almost identical in form and make with that found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, in the Troad, and he concludes that it must belong to the same period and the same area of civilization. There is as yet little, if any, trace of Oriental influence; a few of the clay vases from Thera, and some of the gold workmanship at Hissarlik, can alone be referred, with more or less hesitation, to Phœnician artists. We have not yet reached the age when Phœnician trade in the West ceased to be the sporadic effort of private individuals, and when trading colonies were established in different parts of the Greek world; Europe is still unaffected by Eastern culture, and the beginnings of Greek art are still free from foreign interference. It is only in certain designs on the terra-cotta discs, believed by Dr. Schliemann to be spindle-whorls, that we may possibly detect rude copies of Babylonian and Phœnician intaglios.
Among all the objects discovered at Hissarlik, none have been more discussed than the vases and clay images in which Dr. Schliemann saw a representation of an owl-headed Athena. What Dr. Schliemann took for an owl's head, however, is really a rude attempt to imitate the human face, and two breasts are frequently moulded in the clay below it. In many examples the human countenance is unmistakable, and in most of the others the representation is less rude than in the case of the small marble statues of Apollo (?) found in the Greek islands, or even of the early Hellenic vases where the men seem furnished with the beaks of birds. But we now know that these curious vases are not peculiar to the Troad. Specimens of them have also been met with in Cyprus, and in these we can trace the development of the owl-like head into the more perfect portraiture of the human face.[27] In conservative Cyprus there was not that break with the past which occurred in other portions of the Greek world.
Cyprus, in fact, lay midway between Greece and Phœnicia, and was shared to the last between an Aryan and a Semitic population. The Phœnician element in the island was strong, if not preponderant; Paphos was a chief seat of the worship of the Phœnician Astarte, and the Phœnician Kitium, the Chittim of the Hebrews, took first rank among the Cyprian towns. The antiquities brought to light by General di Cesnola are of all ages and all styles—prehistoric and classical, Phœnician and Hellenic, Assyrian and Egyptian—and the various styles are combined together in the catholic spirit that characterized Phœnician art.
But we must pause here for a moment to define more accurately what we mean by Phœnician art. Strictly speaking, Phœnicia had no art of its own; its designs were borrowed from Egypt and Assyria, and its artists went to school on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. The Phœnician combined and improved upon his models; the impulse, the origination came from abroad; the modification and elaboration were his own. He entered into other men's labours, and made the most of his heritage. The sphinx of Egypt became Asiatic, and in its new form was transplanted to Nineveh on the one side and to Greece on the other. The rosettes and other patterns of the Babylonian cylinders were introduced into the handiwork of Phœnicia, and so passed on to the West, while the hero of the ancient Chaldean epic became first the Tyrian Melkarth, and then the Herakles of Hellas. It is possible, no doubt, that with all this borrowing there was still something that was original in Phœnician work; such at any rate seems to be the case with some of the forms given to the vases; but at present we have no means of determining how far this originality may have extended. In Assyria, indeed, Phœnician art exercised a great influence in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.; but it had itself previously drawn its first inspiration from the empire of the Tigris, and did but give back the perfect blossom to those from whom it had received the seed. The workmanship of the ivories and bronze bowls found at Nineveh by Mr. Layard is thoroughly Phœnician; but it cannot be separated from that of the purely Assyrian pavements and bas-reliefs with which the palaces were adorned. The Phœnician art, in fact, traces of which we find from Assyria to Italy, though based on both Egyptian and Assyrian models, owed far more to Assyria than it did to Egypt. In art, as in mythology and religion, Phœnicia was but a carrier and intermediary between East and West; and just as the Greek legends of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Herakles and his twelve labours, and of the other borrowed heroes of Oriental story came in the first instance from Assyria, so did that art and culture which Kadmus the Phœnician handed on to the Greek race.
But Assyria itself had been equally an adapter and intermediary. The Semites of Assyria and Babylonia had borrowed their culture and civilization from the older Accadian race, with its agglutinative language, which had preceded them in the possession of Chaldea. So slavishly observant were the Assyrians of their Chaldean models that in a land where limestone was plentiful they continued to build their palaces and temples of brick, and to ornament them with those columns and pictorial representations which had been first devised on the alluvial plains of Babylonia. To understand Assyrian art, and track it back to its source, we must go to the engraved gems and ruined temples of primæval Babylonia. It is true that Egypt may have had some influence on Assyrian art, at the time when the eighteenth dynasty had pushed its conquests to the banks of the Tigris; but that influence does not seem to have been either deep or permanent. Now the art of Assyria is in great measure the art of Phœnicia, and that again the art of prehistoric Greece. Modern research has discovered the prototype of Herakles in the hero of a Chaldean epic composed it may be, four thousand years ago; it has also discovered the beginnings of Greek columnar architecture and the germs of Greek art in the works of the builders and engravers of early Chaldea.
When first I saw, five years ago, the famous sculpture which has guarded the Gate of Lions at Mykenæ for so many centuries, I was at once struck by its Assyrian character. The lions in form and attitude belong to Assyria, and the pillar against which they rest may be seen in the bas-reliefs brought from Nineveh. Here, at all events, there was clear proof of Assyrian influence; the only question was whether that influence had been carried through the hands of the Phœnicians or had travelled along the highroad which ran across Asia Minor, the second channel whereby the culture of Assyria could have been brought to Greece. The existence of a similar sculpture over a rock-tomb at Kumbet in Phrygia might seem to favour the latter view.
The discoveries of Dr. Schliemann have gone far to settle the question. The pottery excavated at Mykenæ is of the Phœnician type, and the clay of which is composed has probably come from Thera. The terra-cotta figures of animals and more especially of a goddess with long robe, crowned head, and crescent-like arms, are spread over the whole area traversed by the Phœnicians. The image of the goddess in one form or another has been found in Thera and Melos, in Naxos and Paros, in Ios, in Sikinos, and in Anaphos, and M. Lenormant has traced it back to Babylonia and to the Babylonian representation of the goddess Artemis-Nana.[28] At Tanagra the image has been found under two forms, both, however, made of the same clay and in the same style as the figures from Mykenæ. In one the goddess is upright, as at Mykenæ, with the polos on her head, and the arms either outspread or folded over the breast; in the other she is sitting with the arms crossed. Now among the gold ornaments exhumed at Mykenæ are some square pendants of gold which represent the goddess in this sitting posture.[29]
The animal forms most commonly met with are those of the lion, the stag, the bull, the cuttle-fish, and the murex. The last two point unmistakably to a seafaring race, and more especially to those Phœnician sailors whose pursuit of the purple-trade first brought them into Greek seas. So far as I know, neither the polypus nor the murex, nor the butterfly which often accompanies them have been found in Assyria or Egypt, and we may therefore see in them original designs of Phœnician art. Mr. Newton has pointed out that the cuttle-fish (like the dolphin) also occurs among the prehistoric remains from Ialysos in Rhodes, where, too, pottery of the same shape and material as that of Mykenæ has been found, as well as beads of a curious vitreous substance, and rings in which the back of the chaton is rounded so as to fit the finger. It is clear that the art of Ialysos belongs to the same age and school as the art of Mykenæ; and as a scarab of Amenophis III. has been found in one of the Ialysian tombs, it is possible that the art may be as old as the fifteenth century b.c.
Now Ialysos is not the only Rhodian town which has yielded prehistoric antiquities. Camirus also has been explored by Messrs. Biliotti and Saltzmann; and while objects of the same kind and character as those of Ialysos have been discovered there, other objects have been found by their side which belong to another and more advanced stage of art. There are vases of clay and metal, bronze bowls, and the like, which not only display high finish and skill, but are ornamented with the designs characteristic of Phœnician workmanship at Nineveh and elsewhere. Thus we have zones of trees and animals, attempts at the representation of scenery, and a profusion of ornament, while the influence of Egypt is traceable in the sphinxes and scarabs, which also occur plentifully. Here, therefore, at Camirus, there is plain evidence of a sudden introduction of finished Phœnician art among a people whose art was still rude and backward, although springing from the same germs as the art of Phœnicia itself. Two distinct periods in the history of the Ægean thus seem to lie unfolded before us; one in which Eastern influence was more or less indirect, content to communicate the seeds of civilization and culture, and to import such objects as a barbarous race would prize; and another in which the East was, as it were, transported into the West, and the development of Greek art was interrupted by the introduction of foreign workmen and foreign beliefs. This second period was the period of Phœnician colonization as distinct from that of mere trading voyages—the period, in fact, when Thebes was made a Phœnician fortress, and the Phœnician alphabet diffused throughout the Greek world. It is only in relics of the later part of this period that we can look for inscriptions and traces of writing, at least in Greece proper; in the islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, the Cypriote syllabary seems to have been in use, to be superseded afterwards by the simpler alphabet of Kadmus. For reasons presently to be stated, I would distinguish the first period by the name of Phrygian.