Different forms of Tree of Life, from Sicilian Silks.
Pl. 24.
Modern Embroidery from the Principalities, in which the cone-shaped tree grows into a vine,
and the two animals at the foot have lost their shape and intention.
This sacred tree, the Homa of Zoroaster and of the later Persians, has so early a beginning that we find it on Assyrian monuments.[117] Rock says “that, perhaps, it stood for the tree of life, which grew in Paradise.” It is represented as a subject of homage to men and animals, and it invariably stands between priests and kings, or beasts kneeling to it. It is figured on the small bucket for religious rites, carried in the hands, or embroidered in the upper sleeve of the monarch’s tunic. It always represents a shrub, sometimes bearing a series of umbels of seven flowers each. (Pl. [2], [20].)
Sometimes the expression of the symbol is reduced to the cone-fruit of the homa alone; or even to a blossom, as in the two glass bowls in the Slade collection in the British Museum, from a tomb at Chiusi, in Etruria. Here the design is a flower, of which each petal contains the essential emblem—a plant within a plant. These bowls, pronounced to be Greek of the fourth century B.C., have yet to me a strong Oriental character. (Pl. [22], No. 3.)
I have spoken of the lotus as a naturalistic pattern. One mode of drawing and embroidering its flower in India, is to cut it in two; half the blossom is then carefully and almost botanically copied, thus conveying the inner meaning of the sacred flower. (Pl. [22], No. 3.)
Another conventional pattern, common to all times of art and all nations, is that called in architecture the “egg and tongue” pattern. (Pl. [13].) This, as I have already said, is supposed to be derived directly from the lotus. The Egyptians formed it from the bud and blossom; and the pattern is found in India, Greece, and Rome, changing continually and yet retaining its identity. Vitruvius claimed to have given it the last touch and finish, so that in Italy it was called the Vitruvian scroll; and it is common to all decoration, even in textiles, though it is hardly suited for weaving or embroidery. This is one of the earliest patterns which, having ceased long ago to be a religious emblem or sign, still survives by its decorative fitness, and perpetuates the echoes of its origin.