Ivories Ancient and Mediæval

by William Maskell

It does not appear that any good method is known by which a discoloured ivory can be bleached. All rough usage of course merely injures the piece itself, and removes the external surface. Exposure to the light keeps the original whiteness longer, and in a few instances may to some extent restore it. It need hardly be observed that any other attempt to alter the existing condition, whatever it may be, as regards the colour of an antique or mediæval ivory is to be condemned.

It is quite a different matter to endeavour to preserve works in ivory which have suffered partial decomposition, and which can be kept from utter destruction only by some kind of artificial treatment. Almost all the fragments sent to England by Mr. Layard from Nineveh were in this state of extreme fragility and decay. Professor Owen suggested that they should be boiled in a solution of gelatine. The experiment was tried and found to be sufficiently effectual; and it is to be hoped that the present success will prove to be lasting. “Since the fragments have been in England,” says Mr. Layard, “they have been admirably restored and cleaned. The glutinous matter, by which the particles forming the ivory are kept together, had, from the decay of centuries, been completely exhausted. By an ingenious process it has been restored, and the ornaments, which on their discovery fell to pieces almost upon mere exposure to the air, have regained the appearance and consistency of recent ivory, and may be handled without risk of injury.”

We may think it to be sufficiently strange in tracing the early history of the art of carving or engraving in ivory, that we should be able easily to carry it, upon the evidence of extant examples, to an antiquity long before the Christian era: through the Roman, Greek, Assyrian, and Jewish people, up to an age anterior to the origin of those nations by centuries, the number of which it may be difficult accurately to count. These very ancient examples are of the earliest Egyptian dynasties: yet, between them and the date of the earliest now known specimens of works of art incised or carved in ivory there is a lapse of time so great that it may probably be numbered by thousands of years.

We must go back to prehistoric man for the proof of this; to a period earlier than the age of iron or of bronze; to the first—the drift—period of the stone age. We must go back, as Sir John Lubbock writes, “to a time so remote that the reindeer was abundant in the south of France, and probably even the mammoth had not entirely disappeared.” Lartet and Christy also (in their valuable publication, the Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ) make a like remark: “It rests with the geologist, by indicating the changes which have occurred in the very land itself, to shadow out the period in the dim distance of that far antiquity when these implements, the undoubted work of human hands, were used and left there by primæval man.”

Within the last few years, in caves at Le Moustier and at La Madelaine in the Dordogne, numerous fragments have been found of tusks of the mammoth and of reindeer’s bone and horn, on some of which are incised drawings of various animals, and upon others similar representations carved in low relief. These objects have been engraved in several works by geologists and writers upon the important questions relating to prehistoric people; and copies of them may be found in Sir John Lubbock’s book, “The origin of Civilization,” already quoted from. Among them are drawings and carvings of fish, of a snake, of an ibex, of a man carrying a spear, of a mammoth, of horses’ heads, and of a group of reindeer.

Sir John Lubbock describes these works as showing “really considerable skill;” as “being very fair drawings;” as the productions of men to whom we must give “full credit for their love of art, such as it was.” But to speak of them in words so cold is less than justice. No one can examine the few fragments which as yet have been discovered without acknowledging their merit, and attributing them to what may very truly be called the hand of an artist. There can be no mistake for a moment as to many of the beasts which are represented.

Again: the sculptor has given us, in a spirited and natural manner, more than one characteristic quality of his subject: and we can recognise the heaviness and sluggishness of the mammoth as easily as the grace and activity of the reindeer. The results of the workman’s labour are not like the elephants and camels and lions of a child’s Noah’s ark—merely bodies with heads and four legs—but they are executed with the right feeling and in an artistic spirit: the animals are carefully drawn, and often with much vigour. There is nothing conventional about them; they are far beyond and utterly different in style from the ugly attempts of really civilised people, such as the Peruvians or Mexicans, to say nothing of the works of the savages of Africa or New Zealand. They are true to nature.

The aboriginal nations of North and South America must certainly be spoken of as civilised, though it is curious to remember how great authorities seem to differ as to what civilisation means. Macaulay, in his Life of lord Clive, writing with a recklessness of statement not unusual with him when aiming at some picturesque contrast, describes the ancient Mexicans as “savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, and who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fishbones, and who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster.” But Bernal Diaz, whose report as an eye-witness has stood the test of years of later investigation and dispute, describes the appearance of the great cities from without as like the enchanted castles of romance, and full of great towers and temples. And within, “every kind of eatable, every form of dress, medicines, perfumes, unguents, furniture, lead, copper, gold, and silver ornaments wrought in the form of fruit, adorned the porticoes and allured the passer-by. Paper, that great material of civilisation, was to be obtained in this wonderful emporium; also every kind of earthenware, cotton of all colours in skeins, &c. There were officers who went continually about the market-place, watching what was sold, and the measures which were used.”

If we are to take the judgment of Lord Macaulay as our guide in determining what may be true civilisation, we must set down the Greeks in the reign of Alexander, or the Italians in the days of Leo the tenth, as “savages,” because they were ignorant of the electric telegraph; or ourselves now, because we cannot guide balloons through the air.

The sculptures and works of art in the ruined cities of Yucatan are also to be thought of. Many engravings of them are given in Stephens’s central America.