Herodotus begins his history by relating how Phoenician traders brought
"Egyptian and Assyrian wares" to Argos and other parts of Greece, in those
remote days when the Greeks were still waiting to receive the elements of
their culture from the more civilized East. His account was derived from
Persian and Phoenician sources, but, it would seem, was accepted by his
contemporaries with the same unquestioning confidence as by himself. The
belief of Herodotus was shared by the scholars of Europe after the revival
of learning, and there were none among them who doubted that the
civilization of ancient Greece had been brought from Asia or Egypt, or
from both. Hebrew was regarded as the primaeval language, and the Hebrew
records as the fountain-head of all history; just as the Greek vocabulary,
therefore, was traced back to the Hebrew lexicon, the legends of primitive
Greece were believed to be the echoes of Old Testament history. _Ex
Oriente lux_ was the motto of the inquirer, and the key to all that was
dark or doubtful in the mythology and history of Hellas was to be found in
the monuments of the Oriental world.
But the age of Creuzer and Bryant was succeeded by an age of scepticism
and critical investigation. A reaction sat in against the attempt to force
Greek thought and culture into an Asiatic mould. The Greek scholar was
repelled by the tasteless insipidity and barbaric exuberance of the East;
he contrasted the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Sophocles and Plato,
with the monstrous creations of India or Egypt, and the conviction grew
strong within him that the Greek could never have learnt his first lessons
of civilization in such a school as this. Between the East and the West a
sharp line of division was drawn, and to look for the origin of Greek
culture beyond the boundaries of Greece itself came to be regarded almost
as sacrilege. Greek mythology, so far from being an echo or caricature of
Biblical history and Oriental mysticism, was pronounced to be self-evolved
and independent, and K. O. Mueller could deny without contradiction the
Asiatic origin even of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, where the name of
the Semitic sun-god seems of itself to indicate its source. The
Phoenician traders of Herodotus, like the royal maiden they carried away
from Argos, were banished to the nebulous region of rationalistic fable.
Along with this reaction against the Orientalizing school which could see
in Greece nothing but a deformed copy of Eastern wisdom went another
reaction against the conception of Greek mythology on which the labours of
the Orientalizing school had been based. Key after key had been applied to
Greek mythology, and all in vain; the lock had refused to turn. The light
which had been supposed to come from the East had turned out to be but a
will-o'-the-wisp; neither the Hebrew Scriptures nor the Egyptian
hieroglyphics had solved the problem presented by the Greek myths. And the
Greek scholar, in despair, had come to the conclusion that the problem was
insoluble; all that he could do was to accept the facts as they were set
before him, to classify and repeat the wondrous tales of the Greek poets,
but to leave their origin unexplained. This is practically the position of
Grote; he is content to show that all the parts of a myth hang closely
together, and that any attempt to extract history or philosophy from it
must be arbitrary and futile. To deprive a myth of its kernel and soul,
and call the dry husk that is left a historical fact, is to mistake the
conditions of the problem and the nature of mythology.
It was at this point that the science of comparative mythology stepped in.
Grote had shown that we cannot look for history in mythology, but he had
given up the discovery of the origin of this mythology as a hopeless task.
The same comparative method, however, which has forced nature to disclose
her secrets has also penetrated to the sources of mythology itself. The
Greek myths, like the myths of the other nations of the world, are the
forgotten and misinterpreted records of the beliefs of primitive man, and
of his earliest attempts to explain the phenomena of nature. Restore the
original meaning of the language wherein the myth is clothed, and the
origin of the myth is found. Myths, in fact, are the words of a dead
language to which a wrong sense has been given by a false method of
decipherment. A myth, rightly explained, will tell us the beliefs, the
feelings, and the knowledge of those among whom it first grew up; for the
evidences and monuments of history we must look elsewhere.
But there is an old proverb that "there is no smoke without fire." The war
of Troy or the beleaguerment of Thebes may be but a repetition of the
time-worn story of the battle waged by the bright powers of day round the
battlements of heaven; but there must have been some reason why this story
should have been specially localized in the Troad and at Thebes. Most of
the Greek myths have a background in space and time; and for this
background there must be some historical cause. The cause, however, if it
is to be discovered at all, must be discovered by means of those evidences
which will alone satisfy the critical historian. The localization of a
myth is merely an indication or sign-post pointing out the direction in
which he is to look for his facts. If Greek warriors had never fought in
the plains of Troy, we may be pretty sure that the poems of Homer would
not have brought Akhilles and Agamemnon under the walls of Ilium. If
Phoenician traders had exercised no influence on primaeval Greece, Greek
legend would have contained no references to them.
But even the myth itself, when rightly questioned, may be made to yield
some of the facts upon which the conclusions of the historian are based.
We now know fairly well what ideas, usages, and proper names have an Aryan
stamp upon them, and what, on the other hand, belong rather to the Semitic
world. Now there is a certain portion of Greek mythology which bears but
little relationship to the mythology of the kindred Aryan tribes, while it
connects itself very closely with the beliefs and practices of the Semitic
race. Human sacrifice is very possibly one of these, and it is noticeable
that two at least of the legends which speak of human sacrifice--those of
Athamas and Busiris--are associated, the one with the Phoenicians of
Thebes, the other with the Phoenicians of the Egyptian Delta. The whole
cycle of myths grouped about the name of Herakles points as clearly to a
Semitic source as does the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis; and the
extravagant lamentations that accompanied the worship of the Akhaean
Demeter (Herod. v. 61) come as certainly from the East as the olive, the
pomegranate, and the myrtle, the sacred symbols of Athena, of Hera, and of
Aphrodite.[24]
Comparative mythology has thus given us a juster appreciation of the
historical inferences we may draw from the legends of prehistoric Greece,
and has led us back to a recognition of the important part played by the
Phoenicians in the heroic age. Greek culture, it is true, was not the
mere copy of that of Semitic Asia, as scholars once believed, but the
germs of it had come in large measure from an Oriental seed-plot. The
conclusions derived from a scientific study of the myths have been
confirmed and widened by the recent researches and discoveries of
archaeology. The spade, it has been said, is the modern instrument for
reconstructing the history of the past, and in no department in history
has the spade been more active of late than in that of Greece. From all
sides light has come upon that remote epoch around which the mist of a
fabulous antiquity had already been folded in the days of Herodotus; from
the islands and shores of the AEgean, from the tombs of Asia Minor and
Palestine, nay, even from the temples and palaces of Egypt and Assyria,
have the materials been exhumed for sketching in something like clear
outline the origin and growth of Greek civilization. From nowhere,
however, have more important revelations been derived than from the
excavations at Mykenae and Spata, near Athens, and it is with the evidence
furnished by these that I now propose mainly to deal. A personal
inspection of the sites and the objects found upon them has convinced me
of the groundlessness of the doubts which have been thrown out against
their antiquity, as well as of the intercourse and connection to which
they testify with the great empires of Babylonia and Assyria. Mr. Poole
has lately pointed out what materials are furnished by the Egyptian
monuments for determining the age and character of the antiquities of
Mykenae.[25] I would now draw attention to the far clearer and more
tangible materials afforded by Assyrian art and history.
Two facts must first be kept well in view. One of these is the Semitic
origin of the Greek alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet, originally
derived from the alphabet of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and imported into
their mother-country by the Phoenician settlers of the Delta, was
brought to Greece, not probably by the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon,
but by the Aramaeans of the Gulf of Antioch, whose nouns ended with the
same "emphatic aleph" that we seem to find in the Greek names of the
letters, _alpha_, _beta_, _gamma_, (_gamla_). Before the introduction of
the simpler Phoenician alphabet, the inhabitants of Asia Minor and the
neighbouring islands appear to have used a syllabary of some seventy
characters, which continued to be employed in conservative Cyprus down to
a very late date; but, so far as we know at present, the Greeks of the
mainland were unacquainted with writing before the Aramaeo-Phoenicians
had taught them their phonetic symbols. The oldest Greek inscriptions are
probably those of Thera, now Santorin, where the Phoenicians had been
settled from time immemorial; and as the forms of the characters found in
them do not differ very materially from the forms used on the famous
Moabite Stone, we may infer that the alphabet of Kadmus was brought to the
West at a date not very remote from that of Mesha and Ahab, perhaps about
800 B.C. We may notice that Thera was an island and a Phoenician colony,
and it certainly seems more probable that the alphabet was carried to the
mainland from the islands of the AEgean than that it was disseminated from
the inland Phoenician settlement at Thebes, as the old legends affirmed.
In any case, the introduction of the alphabet implies a considerable
amount of civilizing force on the part of those from whom it was borrowed;
the teachers from whom an illiterate people learns the art of writing are
generally teachers from whom it has previously learnt the other elements
of social culture. A barbarous tribe will use its muscles in the service
of art before it will use its brains; the smith and engraver precede the
scribe. If, therefore, the Greeks were unacquainted with writing before
the ninth century, B.C., objects older than that period may be expected to
exhibit clear traces of Phoenician influence, though no traces of
writing.
The other fact to which I allude is the existence of pottery of the same
material and pattern on all the prehistoric sites of the Greek world,
however widely separated they may be. We find it, for instance, at Mykenae
and Tiryns, at Tanagra and Athens, in Rhodes, in Cyprus, and in Thera,
while I picked up specimens of it in the neighbourhood of the Treasury of
Minyas and on the site of the Acropolis at Orchomenus. The clay of which
it is composed is of a drab colour, derived, perhaps in all instances,
from the volcanic soil of Thera and Melos, and it is ornamented with
geometrical and other patterns in black and maroon-red. After a time the
patterns become more complicated and artistic; flowers, animal forms, and
eventually human figures, take the place of simple lines, and the pottery
gradually passes into that known as Corinthian or Phoeniko-Greek. It
needs but little experience to distinguish at a glance this early pottery
from the red ware of the later Hellenic period.
Phoenicia, Keft as it was called by the Egyptians, had been brought into
relation with the monarchy of the Nile at a remote date, and among the
Semitic settlers in the Delta or "Isle of Caphtor" must have been natives
of Sidon and the neighbouring towns. After the expulsion of the Hyksos,
the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties carried their arms
as far as Mesopotamia and placed Egyptian garrisons in Palestine. A
tomb-painting of Thothmes III. represents the Kefa or Phoenicians, clad
in richly-embroidered kilts and buskins, and bringing their tribute of
gold and silver vases and earthenware cups, some in the shape of animals
like the vases found at Mykenae and elsewhere. Phoenicia, it would seem,
was already celebrated for its goldsmiths' and potters' work, and the
ivory the Kefa are sometimes made to carry shows that their commerce must
have extended far to the east. As early as the sixteenth century B.C.,
therefore, we may conclude that the Phoenicians were a great commercial
people, trading between Assyria and Egypt and possessed of a considerable
amount of artistic skill.
It is not likely that a people of this sort, who, as we know from other
sources, carried on a large trade in slaves and purple, would have been
still unacquainted with the seas and coasts of Greece where both slaves
and the murex or purple-fish were most easily to be obtained. Though the
Phoenician alphabet was unknown in Greece till the ninth century B.C.,
we have every reason to expect to find traces of Phoenician commerce and
Phoenician influence there at least five centuries before. And such
seems to be the case. The excavations carried on in Thera by MM. Fouque
and Gorceix,[26] in Rhodes by Mr. Newton and Dr. Saltzmann, and in various
other places such as Megara, Athens, and Melos, have been followed by the
explorations of Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Mykenae, of
General di Cesnola in Cyprus, and of the Archaeological Society of Athens
at Tanagra and Spata.
The accumulations of prehistoric objects on these sites all tell the same
tale, the influence of the East, and more especially of the Phoenicians,
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
Phoenicians 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 Phoenician settlers that the
embroidered dresses known as Theraean were brought to Greece; they were
adorned with animals and other figures, similar to those seen upon
Corinthian or Phoeniko-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 Phoenician artists.
We have not yet reached the age when Phoenician 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 Phoenician
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 Phoenicia, and was shared
to the last between an Aryan and a Semitic population. The Phoenician
element in the island was strong, if not preponderant; Paphos was a chief
seat of the worship of the Phoenician Astarte, and the Phoenician
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, Phoenician and Hellenic,
Assyrian and Egyptian--and the various styles are combined together in the
catholic spirit that characterized Phoenician art.
But we must pause here for a moment to define more accurately what we mean
by Phoenician art. Strictly speaking, Phoenicia 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 Phoenician
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
Phoenicia, 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 Phoenician 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, Phoenician 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 Phoenician; but it cannot be separated from that of
the purely Assyrian pavements and bas-reliefs with which the palaces were
adorned. The Phoenician 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, Phoenicia 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 Phoenician 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 primaeval
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 Phoenicia, 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 Mykenae 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 Phoenicians 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 Mykenae is of the Phoenician 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
Phoenicians. 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 Mykenae. In one the goddess is
upright, as at Mykenae, 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 Mykenae 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 Phoenician 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 Phoenician 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 Mykenae 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 Mykenae; 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 Phoenician 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 Phoenician art among a people whose art was still rude and
backward, although springing from the same germs as the art of Phoenicia
itself. Two distinct periods in the history of the AEgean 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
Phoenician colonization as distinct from that of mere trading
voyages--the period, in fact, when Thebes was made a Phoenician
fortress, and the Phoenician 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.
Throughout the whole of it, however, the Phoenician trading ships must
have formed the chief medium of intercourse between Asia and Europe. Proof
of this has been furnished by the rock tombs of Spata, which have been
lighted on opportunely to illustrate and explain the discoveries at
Mykenae. Spata is about nine miles from Athens, on the north-west spur of
Hymettos, and the two tombs hitherto opened are cut in the soft sandstone
rock of a small conical hill. Both are approached by long tunnel-like
entrances, and one of them contains three chambers, leading one into the
other, and each fashioned after the model of a house. No one who has seen
the objects unearthed at Spata can doubt for a moment their close
connection with the Mykenaean antiquities. The very moulds found at Mykenae
fit the ornaments from Spata, and might easily have been used in the
manufacture of them. It is more especially with the contents of the sixth
tomb, discovered by Mr. Stamataki in the _enceinte_ at Mykenae after Dr.
Schliemann's departure, that the Spata remains agree so remarkably. But
there is a strong resemblance between them and the Mykenaean antiquities
generally, in both material, patterns, and character. The cuttle-fish and
the murex appear in both; the same curious spiral designs, and ornaments
in the shape of shells or rudely-formed oxheads; the same geometrical
patterns; the same class of carved work. An ivory in which a lion, of the
Assyrian type, is depicted as devouring a stag, is but a reproduction of a
similar design met with among the objects from Mykenae, and it is
interesting to observe that the same device, in the same style of art, may
be also seen on a Phoenician gem from Sardinia.[30] Of still higher
interest are other ivories, which, like the antiquities of Camirus, belong
rather to the second than to the first period of Phoenician influence.
One of these represents a column, which, like that above the Gate of
Lions, carries us back to the architecture of Babylonia, while others
exhibit the Egyptian sphinx, as modified by Phoenician artists. Thus the
handle of a comb is divided into two compartments--the lower occupied by
three of these sphinxes, the upper by two others, which have their eyes
fixed on an Assyrian rosette in the middle. Similar sphinxes are engraved
on a silver cup lately discovered at Palestrina, bearing the Phoenician
inscription, in Phoenician letters, "Eshmun-ya'ar, son of Ashta'."[31]
Another ivory has been carved into the form of a human side face,
surmounted by a tiara of four plaits. On the one hand the arrangement of
the hair of the face, the whisker and beard forming a fringe round it, and
the two lips being closely shorn, reminds us of what we find at
Palestrina; on the other hand, the head-dress is that of the figures on
the sculptured rocks of Asia Minor, and of the Hittite princes of
Carchemish. In spite of this Phoenician colouring, however, the
treasures of Spata belong to the earlier part of the Phoenician period,
if not to that which I have called Phrygian: there is as yet no sign of
writing, no trace of the use of iron. But we seem to be approaching the
close of the bronze age in Greece--to have reached the time when the
lions were sculptured over the chief gateway of Mykenae, and the so-called
treasuries were erected in honour of the dead.
Can any date be assigned, even approximately, to those two periods of
Phoenician influence in Greece? Can we localize the era, so to speak, of
the antiquities discovered at Mykenae, or fix the epoch at which its kings
ceased to build its long-enduring monuments, and its glory was taken from
it? I think an answer to these questions may be found in a series of
engraved gold rings and prisms found upon its site--the prisms having
probably once served to ornament the neck. In these we can trace a gradual
development of art; which in time becomes less Oriental and more Greek,
and acquires a certain facility in the representation of the human form.
Let us first fix our attention on an engraved gold chaton found, not in
the tombs, but outside the _enceinte_ among the ruins, as it would seem,
of a house.[32] On this we have a rude representation of a figure seated
under a palm-tree, with another figure behind and three more in front, the
foremost being of small size, the remaining two considerably taller and in
flounced dresses. Above are the symbols of the sun and crescent-moon, and
at the side a row of lions' heads. Now no one who has seen this chaton,
and also had any acquaintance with the engraved gems of the archaic period
of Babylonian art, can avoid being struck by the fact that the intaglio is
a copy of one of the latter. The characteristic workmanship of the
Babylonian gems is imitated by punches made in the gold which give the
design a very curious effect. The attitude of the figures is that common
on the Chaldean cylinders; the owner stands in front of the deity, of
diminutive size, and in the act of adoration, while the priests are placed
behind him. The latter wear the flounced dresses peculiar to the early
Babylonian priests; and what has been supposed to represent female
breasts, is really a copy of the way in which the breast of a man is
frequently portrayed on the cylinders.[33] The palm-tree, with its single
fruit hanging on the left side, is characteristically Babylonian; so also
are the symbols that encircle the engraving, the sun and moon and lions'
heads. The chaton of another gold ring, found on the same spot, is covered
with similar animal heads. This, again, is a copy of early Babylonian art,
in which such designs were not unfrequent, though, as they were afterwards
imitated by both Assyrian and Cyprian engravers, too much stress must not
be laid on the agreement.[34] The artistic position and age of the other
ring, however, admits of little doubt. The archaic period of Babylonian
art may be said to close with the rise of Assyria in the fourteenth
century B.C.; and though archaic Babylonian intaglios continued to be
imported into the West down to the time of the Romans, it is not likely
that they were imitated by Western artists after the latter had become
acquainted with better and more attractive models. I think, therefore,
that the two rings may be assigned to the period of archaic Babylonian
power in western Asia, a period that begins with the victories of
Naram-Sin in Palestine in the seventeenth century B.C. or earlier, and
ends with the conquest of Babylon by the Assyrians and the establishment
of Assyrian supremacy. This is also the period to which I am inclined to
refer the introduction among the Phoenicians and Greeks of the column
and of certain geometrical patterns, which had their first home in
Babylonia.[35] The lentoid gems with their rude intaglios, found in the
islands, on the site of Heraeum, in the tombs of Mykenae and elsewhere,
belong to the same age, and point back to the loamy plain of Babylonia
where stone was rare and precious, and whence, consequently, the art of
gem-cutting was spread through the ancient world. We can thus understand
the existence of artistic designs and other evidences of civilizing
influence among a people who were not yet acquainted with the use of iron.
The early Chaldean Empire, in spite of the culture to which it had
attained, was still in the bronze age; iron was almost unknown, and its
tools and weapons were fashioned of stone, bone, and bronze. Had the
Greeks and the Phoenicians before them received their first lessons in
culture from Egypt or from Asia Minor, where the Khalybes and other allied
tribes had worked in iron from time immemorial, they would probably have
received this metal at the same time. But neither at Hissarlik nor at
Mykenae is there any trace of an iron age.
The second period of Western art and civilization is represented by some
of the objects found at Mykenae in the tombs themselves. The intaglios have
ceased to be Babylonian, and have become markedly Assyrian. First of all
we have a hunting scene, a favourite subject with Assyrian artists, but
quite unknown to genuine Hellenic art. The disposition of the figures is
that usual in Assyrian sculpture, and, like the Assyrian king, the
huntsman is represented as riding in a chariot. A comparison of this
hunting scene with the bas-reliefs on the tombstones which stood over the
graves shows that they belong to the same age, while the spiral
ornamentation of the stones is essentially Assyrian. Equally Assyrian,
though better engraved, is a lion on one of the gold prisms, which might
have been cut by an Assyrian workman, so true is it to its Oriental model,
and after this I would place the representation of a struggle between a
man (perhaps Herakles) and a lion, in which, though the lion and attitude
of the combatants are Assyrian, the man is no longer the Assyrian hero
Gisdhubar, but a figure of more Western type. In another intaglio,
representing a fight between armed warriors, the art has ceased to be
Assyrian, and is struggling to become native. We seem to be approaching
the period when Greece gave over walking in Eastern leading-strings, and
began to step forward firmly without help. As I believe, however, that the
tombs within the _enceinte_ are of older date than the Treasuries outside
the Acropolis, or the Gate of Lions which belongs to the same age, it is
plain that we have not yet reached the time when Assyro-Phoenician
influence began to decline in Greece. The lions above the gate would alone
be proof to the contrary.
But, in fact, Phoenician influence continued to be felt up to the end of
the seventh century B.C. Passing by the so-called Corinthian vases, or the
antiquities exhumed by General di Cesnola in Cyprus, where the
Phoenician element was strong, we have numerous evidences of the fact
from all parts of Greece. Two objects of bronze discovered at Olympia may
be specially signalized. One of these is an oblong plate, narrower at one
end than at the other, ornamented with _repousse_ work, and divided into
four compartments. In the first compartment are figures of the nondescript
birds so often seen on the "Corinthian" pottery; in the next come two
Assyrian gryphons standing, as usual, face to face; while the third
represents the contest of Herakles with the Kentaur, thoroughly Oriental
in design. The Kentaur has a human forefront, covered, however, with hair;
his tail is abnormally long, and a three-branched tree rises behind him.
The fourth and largest compartment contains the figure of the Asiatic
goddess with the four wings at the back, and a lion, held by the hind leg,
in either hand. The face of the goddess is in profile. The whole design is
Assyro-Phoenician, and is exactly reproduced on some square gold plates,
intended probably to adorn the breast, presented to the Louvre by the Duc
de Luynes. The other object to which I referred is a bronze dish,
ornamented on the inside with _repousse_ work, which at first sight looks
Egyptian, but is really that Phoenician modification of Egyptian art so
common in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. An inscription in the
Aramaic characters of the so-called Sidonian branch of the Phoenician
alphabet is cut on the outside, and reads: "Belonging to Neger, son of
Miga."[36] As the word used for "son" is the Aramaic _bar_ and not the
Phoenician _ben_, we may conclude that the owner of the dish had come
from northern Syria. It is interesting to find a silver cup embossed with
precisely the same kind of design, and also bearing an inscription in
Phoenician letters, among the treasures discovered in a tomb at
Palestrina, the ancient Praeneste, more than a year ago. This inscription
is even briefer than the other: "Eshmunya'ar son of 'Ashta,"[37] where,
though _ben_ is employed, the father's name has an Aramaic form. Helbig
would refer these Italian specimens of Phoenician skill to the
Carthaginian epoch, partly on the ground that an African species of ape
seems sometimes represented on them;[38] in this case they might be as
late as the fifth century before the Christian era.
During the earlier part of the second period of Phoenician influence,
Phoenicia and the Phoenician colonies were not the only channel by
which the elements of Assyrian culture found their way into the West. The
monuments and religious beliefs of Asia Minor enable us to trace their
progress from the banks of the Euphrates and the ranges of the Taurus,
through Cappadocia and Phrygia, to the coasts and islands of the AEgean.
The near affinity of Greek and Phrygian is recognized even by Plato;[39]
the legends of Midas and Gordius formed part of Greek mythology, and the
royal house of Mykenae was made to come with all its wealth from the golden
sands of the Paktolus; while on the other hand the cult of Ma, of Attys,
or of the Ephesian Artemis points back to an Assyrian origin. The
sculptures found by Perrot[40] and Texier constitute a link between the
prehistoric art of Greece and that of Asia Minor; the spiral ornaments
that mark the antiquities of Mykenae are repeated on the royal tombs of
Asia Minor; and the ruins of Sardis, where once ruled a dynasty derived by
Greek writers from Ninus or Nineveh, "the son of Bell," the grandson of
the Assyrian Herakles,[41] may yet pour a flood of light on the earlier
history of Greece. But it was rather in the first period, which I have
termed Phrygian, than in the second, that the influence of Asia Minor was
strongest. The figure of the goddess riding on a leopard, with mural crown
and peaked shoes, on the rock-tablets of Pterium,[42] is borrowed rather
from the cylinders of early Babylonia than from the sculptures of Assyria;
and the Hissarlik collection connects itself more with the primitive
antiquities of Santorin than with the later art of Mykenae and Cyprus. We
have already seen, however, the close relationship that exists between
some of the objects excavated at Mykenae and what we may call the
pre-Phoenician art of Ialysos,--that is to say, the objects in which the
influence of the East is indirect, and not direct. The discovery of
metallurgy is associated with Dodona, where the oracle long continued to
be heard in the ring of a copper chaldron, and where M. Karapanos has
found bronze plates with the geometrical and circular patterns which
distinguish the earliest art of Greece; now Dodona is the seat of primaeval
Greek civilization, the land of the Selloi or Helloi, of the Graioi
themselves, and of Pelasgian Zeus, while it is to the north that the
legends of Orpheus, of Musaeus, and of other early civilizers looked back.
But even at Dodona we may detect traces of Asiatic influence in the part
played there by the doves, as well as in the story of Deucalion's deluge,
and it may, perhaps, be not too rash to conjecture that even before the
days of Phoenician enterprise and barter, an echo of Babylonian
civilization had reached Greece through the medium of Asia Minor, whence
it was carried, partly across the bridge formed by the islands of the
Archipelago, partly through the mainland of Thrace and Epirus. The
Hittites, with their capital at Carchemish, seem to have been the centre
from which this borrowed civilization was spread northward and westward.
Here was the home of the art which characterizes Asia Minor, and we have
only to compare the bas-relief of Pterium with the rock sculptures found
by Mr. Davis associated with "Hamathite" hieroglyphics at Ibreer, in
Lycaonia,[43] to see how intimate is the connection between the two. These
hieroglyphics were the still undeciphered writing of the Hittite tribes
and if, as seems possible, the Cypriote syllabary were derived from them,
they would be a testimony to the western spread of Hittite influence at a
very early epoch. The Cypriote characters adopted into the alphabets of
Lycia and Karia, as well as the occurrence of the same characters on a
hone and some of the terra-cotta discs found by Dr. Schliemann at
Hissarlik, go to show that this influence would have extended, at any
rate, to the coasts of the sea.
The traces of Egyptian influence, on the contrary, are few and faint. No
doubt the Phoenician alphabet was ultimately of Egyptian origin, no
doubt, too, that certain elements of Phoenician art were borrowed from
Egypt, but before these were handed on to the West, they had first been
profoundly modified by the Phoenician settlers in the Delta and in
Canaan. The influence exercised immediately by Egypt upon Greece belongs
to the historic period; the legends which saw an Egyptian emigrant in
Kekrops or an Egyptian colony in the inhabitants of Argos were fables of a
late date. Whatever intercourse existed between Egypt and Greece in the
prehistoric period was carried on, not by the Egyptians, but by the
Phoenicians of the Delta; it was they who brought the scarabs of a
Thothmes or an Amenophis to the islands of the AEgean, like their
descendants afterwards in Italy, and the proper names found on the
Egyptian monuments of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, which
certain Egyptologists have identified with those of Greece and Asia Minor,
belong rather, I believe, to Libyan and Semitic tribes.[44] Like the
sphinxes at Spata, the indications of intercourse with Egypt met with at
Mykenae prove nothing more than the wide extent of Phoenician commerce
and the existence of Phoenician colonies at the mouths of the Nile.
Ostrich-eggs covered with stucco dolphins have been found not only at
Mykenae, but also in the grotto of Polledrara near Vulci in Italy; the
Egyptian porcelain excavated at Mykenae is painted to represent the fringed
dress of an Assyrian or a Phoenician, not of an Egyptian; and though a
gold mask belonging to Prince Kha-em-Uas, and resembling the famous masks
of Mykenae, has brought to the Louvre from an Apis chamber, a similar mask
of size was discovered last year in a tomb on the site of Aradus. Such
intercourse, however, as existed between Greece and the Delta must have
been very restricted; otherwise we should surely have some specimens of
writing, some traces of the Phoenician alphabet. It would not have been
left to the Aramaeans of Syria to introduce the "Kadmeian letters" into
Greece, and Mykenae, rather than Thebes, would have been made the centre
from which they were disseminated. Indeed, we may perhaps infer that even
the coast of Asia Minor, near as it was to the Phoenician settlements at
Kamirus and elsewhere, could have held but little intercourse with the
Phoenicians of Egypt from the fact that the Cypriote syllabary was so
long in use upon it, and that the alphabets afterwards employed were
derived only indirectly from the Phoenician through the medium of the
Greek.
One point more now alone needs to be noticed. The long-continued influence
upon early Greek culture which we ascribe to the Phoenicians cannot but
have left its mark upon the Greek vocabulary also. Some at least of the
names given by the Phoenicians to the objects of luxury they brought
with them must have been adopted by the natives of Hellas. We know that
this is the case with the letters of the alphabet; is it also the case
with other words? If not, analogy would almost compel us to treat the
evidences that have been enumerated of Phoenician influence as illusory,
and to fall back upon the position of O. K. Mueller and his school. By way
of answer I would refer to the list of Greek words, the Semitic origin of
which admits of no doubt, lately given by Dr. August Mueller in
Bezzenberger's "Beitrage zur Kunde der indogermanischen Sprachen."[45]
Amongst these we find articles of luxury like "linen," "shirt,"
"sackcloth," "myrrh," and "frankincense," "galbanum" and "cassia,"
"cinnamon" and "soap," "lyres" and "wine-jars," "balsam" and "cosmetics,"
as well, possibly, as "fine linen" and "gold," along with such evidences
of trade and literature as the "pledge," "the writing tablet," and the
"shekel." If these were the only instances of Semitic tincture, they would
be enough to prove the early presence of the Semitic Phoenicians in
Greece. But we must remember that they are but samples of a class, and
that many words borrowed during the heroic age may have dropped out of use
or been conformed to the native part of the vocabulary long before the
beginning of the written literature, while it would be in the lesser known
dialects of the islands that the Semitic element was strongest. We know
that the dialect of Cyprus was full of importations from the East.
In what precedes I have made no reference to the Homeric poems, and the
omission may be thought strange. But Homeric illustrations of the presence
of the Phoenicians in Greece will occur to every one, while both the
Iliad and the Odyssey in their existing form are too modern to be quoted
without extreme caution. A close investigation of their language shows
that it is the slow growth of generations; AEolic formulae from the lays
first recited in the towns of the Troad are embodied in Ionic poems where
old Ionic, new Ionic, and even Attic jostle against one another, and
traditional words and phrases are furnished with mistaken meanings or new
forms coined by false analogy. It is difficult to separate the old from
the new, to say with certainty that this allusion belongs to the heroic
past, this to the Homer of Theopompus and Euphorion, the contemporary of
the Lydian Gyges. The art of Homer is not the art of Mykenae and of the
early age of Phoenician influence; iron is already taking the place of
bronze, and the shield of Akhilles or the palace of Alkinous bear witness
to a developed art which has freed itself from its foreign bonds. Six
times are Phoenicia and the Phoenicians mentioned in the Odyssey, once
in the Iliad;[46] elsewhere it is Sidon and the Sidonians that represented
them, never Tyre.[47] Such passages, therefore, cannot belong to the epoch
of Tyrian supremacy, which goes back, at all events, to the age of David,
but rather to the brief period when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser laid
siege to Tyre, and his successor Sargon made Sidon powerful at its
expense. This, too, was the period when Sargon set up his record in
Cyprus, "the isle of Yavnan" or the Ionians, when Assyria first came into
immediate contact with the Greeks, and when Phoenician artists worked at
the court of Nineveh and carried their wares to Italy and Sardinia. But it
was not the age to which the relics of Mykenae, in spite of paradoxical
doubts, reach back, nor that in which the sacred bull of Astarte carried
the Phoenician maiden Europa to her new home in the west.
A. H. SAYCE, in _Contemporary Review_.