Part 5 (1/2)

But the most striking of the Phoenician sepulchral monuments are to be found in the north of Phoenicia, and not in the south, in the neighbourhood, not of Tyre and Sidon, but of Marathus and Aradus. Two of them, known as the Meghazil,[673] form a group which is very remarkable, and which, if we may trust the restoration of M. Thobois,[674] must have had considerable architectural merit. Situated very near each other, on the culminating point of a great plateau of rock, they dominate the country far and wide, and attract the eye from a long distance. One seems to have been in much simpler and better taste than the other.

M. Renan calls it ”a real masterpiece, in respect of proportion, of elegance, and of majesty.”[675] It is built altogether in three stages.

First, there is a circular bas.e.m.e.nt story flanked by four figures of lions, attached to the wall behind them, and only showing in front of it their heads, their shoulders, and their fore paws. This bas.e.m.e.nt, which has a height of between seven and eight feet, is surmounted by a cylindrical tower in two stages, the lower stage measuring fourteen and the upper, which is domed, ten feet. The bas.e.m.e.nt is composed of four great stones, the entire tower above it is one huge monolith. An unusual and very effective ornamentation crowns both stages of the tower, consisting of a series of gradines at top with square machicolations below.

The other monument of the pair, distant about twenty feet from the one already described, is architecturally far less happy. It is composed of four members, viz. a low plinth for base, above this a rectangular pedestal, surmounted by a strong band or cornice; next, a monolithic cylinder, without ornaments, which contracts slightly as it ascends; and, lastly, a pentagonal pyramid at the top. The pedestal is exceedingly rough and unfinished; generally, the workmans.h.i.+p is rude, and the different members do not a.s.sort well one with another. Still it would seem that the two monuments belong to the same age and are parts of the same plan.[676] Their lines are parallel, as are those of the subterranean apartments which they cover, and they stand within a single enclosure. Whether the same architect designed them both it is impossible to determine, but if so he must have been one of the cla.s.s of artists who have sometimes happy and sometimes unhappy inspirations.

Both the Meghazil are superimposed upon subterranean chambers, containing niches for bodies, and reached by a flight of steps cut in the rock, the entrance to which is at some little distance from the monuments.[677] But there is nothing at all striking or peculiar in the chambers, which are without ornament of any kind.

Another tomb, in the vicinity of the Meghazil, is remarkable chiefly for the care taken to shelter and protect the entrance to the set of chambers which it covers.[678] The monument is a simple one. A square monolith, crowned by a strong cornice, stands upon a base consisting of two steps. Above the cornice is another monolith, the lower part squared and the upper shaped into a pyramid. The upper part of the pyramid has crumbled away, but enough remains to show the angle of the slope, and to indicate for the original erection a height of about twenty feet. At the distance of about ten yards from the base of the monument is a second erection, consisting of two tiers of large stones, which roof in the entrance to a flight of eighteen steps. These steps lead downwards to a sloping pa.s.sage, in which are sepulchral niches, and thence into two chambers, the inner one of which is almost directly under the main monument. Probably, a block of stone, movable but removed with difficulty, originally closed the entrance at the point where the steps begin. This stone ordinarily prevented ingress, but when a fresh corpse was to be admitted, or funeral ceremonies were to be performed in one of the chambers, it could be ”rolled”[679] or dragged away.

Phoenician architects were, as a general rule, exceedingly sparing in the use of ornament. Neither the pillar, nor the arch, much less the vault, was a feature in their princ.i.p.al buildings, which affected straight lines, right-angles, and a ma.s.sive construction, based upon the Egyptian. The pillar came ultimately to be adopted, to a certain extent, from the Greeks; but only the simplest forms, the Doric and Ionic, were in use, if we except certain barbarous types which the people invented for themselves. The true arch was scarcely known in Phoenicia, at any rate till Roman times, though false arches were not infrequent in the gateways of towns and the doors of houses.[680] The external ornamentation of buildings was chiefly by cornices of various kinds, by bas.e.m.e.nt mouldings, by carvings about doorways,[681] by hemispherical or pyramidical roofs, and by the use of bevelled stones in the walls. The employment of animal forms in external decoration was exceedingly rare; and the half lions of the circular Meghazil of Amrith are almost unique.

In internal ornamentation there was greater variety. Pavements were sometimes of mosaic, and glowed with various colours;[682] sometimes they were of alabaster slabs elaborately patterned. Alabaster slabs also, it is probable, adorned the walls of temples and houses, excepting where woodwork was employed, as in the Temple of Solomon. There is much richness and beauty in many of the slabs now in the Phoenician collection of the Louvre,[683] especially in those which exhibit the forms of sphinxes or griffins. Many of the patterns most affected are markedly a.s.syrian in character, as the rosette, the palm-head, the intertwined ribbons, and the rows of gradines which occur so frequently.

Even the Sphinxes are rather a.s.syrian than Egyptian in character; and exhibit the recurved wings, which are never found in the valley of the Nile. In almost all the forms employed there is a modification of the original type, sufficient to show that the Phoenician artist did not care merely to reproduce.

On the whole the architecture must be p.r.o.nounced wanting in originality and in a refined taste. What M. Renan says of Phoenician art in general[684] is especially true of Phoenician architecture. ”Phoenician art, which issued, as it would seem, originally from mere troglodytism, was, from the time when it arrived at the need of ornament, essentially an art of imitation. That art was, above all, industrial; that art never raised itself for its great public monuments to a style that was at once elegant and durable. The origin of Phoenician architecture was the excavated rock, not the column, as was the case with the Greeks. The wall replaced the excavated rock after a time, but without wholly losing its character. There is nothing that leads us to believe that the Phoenicians knew how to construct a keyed vault. The monolithic principle which dominated the Phoenician and Syrian art, even after it had taken Greek art for its model, is the exact contrary of the h.e.l.lenic style. Greek architecture starts from the principle of employing small stones, and proclaims the princ.i.p.al loudly. At no time did the Greeks extract from Pentelicus blocks at all comparable for size with those of Baalbek or of Egypt; they saw no use in doing so; on the contrary, with ma.s.ses of such enormity, which it is desired to use in their entirety, the architect is himself dominated; the material, instead of being subordinate to the design of the edifice, runs counter to the design and contradicts it. The monuments on the Acropolis of Athens would be impossible with blocks of the size usual in Syria.”[685] Thus there is always something heavy, rude, and coa.r.s.e in the Phoenician buildings, which betray their troglodyte origin by an over-ma.s.sive and unfinished appearance.

There is also a want of originality, more especially in the ornamentation. Egypt, a.s.syria, and Greece have furnished the ”motives”

which lie at the root of almost all the decorative art that is to be met with, either in the mother country or in the colonies. Winged disks, uraei, scarabs, sphinxes, have been adopted from Egypt; a.s.syria has furnished gradines, lotus blossoms, rosettes, the palm-tree ornament, the ribbon ornament, and the form of the lion; Greece has supplied pillars, pediments, festoons, and chimaeras. Native talent has contributed little or nothing to the ornamentation of buildings, if we except the modification of the types which have been derived from foreign sources.

Finally, there is a want of combination and general plan in the Phoenician constructions where they fall into groups. ”This is sensibly felt,” according to M. Renan, ”at Amrith, at Kabr-Hiram, and at Um-el-Awamid. In the remains still visible in these localities there are many fine ideas, many beautiful details; but they do not fall under any general dominant plan, as do the buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.

One seems to see a set of people who are fond of working in stone for its own sake, but who do not care to arrive at a mutual understanding in order to produce in common a single work, since they do not know that it is the conception of a grand whole which const.i.tutes greatness in art.

Hence the incompleteness of the monuments; there is not a tomb to which the relations of the deceased have deemed it fitting to give the finis.h.i.+ng touches; there is everywhere a certain egotism, like that which in later times prevented the Mussulman monuments from enduring. A pa.s.sing pleasure in art does not induce men to finish, since finis.h.i.+ng requires a certain stiffness of will. In general, the ancient Phoenicians appear to have had the spirit of sculptors rather than of architects. They did not construct in great ma.s.ses, but every one laboured on his own account. Hence there was no exact measurement, and no symmetry. Even the capitals of the columns at Um-el-Awamid are not alike; in the portions which most evidently correspond the details are different.”[686]

CHAPTER VII--aeSTHETIC ART

Recent discoveries of Phoenician artistic remains-- Phoenician sculpture--Statues and busts--Animal forms--Bas- reliefs--Hercules and Geryon--Scenes on sarcophagi-- Phoenicians metal castings--Jachin and Boaz--Solomon's ”Molten Sea”--Solomon's lavers--Statuettes in bronze-- Embossed work upon cups and paterae--Cup of Praeneste-- Intaglios on cylinders and gems--Phoenician painting--Tinted statues--Paintings on terra-cotta and clay.

Phoenician aesthetic art embraced sculpture, metal-casting, intaglio, and painting to a small extent. Situated as the Phoenicians were, in the immediate neighbourhood of nations which had practised from a remote antiquity the imitation of natural forms, and brought into contact by their commercial transactions with others, with whom art of every kind was in the highest esteem--adroit moreover with their hands, clever, active, and above all else practical--it was scarcely possible that they should not, at an early period in their existence as a nation, interest themselves in what they found so widely appreciated, and become themselves ambitious of producing such works as they saw everywhere produced, admired, and valued. The mere commercial instinct would lead them to supply a cla.s.s of goods which commanded a high price in the world's markets; while it is not to be supposed that they were, any more than other nations, devoid of those aesthetic propensities which find a vent in what are commonly called the ”fine arts,” or less susceptible of that natural pleasure which successful imitation evokes from all who find themselves capable of it. Thus, we might have always safely concluded, even without any material evidence of it, that the Phoenicians had an art of their own, either original or borrowed; but we are now able to do more than this. Recent researches in Phoenicia Proper, in Cyprus, in Sardina, and elsewhere, have recovered such a ma.s.s of Phoenician artistic remains, that it is possible to form a tolerably complete idea of the character of their aesthetic art, of its methods, its aims, and its value.

Phoenician sculpture, even at its best, is somewhat rude. The country possesses no marble, and has not even any stone of a fine grain. The cretaceous limestone, which is the princ.i.p.al geological formation, is for the most part so pierced with small holes and so thickly sown with fossil sh.e.l.ls as to be quite unsuited for the chisel; and even the better blocks, which the native sculptors were careful to choose, are not free from these defects, and in no case offer a grain that is satisfactory. To meet these difficulties, the Phoenician sculptor occasionally imported his blocks either from Egypt or from the volcanic regions of Taurus and Ama.n.u.s;[71] but it was not until he had transported himself to Cyprus, and found there an abundance of a soft, but fairly smooth, compact, and h.o.m.ogeneous limestone, that he worked freely, and produced either statues or bas-reliefs in any considerable number.[72] The Cyprian limestone is very easy to work. ”It is a whitish stone when it comes out of the quarry, but by continued exposure to the air the tone becomes a greyish yellow, which, though a little dull, is not disagreeable to the eye. The nail can make an impression on it, and it is worked by the chisel much more easily and more rapidly than marble. But it is in the plastic arts as in literature and poetry--what costs but little trouble has small chance of enduring. The Cyprian limestone is too soft to furnish the effects and the contrasts which marble offers, so to speak, spontaneously; it is incapable of receiving the charming polish which makes so strong an opposition to the dark shadows of the parts where the chisel has scooped deep. The chisel, whatever efforts it may make and however laboriously it may be applied, cannot impress on such material the strong and bold touches which indicate the osseous structure, and make the muscles and the veins show themselves under the epidermis in Greek statuary. The sculptor's work is apt to be at once finikin and lax; it wants breadth, and it wants decision. Moreover, the material, having little power of resistance, retains but ill what the chisel once impressed; the more delicate markings and the more lifelike touches that it once received, it loses easily through friction or exposure to rough weather. A certain number of the sculptured figures found by M. Di Cesnola at Athienau were discovered under conditions that were quite peculiar, having pa.s.sed from the shelter of a covered chamber to that of a protecting bed of dust, which had hardened and adhered to their surfaces; and these figures had preserved an unusual freshness, and seem as if just chiselled; but, saving these exceptions, the Cypriot figures have their angles rounded, and their projections softened down. It is like a page of writing, where the ink, before it had time to dry, preserving its sharpness of tone, has been absorbed by the blotting paper and has left only pale and feeble traces.”[73]

Another striking defect in the Phoenician, or at any rate in the Cyprio-Phoenician, sculpture, and one that cannot be excused on account of any inherent weakness in the material, is the thinness and flatness of the greater part of the figures. The sculptor seems to have been furnished by the stonecutter, not so much with solid blocks of stone, as with tolerably thick slabs.[74] These he fas.h.i.+oned carefully in front, and produced statues, which, viewed in front, are lifelike and fairly satisfactory. But to the sides and back of the slab he paid little attention, not intending that his work should be looked at from all quarters, but that the spectator should directly face it. The statues were made to stand against walls,[75] or in niches, or back to back, the heels and backs touching;[76] they were not, properly speaking, works _in the round_, but rather _alti relievi_ a little exaggerated, not actually part of the wall, but laid closely against it. A striking example of this kind of work may be seen in a figure now at New York, which appears to represent a priest, whereof a front view is given by Di Cesnola in his ”Cyprus,” and a side view by Perrot and Chipiez in their ”History of Ancient Art.” The head and neck are in good proportion, but the rest of the figure is altogether unduly thin, while for some s.p.a.ce above the feet it is almost literally a slab, scarcely fas.h.i.+oned at all.

This fault is less p.r.o.nounced in some statues than in others, and from a certain number of the statuettes is wholly absent. This is notably the case in a figure found at Golgi, which represents a female arrayed in a long robe, the ample folds of which she holds back with one hand, while the other hand is advanced, and seems to have held a lotus flower.

Three graceful tresses fall on either side of the neck, round which is a string of beads or pearls, with an amulet as pendant; while a long veil, surmounted by a diadem, hangs from the back of the head. This statue is in no respect narrow or flat, as may be seen especially from the side view given by Di Cesnola;[77] but it is short and inelegant, though not wanting in dignity; and it is disfigured by sandalled feet of a very disproportionate size, which stand out offensively in front. The figure has been viewed as a representation of the G.o.ddess Astarte or Ashtoreth;[78] but the identification can scarcely be regarded as more than a reasonable conjecture.

The general defects of Phoenician statuary, besides want of finish and flatness, are a stiff and conventional treatment, recalling the art of Egypt and a.s.syria, a want of variety, and a want of life. Most of the figures stand evenly on the two feet, and have the arms pendant at the two sides, with the head set evenly, neither looking to the right nor to the left, while even the arrangement of the drapery is one of great uniformity. In the points where there is any variety, the variety is confined within very narrow limits. One foot may be a little advanced;[79] one arm may be placed across the breast, either as confined by the robe,[710] or as holding something, e.g. a bird or a flower.[711] In female figures both arms may be laid along the thighs,[712] or both be bent across the bosom, with the hands clasping the b.r.e.a.s.t.s,[713] or one hand may be so placed, and the other depend in front.[714] The hair and beard are mostly arranged with the utmost regularity in crisp curls, resembling the a.s.syrian; where tresses are worn, they are made to hang, whatever their number, with exact uniformity on either side.[715] Armlets and bracelets appear always in pairs, and are exactly similar; the two sides of a costume correspond perfectly; and in the groups the figures have, as nearly as possible, the same att.i.tude.

Repose is no doubt the condition of human existence which statuary most easily and most naturally expresses; and few things are more obnoxious to a refined taste than that sculpture which, like that of Roubiliac, affects movement, fidget, flutter, and unquiet. But in the Phoenician sculpture the repose is overdone; except in the expression of faces, there is scarcely any life at all. The figures do nothing; they simply stand to be looked at. And they stand stiffly, sometimes even awkwardly, rarely with anything like elegance or grace. The heads, indeed, have life and vigour, especially after the artists have become acquainted with Greek models;[716] but they are frequently too large for the bodies whereto they are attached, and the face is apt to wear a smirk that is exceedingly disagreeable. This is most noticeable in the Cypriot series, as will appear by the accompanying representations; but it is not confined to them, since it reappears in the bronzes found in Phoenicia Proper.

Phoenician statues are almost always more or less draped. Sometimes nothing is worn besides the short tunic, or _shenti_, of the Egyptians, which begins below the navel and terminates at the knee.[717] Sometimes there is added to this a close-fitting s.h.i.+rt, like a modern ”jersey,”

which has short sleeves and clings to the figure, so that it requires careful observation to distinguish between a statue thus draped and one which has the _shenti_ only.[718] But there are also a number of examples where the entire figure is clothed from the head to the ankles, and nothing is left bare but the face, the hands, and the feet. A cap, something like a Phrygian bonnet, covers the head; a long-sleeved robe reaches from the neck to the ankles, or sometimes rests upon the feet; and above this is a mantle or scarf thrown over the left shoulder, and hanging down nearly to the knees. Ultimately a drapery greatly resembling that of the Greeks seems to have been introduced; a long cloak, or _chlamys_, is worn, which falls into numerous folds, and is disposed about the person according to the taste and fancy of the wearer, but so as to leave the right arm free.[719] Statues of this cla.s.s are scarcely distinguishable from Greek statues of a moderately good type.

Phoenician sculptors _in the round_ did not very often indulge in the representation of animal forms. The lion, however, was sometimes chiselled in stone, either partially, as in a block of stone found by M. Renan at Um-el-Awamid, or completely, as in a statuette brought by General Di Cesnola from Cyprus. The representations. .h.i.therto discovered have not very much merit. We may gather from them that the sculptors were unacquainted with the animal itself, had never seen the king of beasts sleeping in the shade or stretching himself and yawning as he awoke, or walking along with a haughty and majestic slowness, or springing with one bound upon his prey, but had simply studied without much attention or interest the types furnished them by Egyptian or a.s.syrian artists, who were familiar with the beast himself. The representations are consequently in every case feeble and conventional; in some they verge on the ridiculous. What, for instance, can be weaker than the figure above given from the great work of Perrot and Chipiez, with its good-humoured face, its tongue hanging out of its mouth, its tottering forelegs, and its general air of imbecility? The lioness'

head represented in the same work is better, but still leaves much to be desired, falling, as it does, very far behind the best a.s.syrian models.

Nor were the sculptors much more successful in their mode of expressing animals with whose forms they were perfectly well acquainted. The sheep carried on the back of a shepherd, brought from Cyprus and now in the museum of New York, is a very ill-shaped sheep, and the doves so often represented are very poor doves.[720] They are just recognisable, and that is the most that can be said for them. A dog in stone,[721] found at Athienau, is somewhat better, equally the dogs of the Egyptians and a.s.syrians. On the other hand, the only fully modelled horses that have been found are utterly childish and absurd.[722]

The reliefs of the Phoenicians are very superior to their statues. They vary in their character from almost the lowest kind of relief to the highest. On dresses, on s.h.i.+elds, on slabs, and on some sarcophagi it is much higher than is usual even in Greece. A bas-relief of peculiar interest was discovered at Athienau by General Di Cesnola, and has been represented both by him and by the Italian traveller Ceccaldi.[723] It represents Hercules capturing the cattle of Geryon from the herdsman Eurytion, and gives us reason to believe that that myth was a native Phoenician legend adopted by the Greeks, and not a h.e.l.lenic one imported into Phoenicia. The general character of the sculpture is archaic and a.s.syrian; nor is there a trace of Greek influence about it. Hercules, standing on an elevated block of stone at the extreme left, threatens the herdsman, who responds by turning towards him, and making a menacing gesture with his right hand, while in his left, instead of a club, he carries an entire tree. His hair and beard are curled in the a.s.syrian fas.h.i.+on, while his figure, though short, is strong and muscular. In front of him are his cattle, mixed up in a confused and tangled ma.s.s, some young, but most of them full grown, and amounting to the number of seventeen. They are in various att.i.tudes, and are drawn with much spirit, recalling groups of cattle in the sculptures of a.s.syria and Egypt, but surpa.s.sing any such group in the vigour of their life and movement. Above, in an upper field or plain, divided from the under one by a horizontal line, is the triple-headed dog, Orthros, running full speed towards Hercules, and scarcely checked by the arrow which has met him in mid career, and entered his neck at the point of junction between the second and the third head.[724] The bas-relief is three feet two inches in length, and just a little short of two feet in height. It served to ornament a huge block of stone which formed the pedestal of a colossal statue of Hercules, eight feet nine inches high.[725]

A sarcophagus, on which the relief is low, has been described and figured by Di Cesnola,[726] who discovered it in the same locality as the sculpture which has just engaged our attention. The sarcophagus, which had a lid guarded by lions at the four corners, was ornamented at both ends and along both sides by reliefs. The four scenes depicted appear to be distinct and separate. At one end Perseus, having cut off Medusa's head and placed it in his wallet, which he carries behind him by means of a stick pa.s.sed over his shoulder, departs homewards followed by his dog. Medusa's body, though sunk upon one knee, is still upright, and from the bleeding neck there spring the forms of Chrysaor and Pegasus. At the opposite end of the tomb is a biga drawn by two horses, and containing two persons, the charioteer and the owner, who is represented as bearded, and rests his hand upon the chariot-rim. The horse on the right hand, which can alone be distinctly seen, is well proportioned and spirited. He is impatient and is held in by the driver, and prevented from proceeding at more than a foot's pace. On the longer sides are a hunting scene, and a banqueting scene. In a wooded country, indicated by three tall trees, a party, consisting of five individuals, engages in the pleasures of the chase. Four of the five are accoutred like Greek soldiers; they wear crested helmets, cuira.s.ses, belts, and a short tunic ending in a fringe: the arms which they carry are a spear and a round buckler or s.h.i.+eld. The fifth person is an archer, and has a lighter equipment; he wears a cloth about his loins, a short tunic, and a round cap on his head. The design forms itself into two groups. On the right two of the spearmen are engaged with a wild boar, which they are wounding with their lances; on the left the two other spearmen and the archer are attacking a wild bull. In the middle a c.o.c.k separates the two groups, while at the two extremities two animal forms, a horse grazing and a dog trying to make out a scent, balance each other. The fourth side of the sarcophagus presents us with a banqueting scene. On four couches, much like the a.s.syrian,[727] are arranged the banqueters. At the extreme right the couch is occupied by a single person, who has a long beard and extends a wine-cup towards an attendant, a naked youth, who is advancing towards him with a wine-jug in one hand, and a ladle or strainer in the other. The three other couches are occupied respectively by three couples, each comprising a male and a female. The male figure reclines in the usual att.i.tude, half sitting and half lying, with the left arm supported on two pillows;[728] the female sits on the edge of the couch, with her feet upon a footstool. The males hold wine-cups; of the females, one plays upon the lyre, while the two others fondle with one hand their lover or husband. A fourth female figure, erect in the middle between the second and third couches, plays the double flute for the delectation of the entire party. All the figures, except the boy attendant, are decently draped, in robes with many folds, resembling the Greek. At the side of each couch is a table, on which are spread refreshments, while at the extreme left is a large bowl or amphora, from which the wine-cups may be replenished. This is placed under the shade of a tree, which tells us that the festivity takes place in a garden.[729]

No one can fail to see, in this entire series of sculptures, the dominant influence of Greece. While the form of the tomb, and the lions that ornament the covering, are unmistakably Cyprio-Phoenician, the reliefs contain scarcely a feature which is even Oriental; all has markedly the colouring and the physiognomy of h.e.l.lenism. Yet Cyprian artists probably executed the work. There are little departures from Greek models, which indicate the ”barbarian” workman, as the introduction of trees in the backgrounds, the shape of the furniture, the recurved wings of the Gorgon, and the idea of hunting the wild bull.