Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/494

 470 History of Art in Antiquity. kinds, and thus favoured its manufacture. We learn from Athenxus that, at a banquet given at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus, the feet of the g^uests, as they reclined upon couches, rested upon Persian carpets, upon which animals were figured in a wonderful • manner.^ Under the rule of the successors of Alexander, then, carpet manu&cture was in full swing in Persia, where it has con- tinued to the present day ; but it has relinquished its former taste for animal portraiture and exclusively confines itsdf to ornament derived from geometrical and vegetable forms. These it has con- ventionalized into what is commonly called arabesque. It would be interesting to know if in the patterns which Persia has' now repeated for centuries, any can travel back to antiquity. M. Fig. 241.— Device taken rron a carpet, It|Mdiaii. Houssay, with great ingenuity, has tried to show that the carpet pattern (Fig. 241) was suggested by the bull capital at Persepolis, where the animals appear back to back. Whether the conjecture can ever become an established fact must for the present remain an open question, though it is sufficiently ingenious to deserve recognition. When we described the enamelled sculptures at Susa, we pointed out that if one at least of the themes treated by the enamellist belonged to Persia, the technique was wholly Susian and Babylonian ; that, according to all appearance, the art of enamel did not acquire a firm foothold in the country until the close of the Achsmenid era. Our view is confirmed by the late excavations at Susa, and others made in several parts of the territory, in that no fragment whatever of enamelled pottery has Digitized by Google
 * Atheiueas, v. 197, B.