Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/226

 2O2 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. is not to be met with in that of Egypt ; the plastic symbolism of that country was fixed before he was acclimatized in the Nile valley, and the Egyptians were too conservative to admit him either into the lists of their scribes or pattern books of their decorative artists. 1 It was not so, however, with the Chaldseans and Assyrians. The beginnings of their art were also remote, but far less remote than those of Egypt, while in later years they were more tolerant of change, innovation, and the admission of new elements. We do not know when the horse made his first appearance in Mesopotamia, but it is certain that he was there employed in the creation of those fantastic animals which were first used to embody religious conceptions and afterwards sunk to the condition of ornamental motives. The passage has often been quoted where Berosus describes the hybrid forms in which life commenced upon the earth, accord- ing to the tradition of his people. 2 In his list of monsters figure "men with horse's feet, and others with the hind-quarters of a horse, while in front they were entirely human, giving them the appearance of hippo-centaurs." Farther on he speaks of " dog- headed horses," and of "beasts with horses' heads and fishes' tails." This latter type is the hippo -campus of the Greeks. And the historian tells us that he saw all these strange beasts figured in the temple of Bel at Babylon ; 3 he did not invent them or take them from the descriptions of previous writers. Several of the types mentioned by Berosus are no longer to be encountered on the Chaldaeo-Assyrian monuments, but from what has already been found we may fairly hope in time to discover 1 See M. E. LEFEBURE, Sur Fandennete du cheval en Egypte (Annuaire de la faculte des lettres de Lyon, 2nd year ; Histoire et Geographic, part i. p. i). He admits that there is absolutely nothing to suggest the presence of the horse in Egypt at the time of the ancient empire, while he thinks he can prove that it was already known and acclimatized under the Theban Pharaohs of the middle empire ; he admits, however, that it was not used in war until the new empire, towards the time of the eighteenth dynasty. Even if we accept his conclusions, our assertion will remain good that the repertory to which the sacred and secular artists of Egypt turned for their motives and types was closed long before the horse became common in the Nile valley. The researches of M. Maspero all tend to show that in the Egypt of Thothmes and Rameses there was nothing of which the framework had not been set up in the days of the ancient empire. 2 C. MULLER, Fragmenta historicorum Grcecorum (Didot's edition, vol. ii. fragment i). vaa> ava.KLcr Lcr6a.i.