Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/282

 258 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. than among those of the east ; at Carthage and in Sardinia they were farther from Nineveh and Babylon than from the Delta ports. We have more than one proof that Carthage kept up intercourse with Egypt, and that, over the whole northern coast of Africa, Egyptian taste made itself felt in architectural and ornamental details down even to the first century of our era. 1 We are then not surprised to find Egyptian types prevailing here both in number and quality. The history of Sardinia is little known, but that little allows us to believe that Caralis, Tharros, and all those other towns whose spoils fill the modern museums of the island, were never really prosperous and rich except between the end of the sixth and the end of the third century, at the time when Carthage was supreme over the whole western basin of the Mediterranean. It was then to Carthage, and to Carthage alone, that Sardinia owed both the necessaries and the luxuries of life. We have good reason to suspect that many of these seals were made in the Punic capital, but others seem to have been cut in the island itself. All those who have explored it agree upon this : that in the neighbourhoods of the principal cemeteries the very rocks from which these intaglios are cut are all to be found. Half- finished scarabs were found ; lumps of jasper roughly shaped into the form of a seal. 2 This fact deserves to be remembered ; gem cutting is a very delicate art, and it is curious to find it practised under the Carthaginian rule, in an island which seems to have fallen back into a kind of barbarism under the Romans. We must now bring this study of Phoenician glyptics to a close. We may even be blamed for dwelling so long on monuments dis- tinguished neither for originality of theme nor beauty of execution, but it was necessary to show that in this walk also the Phoenicians had deserved well of mankind. 3 They showed their usual good 1 See Vol. I. pp. 374-376. 2 CRESPI, Catalogo, p. 131 ; SPANO, Bullettino. 3 For more complete means of comparison than we have had space to afford him, the reader may consult the Melanges of M. DE VOGUE, the Siegel und Gemmen mit aramceischen, phxnikischen altebraischen, himjaritischen, nabatceischen und altsyrischen Inschriften (Breslau, 1866) of LEVY, and the Sceaux et cachets Israelites, pheniciens et syriens, suivis d ' lipigrapkes pheniciennes inedites sur divers Objets et de deux Intailles Cypriotes (forty-eight pages and two plates ; extracted from the Journal asiatique for 1883) of M. CLERMONT-GANNEAU. Many of the types here studied and reproduced with M. Clermont-Ganneau's usual precision are identical with those we have described.