Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/283

 GKMS. 259 sense in discarding the cylinder for the cone and scarab, both of which gave a better impression and gave it more rapidly ; we are inclined to believe that they were the first to fix seals in rings, an example by which the Greeks were to profit ; without the necessity for producing works of art within such a narrow compass, the latter might never have become the great glyptic artists they were. In any case, we know that Greek engravers drew many a hint from the seals carried by the Phoenician merchants all over the ancient world. Thus in the collection of clay impressions picked up near a temple in the acropolis of Selinus a certain number of intaglios quite similar to those we have been describing were mixed with others showing the favourite types of archaic Greek art. 1 There are a great many Egyptian symbols, such as the sacred boat, the winged globe, the dog-headed deity, the uraeus, etc. It is possible that some of these impressions were made by the very scarabs that have been found. On one impression we find a bull brought down by a lion ; on another the Punic type of a horse's head, near this a woman's name, Mishath, appears in Phoenician letters. These merchants' seals do not betray much inventive power, but they may well have suggested types for some of the early coins of Greece. It would be interesting to examine the oldest Greek issues, especially those of Cyprus and Asia Minor, from this point of view ; but this is hardly the place for such a comparison. 2 We have even refrained from entering into any detailed accounts of Phoenician numismatic types ; the few we have reproduced owe their place in our pages to the light they could throw on the popularity and vitality of this or that plastic motive. Our aim has been to find out what Phoenicia received from her predecessors, from Egypt, Chaldsea, and Assyria, and how much she increased the heritage of the past from her own stores. Now money was a Greek or Lydian invention ; in either case it was the Greeks who carried its use over the whole Mediterranean basin ; in that 1 See SIG. SALINAS'S interesting paper entitled, Dei sigilli di Creta rinvenuti a Selinunte e ora conservati net Museo nazionak di Palermo, 4to, Roma, 1883, thirty pages and fifteen excellent plates. Sig. Salinas gives the impressions he believes to be Phoenician in plate xv., where they are numbered from 402 to 422. 2 The latest work on the Cypriot coinage is the dissertation of M. Six, entitled, Du dassement des Series Cypriotes, 8vo, 126 pages and three plates (extracted from the Rei'ue numismatique, third and fourth quarters, 1883). Phoenician numismatics deserve to be the object of a similar study, and M. Six is in a better position than any one else to carry it out.