Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/300

 276 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. sufficient to support the deduction which has been drawn from it. The inscription seems to show that its proprietor attached peculiar importance to it, and we are therefore tempted to believe that it was looked upon as a rarity in its way, and to ask whether it may not owe its existence to the caprice of some Greek, traveller visiting Egypt or Phoenicia? Charmed with the transparent brilliancy of the enamel which he saw glowing on the least important products of local industry, he may have commissioned the vase and supplied its design and inscription ; he may have had the whole thing carried out under his own eyes by one of those oriental workmen whose dexterity is always a marvel to travellers. Whatever the value of our hypothesis may be, we have serious reasons for thinking that Greece never adopted this industry. The excavations at Cameiros have enriched the Louvre and the British Museum with a large number of objects in glazed earthenware ; in our Plate V. a few specimens from the Louvre are reproduced. Some little vases of the same kind have been found in Egypt, in Etruria, and at Athens. 1 By comparing them all we can arrange a series in which nothing but motives familiar to oriental art are to be encountered. Take for example the two alabastrons which occupy the right and left extremities of the plate. 2 The glaze is a light blue turned greenish by time. The field is divided horizontally by several yellow bands, and the same colour is used to heighten certain details of the execution. The figures are traced with the point, the hollow lines being afterwards filled in with a dark tint. These figures are animals walking -and crouching, lions, bulls, and antelopes, and trees. In form these bottles resemble one found at Nimroud with the figure of a lion and Sargon's name upon it ; 3 the row of animals mingled with trees reminds us of the reliefs on the obelisk of Shalmanasar III. and on the bronze cups found at Nimroud. 4 The leaves at the bottom are like those of the lotus. The vase shown back and front in the middle of the plate has a flat bottom. 5 Its glaze is paler than that of the other two, and its decoration is divided into three zones by incised lines. The upper 1 DE LONGPERIER, Musee Napoleon ///., letterpress to plate xlix. 2 The one on the left is 4! inches high, the one on the right 4^. 3 LA YARD, Discoveries, 6^., p. 197. 4 Art in Chaldtza and Assyria, Vol. II. Figs. 49, 217, 218, 225. 5 Its height is two inches.