Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/349

 CERAMICS IN CYPRUS. 321 Troad. The same features are to be encountered in modern societies separated from the great stream of civilization by moun- tain chains or wide oceans ; such as the Kabyles of Djurdjura in Algeria, or the Mexicans and Peruvians at the time of the Spanish conquest. In the 1878 Exhibition I was struck with this analogy at every step I took in the galleries where these products of African and American pottery, the former made in our own time, the latter three or four centuries old, were exhibited. The likeness was most striking in the Peruvian pottery, and especially in its decoration Neither in Peru nor Cyprus was there any glaze ; both made frequent use, as a ground, of a dull yellow, like dirty cream ; the colours of the decoration in both were equally devoid of brilliancy and frankness. As for the Peruvian types and motives, there are very few which could not be readily paralleled in a Cypriot collec- tion. The same vertical and horizontal circles appear on both, the same rectangles crossed and re-crossed by diagonal lines, the same chevrons, the same dog-teeth, the same meanders, the same opposed triangles. In both the field is closely covered with these things, as if the decorator had feared to leave an empty spot. 1 The great difference lies in the fact that in America the art of grouping these elements and of subordinating secondary parts to principals was never pushed so far as in the Mediterranean islands and on the main lands of Greece and Italy. In America, among nations whose development was so rudely cut short by foreign invasion, the style we call geometrical remained in its infancy ; it never attained the relative perfection we see in some vases from Cyprus and Attica or in some of those bronze disks which have been found in Umbria. The principle and the process is the same in both cases, but the advantage is with the nation that did not confine itself to linear ornament. Whether it were due to greater natural gifts or to better conditions, we cannot say, but the fact is undeniable that the races whose story we are writing obtained far better results from geometrical decoration than those who confined themselves entirely to it. The resemblance is still more striking in the case of form. In Peru, as at Hissarlik and in Cyprus, the form of the vase is often rudely imitated from that of the human body. But we shall find 1 See CH. WIENER, Perou et Bolirif, Recit de Voyage, suiri d* tudes archeologiques ft epigraphies, et de Notes sur /' Ecriture et la Langue des Populations indiennes. Paris, Hachette, 1880, 8vo. VOL. II. T T