Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/378

 340 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. commanding genius. To-day, then, the archaeologist can dis- tino-uish Phoenician work of the kind at a glance, and that without t> regard to its provenance. The fact that Phoenicia did manufacture these metal objects is proved, not only by the Egyptian paintings and their legends, but by the direct evidence of Phoenician inscriptions. It may perhaps be thought that the occurrence of names in Semitic characters on many of the bowls found in Assyria is not conclusive ; competent critics believe that here may be recognized an alphabet derived from that of Phoenicia, and employed for certain purposes and by certain groups of the population side by side with the cuneiform writing, which it ended by replacing through the whole valley of Mesopotamia. The editors of the Corpus class these inscriptions as Aramaean. It is different with monuments either from Phoenicia itself or from the west. The remains of one of the oldest Phoenician inscriptions may be recognized on a fragment of a bronze cup reproduced in our first volume (Fig. 32) ; it is to the effect that the vessel in question was dedicated to Baal Lebanon by one Hiram, who may have been the King of Tyre, and contemporary of Solomon. 1 And there is nothing to suggest that this cup offered to the national deity was of foreign manufacture. The inscription on the famous Palestrina cup, Esmunjair ben asto, is also clearly Phoenician. It may be the signature of the artist. 2 Of Hiram's bowl or platter we have nothing but the border, but that of Esmunjair is decorated with images and similar in style and arrangement to many bowls on which no lettering appears, and this fact must be carefully borne in mind. The main criterion, however, is the character of the ornament lavished over the surface of these bowls. As we have already said so often, the Phoenicians mixed up elements taken from Egypt and Assyria, not without giving some preference to the former, and on no objects more clearly than these do we see the system upon which the borrowing in question was carried on. Nowhere else are what we may call empty forms, that is, forms divorced 3 Corpus inscriptionum Semiticarum, Pars, r, No. 2. 2 Certain peculiarities suggest to M. Renan that this inscription was cut at Carthage rather than at Tyre {Gazette archeologique, 1877, p. 16 et seq.}. The peculiar character of the signature is enhanced by its conspicuous position in the centre of the bowl ; all other inscriptions hitherto found are, as it were, hidden away under the edges, and have to be looked for. Even now, in the Arab world, the proprietor of such vessels has his name inscribed in the latter position.