Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/100

 The People. 79 as they betray Semitic words more or less disguised either by whim, popular transcription, or the endings proper to the idiom in which they are incorporated. With few exceptions, the words that fall under this category are names of raw materials, of animals, of plants and fruits not found in Greece ; more often still of im- plements and manufactured objects, such as sindon^ cloth, calamos, cut reed which served as a pen.^ To a certain extent, with the help of this repertory, a catalogue might be made of the borrow- ings, call them rather gifts, with which the strangers enriched the inhabitants of Hellas. The list, however, would not be complete, for many productions of Oriental industry must have entered Greece and have been circulated inland under names other than those which they bore in the country of their birth. In all those instances where the original name was preserved, the fact of the borrowing betrays itself under its Greek garb ; upon the merchandise was glued on, as it were, a trade-mark which warranted its origin. If, through no love of the Canaanite, the Hellenes attributed to him the largest portion of the transmission of the civilizing elements, they were aware of their indebtedness to Libya and Egypt for the rest. As was said above, lo visits the banks of the Nile, and from it Danaiis migrates to Argolis. The first king of Athens, Cecrops, was an Egyptian fugitive ; so too from Egypt came the great gods of Hellas, and Dodona received thence the priestesses of Zeus. An important distinction should be made here. When the Greeks, during the Twenty- sixth Dynasty, entered Egypt, the impression made upon them by sudden contact with the stupendous monuments of that well- ordered society, was one of wonder and amazement. Under the fascination created by the instances of Egyptian art, Greek travellers, lonians and then Athenians, rained questions on every likely individual, as to the origin and age of the monuments they beheld, the signification of images decorating them, humbly and eagerly listening to the answers which the priests or rather the sacristans gave them, who, then as now, showed visitors over temples and public buildings ; reverently they collected the Rena!^, Hisioire des langues semitiques. The author, however, warns us that the list is anything but complete ; his object was to convey some slight idea of the borrowings in question, and the sets of names which obtained the preference.
 * A list of a certain number of words under consideration will be found in