Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/101

 Bronzes, Statuettes, Votive Boats. 83 offered by the soldier of fortune on his safe return. We should be inclined to apply a similar reading to the deer and bull-headed devices seen on votive boats, did we not know that they were universally used among nations of antiquity. 1 Figure-heads on Egyptian and Assyrian vessels are more generally a swan, a horse, or lion ; whilst deer and bulls' heads are unknown, save in Sar- dinia. But no matter the type selected by the builders, the inten- tion of imparting to the vessel a sem- blance of life is apparent everywhere, be it a bull fighting his way through the flood or a swift-footed doe seeming to fly to its distant goal. To the question how to account for so many objects heaped together in repositories or strewn about the ground, we can offer no more solid answer than that Teti was a sanctuary, and that owing to some catastrophe, unknown to us, it had to be hastily abandoned. For it should be borne in mind that the hiding-places under notice have nothing in common with the Latin Tavissae, wherein sacred objects were stowed away from lack of room in the general repository. The Teti weapons evince abundant traces of not having been carefully laid down here, but that, on the contrary, they were violently ripped off the sockets whereon they had been soldered. On the other hand, both weapons and figures look as though hastily thrown in the recesses made on the spur of the moment at the first sound of alarm given by the approaching perhaps scaling enemy, when the tribe was captured or massacred, the sacred treasures saved from the spoiler by the edifice being pulled down over them, where they have lain buried until to-day. The examples of Sardinian sculpture which we have reproduced 1 Nor has this custom ever ceased ; witness the figure-heads on ships, small and great, — such as gods, heroes, tritons, mermaids, madonnas, saints, etc. Surely in remote times, as with the Italian and Greek sailor of our own days, the idea was intimately connected with that of protection and immunity from impending perils at sea. During a heavy gale a candle is frequently vowed or burnt to the Madonna or saint figuring at the prow. — Editor. Fig. 89.— Spurious Bronze. La Mar- mora. Atlas, Plate XVIII., fig. II.