Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/108

 ç)o A History or Art in Sardinia and Judaea. around the sanctuary ? ' We believe the latter hypothesis to be correct, inasmuch as votive swords and statuettes had to be soldered on to their sockets on the spot. Very possibly some of these weapons had been purchased of Phoenician traders, or other- wise imported. The bulk, however, was undoubtedly fabricated by native hands, proved by the stone moulds picked up in Sinis, Nura, and the central plateaux, where the forms of the weapons we have described as Sardinian are distinctly impressed thereon. 2 That lead mines were worked in Sardinia is attested by the enormous accumulation of scoriae and the state in which they were found ; enabling us, too, to determine the various epochs to which they belong ; whilst to judge, on the one hand, from the insignificant amount of copper scoriae, and on the other, of the well-shaped copper cakes, encountered on many points of the island, closely resembling Italian, notably Etrus- can cakes, we may infer that copper was for the most part imported. 3 We reproduce one of these cakes (Fig. 97) recovered at Nuraghus, now in the Cagliari museum. Tin, in its natural state, is not found in Sardinia ; when wrought into bronze, its composition is the same as that of other ancient nations of corresponding or earlier age. Hence, when the native craftsman manufactured weapons, he did so with used-up bronze melted down anew for the purpose, as the finds at Forraxi-Noi have abundantly proved. Zinc, of the nature known to the Greeks as " cassiterion," was imported by the Phoenicians. A block picked up at Teti and carefully examined throughout by M. Gouin, was found to be oxide of calcined zinc, called by mine- 1 Metal bars may have been considered sufficiently valuable to be deemed worthy offerings to the deity (Pais, Boll, pp. 154, 155). 2 Pais, La Sard., p. 122, Plate IV.; Bod., pp. 125, 140, 141, 1884; Baux and Gouin, Essai, p. 208. Feldspath, schist, and talc were the stones used for these moulds. 8 M. Pais thought that the device seen on some bronze cakes was the native dagger. This led him to infer that similar bars had been fused in the country (Bolletlino, p. 130, 1884). One of his illustrations bears undeniable affinity to the Sardinian dagger, save that the peculiar double ring detail is wanting (p. 130.) In Fig. 97, however, the form is more complicated and the analogy less favourable to his theory (p 149). We think this a simple trade's mark, whilst conscious that this view of the case does not help us to solve the vexed bar question. The weight of these bars varies from 28 to 37 kilos.