Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/31

 Inland Tribes. '3 present with a dim past ; and as such, of the utmost importance in the inquiry under notice. According to the same writer Iberians had likewise migrated to Sardinia. 1 Against this unsupported statement no great objection can be raised. It is not at all unlikely that in prehistoric ages bands of emigrant-settlers poured in upon the island from the north, south, and west. Savants are now inclined to believe that from the south, i.e. the African coast, came the Iberians who entered Europe by the Gibraltar Strait at a very remote period ; 2 whence they gradually spread in South Gaul, Italy, and Sicily. If this supposition were realized, the Libyans and Sardi who met in Sardinia were closely related. We will now turn our attention to another people which has of late engaged the attention of the learned world, in connection with the early inhabitants of Sardinia, and supposed by some to have been the ancestors of the Sardi. The Shardana, Shairotana, Shardans or Shardanes, for they are variously written, joined the people, described in hieroglyphs as having come " by sea," in their invasion of the delta during the nineteenth dynasty; but having been van- quished by Ramses II. and Menephtah, those that remained were incorporated by these monarchs in the Egyptian army, or formed into a body-guard, (Fig. 4). 3 The speos of Ipsamboul, and the pylons of Medinet- Abou, are decorated with bas-reliefs representing Shardana warriors with two-horned helmets, one on either side, topped by a Fig. 4.— Shardana of the Royal Guard. Champollion, Monu- ments de F Egypte et de la Nubie, Plate XVIII. Ipsamboul. 1 Pausanias, X. xvii. 4. 2 Among the scholars who favour this hypothesis may be mentioned Niebuhr, Romische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 585 ; Maury, La Terra et V Homme, 4th edit., p. 579 ; D'Arbois de Jubainville, Les Anciens Habitants de l'Europe, p. 273; Renan, Hist. Gen. des Langues Sémitiques, 4th edit., p. 202, etc. 3 De Rouge was the first to draw attention on the importance of this movement, which threatened for a time the safety of Egypt {Extraits dun mémoire sur les attaques dirigées contre V Egypte par les peuples de la Méditerranée vers le quatorzième siècle avant notre ère dans la Revue Archéologique, 1867, t. xvi.). See also Chabas, Etudes sur l'antiquité historique d'après les sources Egyptiennes, in-8, 1873.