Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/36

 iS A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.ea. Other groups are said to have taken the same direction, albeit by a different route, coasting the north of Africa, where they lingered for a time not specially mentioned ; such were the Sha- loska— the ancestors, it may be, of the Siculi — and the Shardana, who had not been absorbed in the Egyptian army. It is probable that, like most of " the tribes that had come by sea," they were from Asia Minor, where their names are supposed to survive in Sagalossos and Sardes. A small remnant took refuge on the Marmaric seaboard, whilst the more numerous were able to keep together, travelling by slow stages, settling in the pleasant districts known to-day as the regency of Tripolis and Tunis. Their journey may have occupied a hundred or two hundred years. Traces of the characteristics which distinguished their various nationalities are still observable in the populations in whose midst they dwelt for a time and in the divisions where they finally settled. This view, if accepted, would explain the tradition which we read in Sallust, that north Africa had been peopled by immigrants from Media, Persia, and Armenia, 1 a theory that has been considerably strengthened of late by the fact that a large proportion of names proper to Libya are likewise seen in the hieroglyphics containing the list of the nations who invaded the delta under Ramses II. and his two successors. The slight variations in the spelling of words found in Egyptian and Libyan inscriptions, or in Greek geographers, are easily explained by differences in the various alphabets involving different methods of transcription. 2 This would also coincide with the tradition noted above, that the Sha- loska and Shardana, after long wanderings on the Libyan sea- board, halted at the place between Carthage and Utica which juts out towards Sicily and Sardinia. Here, owing to lack of space, they separated, some crossing over to Sicily, whilst the rest made for Sardinia. The existence of these outlying islands was doubt- less known to fishermen who, driven by violent gales blowing from the south, had sought shelter under some of their headlands. On their return home they had told of the wonders of the land they had visited and of the ease of settling there, owing to the 1 Sallust, Jugurtha, xviii. 2 M. Halévy, in his Etudes Berbères (Journal Asiatique, 1874, torn. ix. pp. 406- 411), lays great stress on the similitudes of names where, among other examples, he has the word " Sard " a masculine proper name, making " Sardan" in the plural (p. 410).