Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/375

Metal Dishes and Utensils. ^^y After this general statement we may go into the details. In these the hand of the imitator is everywhere visible ; he borrows motives and adapts them to his own habits and tastes. Take as an example the platter to which a double frieze of hiero- glyphs gives a peculiarly Egyptian physiognomy (Fig. 215). An Egyptian artist would never employ hieroglyphs in such a position without giving them some real significance, such as the name of a king or deity. Here, on the other hand, an Egyptologist has only to glance at the cartouches to see that their hieroglyphs are brought together at haphazard and that no sense is to be got out of them. This is obvious even by the arrangement of the several characters in the oval without troubling to examine them one by one. They are divided into groups by straight lines, like those of a copy book. The Egyp- tian scribe never made use of such divisions ; he distributed his characters over the field of the oval according to their sense and shape. The arrangement here followed is only to be explained by habits formed in the use of a writing that goes in horizontal lines from left to right or right to left. There is, in fact, nothing Egyptian but the shape of the ovals, and the motive with which they are crowned. The pretended hieroglyphs are nothing but rather clumsily executed pasticcios. And it must be noticed that even this superficial Egyptianism is absent from the centre of the dish. In those Theban ceilings which display such a wealth of various decoration we may find a simple rosette here and there, or rather a flower with four or eight petals, but these petals are always rounded at the end ; nowhere do we find any- thing that can be compared to the great seven-pointed star which is here combined so ingeniously with eight more of the same pattern but of smaller size. On the other hand this motive is to be found on a great number of cups where no reminiscence of Egypt can be traced. The ruling idea is the same as that of the diaper-work in the thresholds from Khorsabad and Nimroud (see Vol. I., Fig. 135). After such an example we might look upon the demonstration as made, but it may be useful to complete it by analyzing the other cups we have placed in the same class. That on which especially the four entitled Vases en Or émaillè et cloisonne. In all these I can only find one patera, in the plate called Collection de Vases du Règne de Ramesés III. There is nothing to show that the vases here figured were not earthenware. VOL. II. X X