Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/377

Metal Dishes and Utensils. 339 The same remarks will apply to the cup partially reproduced in our Fig. 216. The ornament of the centre and of the outer band is Egyptian in its origin, but the mountainous country with its stags and its trees, that lies between — have we found anything like it in Egypt ? The mountains are suggested in much the same fashion as in the palace reliefs, and we know how much fonder the sculptors of Mesopotamia were of introducing the ibex, the stag, the gazelle, etc., into their work than those of Egypt. The rocky hills and sterile deserts that bounded the Nile valley were far less rich in the wilder ruminants than the wooded hills of Kurdistan and the grassy plains of the double valley. There is one last fact to be mentioned which will, we believe, put the question beyond a doubt. Of all antique civilization, that which has handed down to us the most complete material remains is the civilization of Egypt. Thanks to the tomb there is but little of it lost. Granting that these cups were made in Egypt, how are we to explain the fact that not a single specimen has been found in the country ? About sixty in all have been recovered ; their decoration is distinguished by much variety, but when we compare them one with another we find an appreciable likeness between any two examples. The forms, the execu- tion, the ornamental motives are often similar, or, at least, are often treated in the same spirit. The majority come from Assyria, but some have been found in Cyprus, in Greece, in Campania, Latium, and Etruria. Over the whole area of the ancient world there is but one country from which they are totally absent, and that country is Egypt. with a central motive recalling that of our cup. It shows us two griffins separated by a palmette from which rises a tall stem of papyrus between several pairs of volutes. This object is, however, almost unique of its kind, and we do not exactly know to what epoch it belongs. May it not belong to a period when Egyptian art began to be affected by that of Mesopotamia, an influence that is betrayed in more than one particular ? According to Herr Von Sybel, who has studied Egyptian ornament with so much care, this motive of two animals facing each other did not appear before the nineteenth dynasty, and he looks upon it as purely Asiatic in its origin (Kritik der /Egyptischen Ornaments, pp. 37, 38). We may also quote a small box of Egyptian faïence inscribed with the oval of Ahmes II, the Amasis of Herodotus. It bears two griffins quite similar to those of our group, separated by a cypress. But Dr. Birch, who was the first to publish this monument, recognizes that, in spite of the cartouch, its physiognomy is more Assyrian than Egyptian {Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, Series II. p. 177).