Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/419

Comparison between Egypt and Chaldaea. 381 was not at the mercy of political accident. Wars and changes of dynasty might cause a moment of stagnation and dulness, but such troubles did not prevent the apprentice from receiving from his master the instruction in his trade that he would afterwards pass on to his successors, with all that he himself could add to the legacy of the past. There were no sudden interruptions, no solu- tions of continuity : all that was found was kept ; nothing was forgotten or wasted. Until the still distant day when Ionia, Greece, and Italy should also have their populous cities, Egypt and Chaldaea found themselves in a very favourable situation compared with the peoples, or rather tribes, who dwelt on the shores of the Medi- terranean. Among the latter none but those simple industries that could be carried on under the family roof, and in which the women and children could take their part, were understood. In the basins of the Nile and the Euphrates there were real manu- factures. Artizans were specially trained and grouped into cor- porations ; they did not work only in the hours they could spare from agriculture ; they laboured at their trade without interruption from one end of the year to the other, producing objects which commerce would afterwards " place " where the demand was brisk. In fact they had a real, we might almost say a great industry. Beside the machine-fed industry of modern Europe its output was no doubt small ; neither Egypt nor Chaldaea had steam, nor elec- tricity, nor the " spinning-jenny ; " but their organization and division of labour gave them a superiority over their contem- poraries no less crushing than that by which modern Europe is enabled to flood the whole surface of this planet with her manufactures, and to substitute them for the local industries. In every little village of Anatolia I found the cottons of Manchester and the blue plates of Creil ; they could be bought cheaper than native pottery and textiles. It was the same in antiquity. In the islands and on the coasts of the y^gaean, there was no competition to be feared by the faïence, the vessels of terra-cotta or metal, the textiles, the arms, the ivories, the glass, the utensils of every shape and kind sent out in such inexhaustible quantities from the workshops of Egypt and Chaldaea. We must endeavour to point out the channels by which the overflow from this rich and varied production reached the people by whom it was consumed. And we have a distinction to make