Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/564

Decoration. 537 Remembering the enormous quantities of silver and gold above all that came out of a single Mycenian necropolis, nobody will deem our assumption as very improbable. We need not the testimony of Homer to be sure that ivory inlay was largely em- ployed to embellish wainscoting, ceilings, and entablatures — have not numberless pieces of this fine material been picked up from amidst these ruins ? In the Homeric passages cited above are two words calling for explanation, respecting which opinions were divided even in antiquity. Cyanus [xuavos) has generally been explained as blue steel, commentators having overlooked a passage in Theophrastus which gives the real meaning of the w^ord. This writer distinguishes between the natural cyanus {a'jTo^vrig) and the artificial cyanus {(rx6uoL(rrog)y which elsewhere he also calls fused cyanus (xiavoj X^'^^^)- ^V natural cyanus is meant lapis lazuli, lazulite, and he tells us that the artificial cyanus was prepared in Egypt, and that from Phoenicia came, as part of the tribute, a cyanus which was obtained by firing [TTSTrupcofjLhQg). This burnt kuanos is no more than glass-paste coloured blue with copper ore, and sometimes with cobalt. The Egyptians and Phoenicians were great adepts in fashioning out of it little figures, amulets, and ornaments, or covering terra- cotta with a thin layer of glass enamel. Lazulite is won from the native ore in small pieces alone. Its main source is Tartary, particularly the present Badachkan. From hence the precious stone was brought to Egypt in small quantity by caravans. If even in the Delta the stone was deemed too costly to be used as border to large surfaces, it is in the last degree unlikely that we should meet with it on Grecian soil. At any rate, no trace of it has been found at Mycenee, either in the tombs or palaces ; but glass-paste, often coloured blue, like that of the Tirynthian frieze, has been picked up in abundance enough. The cyanus of Homer, therefore, cannot be anything but enamel which he saw in some chieftain's house or other, and forthwith transferred to the habitation of the Phaeacian king. We next come to the name of the material placed between the gold and silver, which in the passage relating to the palace of Menelaus occurs in the genitive case, rjTiixTpou ; hence the question has been raised whether the genitive ijXexTpou corre- sponds to the masculine noun r^T^sxrpog^ a natural alloy of gold and silver, or the neuter to rjxsxTpov, amber. All the probabilities