Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/103

Weapons, Metal Work. 85 portraitures of the ancient Sardi, in so far at least as the artist was able to reproduce them, we will now slightly adumbrate the needs that contact with Phoenician culture had called forth in these tribes, and the manner they set about to satisfy them. Of all industrial pursuits metal work seems to have been most in favour with these islanders, induced doubtless by the wealth and variety of minerals with which the country abounds, and which at the outset were worked by the Phoenicians, who employed native workmen under Punic supervision. In this way, the Sardi unconsciously learnt how to win the ore from the soil, and later utilized the information thus obtained to their own advantage ; both in the manufacture of arms to keep in check the foreigners holding the seaboard and prevent their further progress, or in the employment of these home-made weapons, when, as mercenaries, they vented their bellicose disposition and spirit of adventure. The Teti figures enable us to reconstruct the defensive and offensive arms of these native tribes, whose stone age was anterior to their intercourse with Phoenicia, when they used hard stone implements, weapons, and utensils. Obsidian arrow-heads 1 have been recovered in many places ; whilst M. Pais mentions a pair of double-edged scissors in basalt, picked up at Pauli-Gerrei. 2 This class of objects, however, is rare, as compared with the vast quantity of bronze pieces yielded by excavations, making it pro bable that when the population had acquired a certain degree of density the processes used in casting and working metals were not unknown. Among the native weapons dug up at Teti and other reposi- tories, by far the more striking are those seen in Figs. 51, 52, 54, and 62, 3 from about 1 m. 30c. to 80c. long. The heaviest and longest exhibiting stout ribs and feeble edges, may not have been cast with any idea of usefulness, but simply as votive arms, on the old principle that a "gift should be such as to remain a visible sign to the latest posterity." However that may be, weapons that had seen service were always smaller and more carefully manufactured, their mean length varying from 80 to 90 c. They were possessed 1 Pais, Boll., Nos. I., II. p. 30, 1884. 2 This implement, o m. 18 c. long, by o m. 6 c. at its broadest, is o m. 4 c. in thick- ness. One end is broken, the other well preserved, and belong to the Neolithic age. 8 Pais, Boll, pp. 130-140, 1884. Baux and Gouin, Essai sur les Nûraghes, p. 204.