Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/34

A History of Art in Sardinia and ]udalj an- relationship existed between them. The horn has always been associated with animals in whom strength, virility, and belli- cose propensities are supposed to reside — such as the stag, ram, bull, etc. — hence it was natural for warriors to adopt it as the emblem of qualities they were conspicuous for, or which they wished to be thought as possessing. The argument relative to similarity of names has better claims to our consideration. The name Shardana, Sardinian, Sardes, and Sardinia, being so like each other as to be almost identical. True, the first consonant in Shardana is soft, and sibilant in Sardinia ; but this point is not so important as at first appears. The Sin and Shin of the Phoenician alphabet, like the Hebrew, are represented by the same sign (ss>), the sound of which differed among people of the same nationality, and from one tribe to another ; and the word " Shibboleth," or " Sibboleth," as the Ephrai'mites pronounced it, will occur to our readers as a case in point. 1 If Shardana and Sardanes be one and the same name the infer- ence would be great, almost amounting to certainty that the hardy mountaineers of Sardinia were a remnant of the mighty host which twice invaded Egypt and threatened her frontiers ; but which, repulsed and driven to the sea, sought to retrieve in the west the fortune that was denied them in the east. But even granting this, it forms but one link in the chain of evidence which it is wished to establish. Who can tell if this resemblance is not the result of mere chance ? (!) A glance at any atlas will furnish many such coincidences. In the present state of our knowledge, the analogy between the Shardana or Shardanes, of the hieroglyphic inscrip- tions, and the Sardonians, Sardanians, or Sardes, of the Graecb- Roman writers, can only have, and probably will always retain, a conjectural character ; although agreeing with the little we know of the remote period preceding the visits of the Phoenicians to the islands of the west — supposed to have taken place between the fourteenth and fifteenth century b.c. Somewhere about this time, there seems to have been an abnormal agitation and dis- placement of peoples in the countries bordering on the /Egean Sea. The primary cause of this disturbance is imperfectly known, and may have been due to the inroads of the Phrygians who, having crossed the European straits, entered the Asiatic continent. 1 Judges xii. 4, 6.