Page 166 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

THE LEVANT IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.
istic: foreign motives were copied without precision and without regard for their mean-
ing, to become elements in decorative designs, which arc vivid and rich at their best, and
gaudy and over-charged at their common worst. This is as true of Byblos and Ras
Shamra in the second millennium b.c. as of the Phoenician cities in the first.
Egyptian examples exerted their strongest influence where a native tradition existed,
as in metal-work. The exquisite pieces of sculpture in the round which were sent to
Syria remained apparently without influence. But three steles found at Ras Shamra are
attempts to use Egyptian methods for the expression of native ideas, while whatever was
borrowed was freely modified. One god17 holds the crook of Pharaoh in one hand, but
a spear - not an Egyptian attribute - in the other. He wears the characteristic shoes of the
Asiatic mountaineers, with upturned toes; he also wears die ‘torque* - a solid metal
neckband of a type widely diffused in Europe during die Bronze Age, known in the
Caucasus, and found at Byblos and Ras Shamra in the period 2000-1800 b.c. It is a great
pity that we cannot see (for the stone is damaged) whether the feather-like plant motif-
perhaps a palm frond - merely decorated the god’s head-dress or was presented as part
of his body. It is combined with a spiral projection derived from the Red Crown of
Lower Egypt. This stele was found together with two others resembling it, and differing
from that of plate 143. One shows a god who holds the Egyptian Waz-sceptrc, like a
truly Nilotic divinity; the other depicts a goddess wrapped in the wings of a great bird,
a type of dress common with the goddess Nut or Mut in Egypt.
The influence of Egypt on Syrian jewellery was similar but went farther. Li the tombs
of the rulers of Byblos splendid ointment pots of obsidian (volcanic glass) and gold were
found, with caskets of ivory, ebony, and gold; pectorals of gold and semi-precious
stones; mirrors and scarabs. Many of these objects were inscribed with the names of the
Pharaohs Amenemhet III and IV.18 Local products were decorated with Egyptian motifs
and even hieroglyphs. The latter betray by their clumsy, un-Egyptian forms their Syrian
origin. They spell out the names of the local prince in whose tomb the object was placed
-a scimitar of bronze on which the mid-rib showed the Egyptian uraeus inlaid with gold
wire, and the hieroglyphic inscription in gold and silver on a blackened ground. This
technique of metal-polychromy (niello) makes its earliest appearance here (see above,
p. 132). It was quite unknown in Egypt at the time; it appears there after the invasion of
the Asiatic Hyksos, towards the end of the sixteenth century, in the tomb of Queen
Aahhotep.19
The finest examples of ancient niello are found in Greece; diey include daggers dis­
covered in the shaft graves of Mycenae20 which are likewise dated to the sixteenth cen-
tury b.c. If there was an appreciable Asiatic influence in die Aegean in and after the
Hyksos Period, it followed channels opened up by the lively intercourse of the preced­
ing age, the age of Egyptian hegemony under the Twelfth Dynasty.21 The movement
in the opposite direction is difficult to defme. At Byblos, in the princely tombs, silver
vessels were found which include fragments of cups with the running spirals often called
Aegean; but no Aegean counterpart is known. The pattern of running spirals is ulti­
mately derived at Byblos, as at Mari, from the Aegean,, but not necessarily at this time
or through the work of silversmiths.22 The very fact that these vessels are of silver favours

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