Page 224 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA

their attributes arc distinctive and native. An alien but well-tried form was filled with a
new, indigenous content. Such a procedure obviously did not give rise to the plaques of
plate 168, A and b nor to those from Nimrud showing a figure somewhat resembling
Pharaoh lifting his hand before a ‘sacred tree’;173 nor such plaques as were found at
Nimrud and in Samos and which show two nondescript Egyptian figures flanking a
fantastic ‘royal name’ in hieroglyphs.174 In all these cases there is no tiling added to the
misconstrued Egyptian themes, and it is therefore unlikely that they had a specific mean­
ing. Other motifs, as we saw, could be understood throughout the Near East: the cow
sue kling her calf might stand for any mother-goddess; an Egyptian cobra with two
worshippers175 could probably symbolize any earth-god manifest in serpent-shape.
Other monsters may likewise have possessed a generally acknowledged significance -
there is, for instance, some evidence that the griffin may have represented the angel of
death. But in the absence of texts we can hardly get beyond guesswork in any of these
interpretations.
Moreover, the wide distribution of Phoenician objects would bring them to regions
where the religious significance of the designs could, in any case, not be grasped. Their
popularity must have been due to an appreciation of their craftsmanship and design, and
it would seem that a preoccupation with richness of decoration rather than with religion
explains the peculiarities of Phoenician art. In particular the deviations from the Egypt­
ian norm seem due to an inconsequential treatment by craftsmen indifferent to the
meaning of their foreign patterns. The designs do not suggest a purposeful remodelling
of foreign themes to make them suitable for the expression of native conceptions.176

Metal-work

The use of designs without concern for their original meaning is also characteristic of
Phoenician metal-work, and here it continues a tradition represented already by the gold
bowl from Ras Shamra (Figure 68). The accumulation of unconnected motifs in concen­
tric zones, and even the motifs themselves, recur in such examples as our figure 97,
though the hunters, monsters, sacred trees, and so on, appear in the guises suited to their
different epochs. It is a fact, perhaps due to the absence of excavations, that these bowls
have hitherto not been found in Phoenicia proper. They come from Assyria, Cyprus,
Greece, and Etruria, and we may possibly include some that were made elsewhere.
Cyprus, in any case, may be reckoned as part of die Phoenician cultural orbit. We know
that Phoenicians were settled there, although they do not seem to have occupied the
whole island. Fragments of fourteen bowls, found in the island, bear a Phoenician dedica­
tion of a governor of Hiram II of Tyre (c. 738 b.c.).177 We know that in 713 b.c. seven
kings of Cyprus came to do homage to S argon at Babylon, ‘ seven kings ... whose distant
abodes are situated a seven days’ journey in the sea of the setting sun and the name of
whose land, since the far-off days of the moon-god’s time not one of the kings, my
fathers, who lived before my day, had heard, [these kings] heard from afar, in the midst
of the sea, the deeds which I was performing in Chaldea and the Flittite land, their hearts
were rent, fe^r fell upon them, gold, silver, and so on, of the workmanship of their land,

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