Page 228 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ARAMAEANS AND PHOENICIANS IN SYRIA
bowl of figure 96 was found, as we saw, at Olympia. Yet it is related to the Nimrud
bowl not only because the Janus-like figures of the latter stand along radii, as do the
quasi-Egyptian gods of figure 96, but also because the central design of the two bowls
is identical. Cyprus, too, can be brought in at this point, because a bronze bowl found at
Idalion depicts a meal in a style which, though different, is not entirely dissimilar.191
Here tiic frieze is continuous and Egyptian features are lacking. Behind the three musi­
cians, which move less jauntily on this bowl, a row of women is shown holding hands
in a dance still practised ill the Levant to-day. They wear the flat caps shown in the older
Nimrud, and even in the Megiddo ivories, and also in the statues from Tell Halaf. It is
very probable that the bowl was made in Cyprus,192 but this detail of dress suggests that
it was made there by Syrians - i.e. Phoenicians - settled in the island.193
Among all these hybrid pieces, one bowl from Nimrud is curiously exclusive in the
use of Egyptian motifs (Plate 171),194 winged scarabs and correctly drawn falcon-headed
sphinxes trampling their enemies. Yet even tliis has no Egyptian parallel, the geometric
central design is quite un-Egyptian, and the whole decoration is jejune and over-elegant,
like those which Napoleon’s cabinet-makers produced after the return of the Egyptian
expedition. Once again we are led to Phoenicia.
The later group of Phoenician bowls is mainly found in Cyprus and Etruria. The
Etrurian context dates them to the early part of the seventh century,195 but some of die
Cypriot bowls may be later. There are definite links with the Nimrud bowls: a network
of six foliate rosettes covers the centre of one of them and also of one from Idalion.196 A
vase found at Delphi has the sphinx chariot of a Nimrud bowl, and a battle scene with
Pharaoh destroying a group of bunched enemies. This subject decorated most of the
temple pylons in Egypt and a number of Egyptian small objects, but it is not, I think,
known on Egyptian bowls. It occurs in the outer zone of the Nimrud vase of plate 172B.
In a bowl from the Bemardini tomb at Palestrina (Figure 97), the motif is almost cor­
rectly rendered by Egyptian standards197 and the surrounding design, too, is purely
Egyptian: the papyrus boats with the sun-beetle or Osiris are common on Egyptian
tomb furniture. Moreover, the four boats ‘square the circle’, which is a characteristic
Egyptian solution of the decoration of a round surface.198 Between the boats appears Isis
nursing the young Horus in the marshes.199 The bands of hieroglyphs do not make sense,
and this, the most purely Egyptian of the bronze bowls, carries a Phoenician inscription.
Also, I do not know of Egyptian bowls with similar designs; die normal Egyptian de­
coration consists of marsh scenes - fish, fowl, and wild oxen, or boats and swimmers
among the reeds.200
In another bowl, from Idalion in Cyprus, the same centre design is surrounded by a
zone of various sphinxes trampling the enemies of Pharaoh, and the outer zone contains
hunting scenes’ with Egyptian- and Asiatic-looking participants. But in figure 98,
from Curium in Cyprus, the group of Pharaoh as victor appears in the outer frieze while
a four-winged Assyrian demon despatches a Hon in the centre. His action is unlike that
of Assyrian hunters, but is known on Cypriot monuments of an eadier age (Plate 149B).
Moreover, the Horus falcon, normally hovering above Pharaoh, has been retained above
die Asiatic demon. A similar combination of Asiatic and Egyptian fig
I ures occurs on a
199