Chapter VI: Introduction (5)

The lotus was a well recognised symbol of life, resurrection, and immortality. It was largely employed in funeral rites in Egypt, and is constantly associated with mummies, and also symbolised the resurrection, but this latter idea was associated in the Egyptian mind with reproductive power, and hence the relation of this also to the lotus. Professor Maspero says:[70] “The assimilation and occasional complete identity of the Supreme God with the sun being once admitted, the assimilation and complete identity of the secondary divine beings with Ra (the sun) were a matter of course. Amon, Osiris, Horus, Ptah, were regarded sometimes as the living soul of Ra, sometimes as Ra himself.” From this would result a mingling and extension of symbolism; but upon these troubled waters the lotus calmly rides supreme. Its association with the sun, its connection with reproductive energy, its descent into the grave, and its symbolism of a resurrection have given to the lotus that immortality which it symbolised.

[70] Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient_,
p. 31, cf. Goodyear, p. 11.

Although lotus designs are profusely scattered up and down in Egyptian art there is no reason for believing that the Egyptians regarded it as a national emblem, but it was a universally recognised symbol. At the beginning of the year it sprouted from its slimy bed and floated beautiful and pure on the surface of the waters. At sunrise the buds opened and studded the water with white or cerulean asters, which closed when night fell. Every autumn it died its annual death only as prelude to the vernal resurrection.

The intensely religious mind of the Ancient Egyptians was permeated with the problems of death and elevated by the prospect of immortality. Resurrection and future bliss were articles of firm faith, not merely a pious hope. What wonder then, with this religious saturation of immortality, that the flower which symbolised the resurrection should be depicted in such profusion in their tombs and elsewhere!

If the reader will take the trouble to compare lotus representations in books on Egyptology it will be beyond dispute that it is the white or blue lotus (Nymphæa), and not the rose water-lily (Nelumbium), which is so ubiquitously delineated.

A slightly conventionalised lotus with two of its leaves (Fig. 73) is drawn on a vase contemporaneous with the pyramids, from the Necropolis of Memphis (Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, 3998-3503 B.C.).

The same lotus flower (Fig. 72) appears some two thousand years later in a representation of an offering to Osiris from the Necropolis of Thebes belonging to the Twentieth Dynasty. Indeed, it was painted and carved so frequently for thousands of years that it would be impossible to describe its variations and applications. I must, however, permit myself to allude to one or two examples which are interesting from other points of view. In Plate VIII., Fig. 12, we see single lotus flowers employed in an isolated manner in a border pattern, and alternating with these is another device. The separation of the elements of a border pattern is by no means universal in Egyptian decorative art; for example, the scroll pattern (Fig. 74) from the Necropolis of Thebes is a good example of a pattern which gives an idea of flow, but even here there is a lack of continuity in the spiral band which creates a feeling of dissatisfaction when one attempts to trace out the construction of the design. It is evident that in such patterns the spiral is quite a secondary motive, and it thus has not been worked out logically; the lotus flowers and the rosettes are the essential elements of the pattern.

With the last figure we may compare the scroll detail (Fig. 75) from a Melian vase, the lotus flower being represented by four black marks, and the scroll has acquired that development which is so characteristic of Ægean art.

Various causes may lead to the evolution of a recognised scheme of decoration of certain objects, but when a new class of objects is to be decorated the artist has a chance to exhibit his originality; even so this is about the last thing which decorative artists do manifest. The constraint of custom appears to exert an influence too potent to be readily snapped, and so the Egyptian decorator, being further tied by religious sentiment, ornamented even extensive areas, such as the ceilings of tombs, with lotus designs, the main elements of which had been elaborated elsewhere.

In Fig. 76 we have a ceiling design in which the lotus is very apparent both in flower and bud; the rosettes, like spiders’ webs, may possibly represent the leaves of the lotus (Fig. 70), and we have the same interlocking but discontinuous spirals that occur in Fig. 74.

A different treatment of the same motive is seen in Fig. 77, but here only the lotus flowers and the interlocking scrolls are employed. Below each flower is a fan-like portion apparently tied on to the former; this may have some significance or it may be merely a convenient method of finishing off the flower.

In these old Egyptian designs the rosette is often associated with the lotus and lotus derivatives, as in Fig. 74; and it may happen, as in Fig. 78, that the former is the most prominent motive. The lotus is here represented solely by the black triangles which occupy the angles of the quadrangular spaces which contain the rosettes; at all events there is good evidence to support this view.

The angularisation of the last pattern gives us Fig. 79, which many people would imagine to be Greek, although, as a matter of fact, it is ancient Egyptian. The rosettes and the angled scrolls alone persist. We cannot speak with certainty as to the reason for the modification of the scrolls, but it is probable that it resulted from an attempt to copy such a painted design as Fig. 78 in textiles, and the pattern metamorphosed by the new conditions was painted on the tomb ceilings along with its more flowing progenitor. For further examples of analogous transference of designs from one technique to another, and their consequent transformation, the reader is referred to p. 112.

Professor Flinders Petrie has stated that the scroll or spiral was one of the greatest factors in the early development of ornament, and only second to the lotus in the part it played in the decorative ideas of the ancient world. What it symbolised, if symbolise anything it did, we know not. Some affect to see in it a representation of the wanderings of the soul, but why, as Professor Petrie suggests, some souls should come to the end of their wanderings in a spiral and others in an oval is not explained. Its oldest use was on the scarabs, where it was clearly used first as “filling-in” ornament. We can first trace it about 3,500 B.C. At first in loose unconnected “C” and “S” links, and afterwards in every variety of combination, continuous as well as unconnected, the scroll line winds its way for ages through the records of Egyptian decoration. Yet there is a clear margin of 1000 years at least between any Egyptian date of its use and its appearance in the art of other ancient countries. From the fact that it is generally coloured yellow in Egyptian designs, Professor Petrie infers that gold was used in these forms to enclose gems, cloisonné and coloured stones; indeed Schliemann found such work in his explorations at Mycenæ.

Mr. Arthur Evans remarks:[71]—“On the twelfth dynasty [about between 2778 and 2565 B.C.] scarabs the returning spiral motive, as is well known to Egyptologists, was developed to an extraordinary degree. These purely spiral types, like the twelfth dynasty motives, were also copied by the native Cretan engravers. From Crete, where we find these Aegean forms in actual juxtaposition with their Egyptian prototypes, we can trace them to the early cemeteries of Amorgos, and here and in other Aegean islands like Melos can see them taking before our eyes more elaborate developments. Reinforced a thousand years later by renewed intimacy of contact between the Aegean peoples and the Egypt of Amenophis III., the same system was to regain a fresh vitality as the principal motive of the Mycenæan goldsmith’s work. But though this later influence reacted on Mycenæan art [about 1500 B.C.], as can be seen by the Orchomenos ceiling, the root of its spiral decoration is to be found in the earlier ‘Aegean’ system engrafted long before, in the days of the twelfth dynasty.

[71] A. J. Evans, “Primitive Pictographs and a Prae-Phœnician
Script, from Crete and the Peloponnese,” _Journ. Hellenic
Studies_, xiv., 1894, p. 328.

“In the wake of early commerce the same spiraliform motives were to spread still further afield to the Danubian basin, and thence in turn by the valley of the Elbe to the Amber Coast of the North Sea, there to supply the Scandinavian Bronze Age population with their leading decorative designs. Adopted by the Celtic tribes in the Central European area, they took at a somewhat later date a westerly turn, reached Britain with the invading Belgae, and finally survived in Irish Art.”[72]

[72] Cf. also G. Coffey, “The Origins of Prehistoric Ornament
in Ireland,” _Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland_, 1894, 1895.

Among the most frequent of the decorative designs employed by the Assyrians are the knop (or bud) and flower pattern and the rosette, and usually these are found in combination. For the former design I shall employ the Greek term “Anthemion.”

“That flower,” write MM. Perrot and Chipiez,[73] “has been recognised as the Egyptian lotus, but Layard believes its type to have been furnished, perhaps, by a scarlet tulip which is very common towards the beginning of spring in Mesopotamia.[74] We ourselves believe rather in the imitation of a motive from the stuffs, the jewels, the furniture, and the pottery that Mesopotamia drew from Egypt at a very early date through the intermediary of the Phœnicians. The Phœnicians themselves appropriated the same motive and introduced it with their own manufactures, not only into Mesopotamia but into every country washed by the Mediterranean. Our conjecture is to some extent confirmed by an observation of Sir H. Layard’s. This lotus flower is only to be found, he says, in the most recent of Assyrian monuments, in those, namely, that date from the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., centuries during which the Assyrian kings more than once invaded Phœnicia and occupied Egypt.[75] In the more ancient bas-reliefs, flowers with a very different aspect—copied in all probability direct from nature—are alone to be found.

[73] G. Perrot and C. Chipiez, _A History of Art in Chaldæa and
Assyria_, 1884, i. p. 303.

[74] A. H. Layard, _Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and
Babylon_, i. p. 184, note.

[75] _Nineveh and its Remains_, ii. p. 212, note.

“The lotus flower is to be found, moreover, in monuments much older than those of the Sargonids, but that does not in any way disprove the hypothesis of a direct plagiarism. The commercial relations between the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates date from a much more remote epoch, and about the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty the Egyptians seem to have occupied in force the basin of the Khabour, the principal affluent of the Euphrates. Layard found many traces of their passage over and sojourn in that district, among them a series of scarabs, many of which bore the superscription of Thothmes III. [1481-1449 B.C.]. So that the points of contact were numerous enough, and the mutual intercourse sufficiently intimate and prolonged, to account for the assimilation by Mesopotamian artists of a motive taken from the flora of Egypt, and to be seen on almost every object imported from the Nile Valley. This imitation appears all the more probable as in the paintings of Theban tombs, dating from a much more remote period than the oldest Ninevite remains, the pattern with its alternate bud and flower is complete (Plate VIII., Fig. 12).

“The Assyrians borrowed their motive from Egypt, but they gave it more than Egyptian perfection. They gave it the definite shapes that even Greece did not disdain to copy. In the Egyptian frieze the cones and flowers are disjointed; their isolation is unsatisfactory both to the eye and the reason. In the Assyrian pattern they are attached to a continuous undulating stem, whose sinuous lines add greatly to the elegance of the composition.”

While admitting that the lotus motive overran Assyrian art, there is reason to believe that it did so only because there was an antecedent style upon which it could be engrafted. The pattern shown in Fig. 10, Plate VIII., is an example of an Assyrian anthemion engraved on an ivory panel in the British Museum, and of purely Assyrian workmanship. It is worth while attempting to trace this back as far as possible. In Fig. 4, Plate VIII., we have a pattern painted in red, blue, white, and yellow upon plaster, discovered by Sir Henry Layard in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Nineveh. In this there is a serial repetition of a disc, or sphere, which is pendant; all the pendants are connected by a single cord, which appears as if it were drawn into loops by their weight.

In Fig. 7, Plate VIII., we have a representation from a stone carving of an Assyrian pavilion, and in Fig. 2 a “tabernacle” from the famous bronze gates of Balawat, which were made for Shalmaneser II., and are now in the British Museum. Yet more simple is the tasselled canopy (Fig. 6) from an enamelled brick from Nimroud, a king who is standing under this canopy has a fringe (Fig. 5) to his robe which is composed of alternate white and yellow tassels. King Sargon (about 722 B.C.) is also represented on a relief from Khorsabad in the Louvre, with a similar fringe (Fig. 1) to the hem of his robe.

Any one who has done any plaiting in bands of two colours knows that if the intersections be truly alternate the fringe along the opposite borders will all be of the same colour as in A, Plate VIII., but if the colours run in stripes the fringe all round will be composed of alternate patches of colour. When bands composed of several threads are employed, it is necessary to knot the strands together at the edge to prevent fraying. A more pleasing border is formed by taking half the strands of one band and tying them to half the strands of the next band of the same colour, and so on (B, Plate VIII.). By this means we naturally obtain a structural root-like origin for each tassel in the fringe, which may be termed the connecting strand. This appears to have been the common method of finishing off the edge of Assyrian textiles.

There is thus no difficulty in accounting for a fringe of tassels (Figs. 1, 5, Plate VIII.). Awnings (Fig. 6) as a protection from the blazing sun were a very common feature in Assyrian life. When the king went out on warlike or hunting expeditions he took with him a large royal tent or pavilion made of “slender columns with rich capitals and a domed roof, made, no doubt, of several skins sewn together, and kept in place by metal weights.[76] The pavilion (Fig. 7) was a civil edifice, the temporary resting-place of the sovereign. The same materials were employed in the same spirit in the erection of religious tabernacles” (Fig. 2). It is, however, probable that brightly-woven rugs or mats were employed for the smaller canopies; these would even more require the employment of weights to prevent the wind from blowing about the covering. One can hardly interpret the pendants on the royal pavilion (Fig. 7) in any other manner than as weights to steady the awning. The pendants would in the case of textiles be fastened on to the tassels, probably they would sometimes be placed on alternate tassels. In the pavilion so often referred to the weight pendants are of two shapes, in this also carrying out that alternate arrangement which manifests itself structurally in most textiles, and which consequently gives rise to the feeling of expectancy in other objects. Another example of this is seen in the representation of the vine in Assyrian art, for the decorative sentiment has so possessed the artists as to cause them to depict the branches with a leaf and a bunch of grapes in regular succession.

[76] Perrot and Chipiez, _Assyria_, i. p. 194.

There is no need to go further than this for the origin of the Assyrian anthemion. We find a fringe of tassels in alternate colours, we find a fringe of canopy weights of alternate design, we assume an occasional alternation of fringe and weight. In all cases these must be serially united by the “connecting strand.” How can the stone-carver or the wall-decorator represent these three alternatives? Clearly they would indicate rather than imitate them. What greater realism could we expect than that which we have?

There are many ways of making tassels—for example, each one may be allowed to splay out fan-wise, or it may be tightly tied round the middle, or bound round so as to form a kind of cone or spindle.

Whether as variously tied, or differently coloured tassels, or as alternate tassel and weight, a border of alternate members organically springing from a common base was constantly before the sight of the artists of this great textile manufacturing people. The conventionalising tendency of decorative art did the rest, and the various forms of Assyrian anthemion would easily follow.

A triple alternation (Fig. 9, Plate VIII.) occurs on an enamelled brick tile from Nimroud in the British Museum. It is characteristically Assyrian in style, but it does not give that effect of repose and satisfied expectancy which we demand from a pattern, and in this respect we cannot regard it as eminently successful.

If this hypothesis of Dr. March’s of the evolution of the Assyrian anthemion be correct, this pattern is essentially a skeuomorph, but at the same time certain local plant-forms were probably associated with it.

Let us now turn to the border pattern (Fig. 8, Plate VIII.) of the carved stone thresholds, which are occasionally found in a marvellous state of preservation. Here we have a “knop and flower pattern” which differs as much from the Assyrian style as it resembles that of Egypt. A comparison of this figure with Fig. 12, Plate VIII., will convince most people that borrowing has taken place. It is not always easy to determine how far the Assyrian anthemion has been influenced by native foliage or by conventional designs derived from the local flora. In these threshold borders, however, the Egyptian phyllomorph has grown, as Dr. March points out, like a floral parasite on a skeuomorphic basis. As introduced plants frequently overrun a new country and crowd out native forms, so the lusty lotus invaded the field of Assyrian art, and largely supplanted pre-existing phyllomorphs.

To return for a moment to the Egyptian pattern, the “proto-anthemion,” as one may term it, is characterised by the absence of a connecting strand, the buds and flowers springing from a basal line. My friend, Dr. March, with his usual ingenuity, has suggested to me a very plausible explanation of this fact. The Egyptian pattern was phyllomorphic from the beginning, originating in symbolism it was primitively a realistic representation of an erect water-plant.

Maspero says the decoration of each part of the Egyptian temple was in consonance with its position. The lower parts of the walls were adorned with long stems of lotus or papyrus—bouquets of water-plants emerging from the water.

This then is the solution of the difficulty. The Egyptian anthemion, derived from plants emerging from the water, has as a rule no connecting strand. The Assyrian variety, derived from a tassel-skeuomorph, is never without its looped base line, is primarily pendant, and consists in the earliest stage of plants that are non-aquatic.

The rosette (Plate VIII., Figs. 4, 8, 10) is usually stated to be an essentially Mesopotamian device, but it is scattered up and down in Egyptian and Mediterranean art. (Figs. 74, 78, 79, 84.) It may be characteristic of Assyria, but it is by no means peculiar to it.

The rosette in Egypt is probably mainly a lotus-motive; the upper end of the yellow-rayed seed-vessel may be regarded as the chief original, but some are undoubtedly fully expanded lotus flowers seen from above or below, or a group of buds or of flowers arranged radially. However conventionalised it may become, the rosette is most constantly associated with the lotus in Egypt, the land of its birth. Their association elsewhere is only to be expected, as there would naturally be a tendency for the rosette to accompany the knop and flower in their migrations.

According to Professor Flinders Petrie,[77] it is even doubtful whether the rosette was truly of vegetable origin. The use of leather-work seemed to have greatly modified the rosette. Its primitive form did not look floral at all, merely a circle with white dotted lines radiating across. Later, there were concentric rings of colours, with the same white dotted lines. The stitched leather theory explained a whole host of peculiar ornaments that could hardly otherwise be understood.

[77] Newspaper Report of a Lecture delivered at the Royal
Institution in May 1894.

Goodyear[78] points out (p. 101) that no dated example of the rosette is known in Assyria or Chaldea before the twelfth century B.C.—_i.e._, on the dress of Merodach-idin-akhi, King of Babylon. It occurs with other lotuses in Egypt on the head-dress of Nefert, a statue of the Fourth Dynasty, 3998-3721 B.C. As previously stated, the earlier Egyptian kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty conquered Assyria. The reign of Thothmes III., who, according to a contemporary expression, “drew his frontiers where he pleased,” is placed by Professor Flinders Petrie[79] from 1481-1449 B.C. The Egyptian empire then comprised Abyssinia, the Soudan, Nubia, Syria, Mesopotamia, part of Arabia, Khurdistan, and Armenia.[80]

[78] _Grammar of the Lotus._

[79] W. M. Flinders Petrie, _A History of Egypt_, i., 1894,
p. 251.

[80] Perrot and Chipiez, _Egypt_, i. p. 19.

In answer to the question, How is it that the fact has been overlooked that the rosette is as familiar a feature of Egyptian ornament as the earliest dated remains of other ornaments? Goodyear (p. 102) says that the answer apparently is that the rosette is very abundantly known on carved slabs from Nineveh, while the architectural surface carvings in Egypt are almost absolutely destitute of rosette ornament, but it is very frequently represented in tomb paintings.

Those who have argued for the Assyrian origin of the rosette appear to have only compared the stone carvings of the two countries in question, but it is well known that no borrowing of architecture took place. There is evidence that portable objects were traded from Egypt to Mesopotamia, and there is no doubt that the purely decorative mural paintings of Egyptian tombs were analogous to the patterns on Egyptian textiles, and these were traded to the East. The thresholds from Assyria were undoubtedly carved in imitation of rugs; from the monuments we may suppose that the walls were often decorated with woven stuffs, the ornamentation of which was transferred to stone and glazed bricks. We may then come to the conclusion that the mural decoration of Assyria was affected by the designs of textiles and other portable articles of merchandise, the idiosyncrasy of this country making itself felt in the selection and adaptation of Egyptian originals.

In dealing with rosettes we must be very careful not to fall into the common error of imagining that things which are similar are necessarily the same. In the course of this book there are several examples of the facility with which such a mistake could arise, and sometimes has arisen. Patterns and designs must primarily be studied _in situ_, and the wandering “from Dan to Beersheba” is to be deprecated as a method. It is only when the indigenous material is insufficient, or fails in its results, that the comparative method should be employed, and then only when history, tradition, or other lines of evidence warrant its use.

Rosettes undoubtedly occur in Egyptian decoration as well as in Assyrian. Goodyear makes a special pleading for the derivation of the latter from the former. The question really is—Are all Assyrian rosettes lotus-motives which originally had their source in Egypt? Few will doubt that Egyptian rosettes may have travelled with other lotus derivatives to Assyria, but it is improbable that a wholly foreign ornament should stud itself so profusely and ubiquitously over Assyrian architecture and manufactures.

I do not profess to be able to suggest what may be the original, or originals, of the primitive Assyrian rosette; but it does seem as if its vitality was increased and its employment further perpetuated by the cross-fertilisation, to speak figuratively, of the immigrant Egyptian variety.

In studying the influence of the lotus in decorative art we have to travel far afield, as it has left its trace even in India. The art of modern India is, so to speak, a medley composed of foreign motives and influences associated with native designs and religion. Under the term “native” must be included all the artistic influences which have been afforded by the mixed races of that vast peninsula. A very brief and limited survey of some of the historical aspects of the question must suffice.

In very early days “the Chaldeans, whose cry is in their ships,” voyaged to India for commercial purposes. Proof of this is found in the discovery of teak wood among the ruins of Mugheir. It is agreed also that there are distinct traces of Assyrian influences in Indian art.

Sir George Birdwood[81] (ii. p. 162) says, “The researches of Mr. Fergusson have shown that stone architecture in India does not begin before the end of the third century B.C.;” and again (i. p. 99), “There is no known Hindu temple older than the sixth or fifth century of the Christian era; and all the earlier stone buildings are Buddhist.”

[81] G. C. M. Birdwood, _The Industrial Arts of India_, 1880.

The same author has come to the conclusion (i. p. 146) “that the remarkable European character of the Buddhistic sculptures in the Panjab and Afghanistan is due, not to Byzantine, but to Greek influence. They are unmistakably Buddhistic sculptures, and may therefore date from B.C. 250 to about A.D. 700; and any of them which are later than the fourth century A.D. may have been executed under Byzantine influence.... Dr. Leitner was the first to insist on describing (the Buddhistic remains in the neighbourhood of Peshawar in the Panjab) as Græco-Buddhistic sculptures.... Their resemblance is probably due to their having been executed by Indian workmen from Greek designs or models.”

Goodyear remarks, “At a later date Hindu art became saturated with Mahommedan lotus patterns. These were all originally borrowed in the countries conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs, during the seventh century A.D., Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Persia.” Islam swept into her net the decorative art of the countries she conquered, and as realism was denied to her owing to the Prophet’s injunction against depicting human or animal forms, she had to fall back on patterns, but, unknown to her, many of these were lotus derivatives. It was these patterns that the Arabs brought with them to India.[82]

[82] I have a note to the following effect, the origin of
which I cannot now trace:—Art under the Mahommedans in the
first centuries appears to have been much encouraged, as many
drawings and pictures are shown, thus upsetting the general
belief that the Koran forbade the representation of human and
animal figures. The picture of a rider belonging to the period
of Arab civilisation is remarkably spirited, the folds of the
rider’s garments, as well as the figure itself, being admirably
portrayed.

“The history of India,” continues Goodyear, “thus explains why its apparently favourite water-lily [the Nelumbium] has had so little influence on its ornamental patterns. Although naturalistic rendering of the rose water-lily is found in ancient and modern Oriental art, it must be remembered that this has nothing to do with the dominance of a pattern, which is a matter of technical tradition. It appears that the famous Indian water-lily exercised no visible influence on the art of Egypt, and that Egyptian patterns have invaded its own home by many paths, at many times, borne by waves of historic influence which are admitted to have determined the character of Hindu art since the third century B.C., which is the first century in which this art is known to us.”

Examples of Indian forms of the anthemion will be found on Sindh pottery (Plate VIII., Fig. 11), on Delhi and Cashmere shawls, and on innumerable other objects and temple carvings. If one compares the anthemion combined with an “astragal” moulding in Fig. 80, which is from the Lât at Allahabad, with Figs. 7 and 5, Plate V., which are purely Greek, it will be evident that borrowing has taken place. One cannot follow Sir George Birdwood[83] when he says this “necking immediately below the capital represents with considerable purity the honeysuckle ornament of the Assyrians, which the Greeks borrowed from them with the Ionic order. Its form is derived originally from the Date _Hom_, but it really represents, conventionally, a flowery lotus, as the Bharhut sculptures enable us to determine. The ‘reel and bead’ pattern running along the lower border of the necking represents the lotus stalks.” This author does not state which lotus he refers to, probably it is the Nelumbium or Rose water-lily, but the stalked flowers added on each side of the central anthemion have no distinctive character, nor can I see that the figures he gives of the Bharhut sculptures are any more definite.

[83] G. C. M. Birdwood, _The Industrial Arts of India_, ii.,
1880, p. 167.

The Buddhist missionaries carried this pattern with them to China, where on some of the pottery unmistakable lotus derivatives occur, and those too of the anthemion series.

From the Orient we must retrace our steps westward. Persian art may be left on one side, as it was largely a legacy of Assyrian.

Among the Mediterranean peoples the Phœnicians claim first attention on account of their early assumed _rôle_ of middle-men. But as Perrot and Chipiez remark, “In the true sense of the word we can hardly say that Phœnicia had a national art. She built much and sculptured much, so we cannot say she had no art at all; but if we attempt to define it, it eludes us. Like an unstable chemical compound it dissolves into its elements, and we recognise one as Egyptian, another as Assyrian, and yet another, in its later years, as purely Greek. The only thing that the Phœnicians can claim as their own is the recipe, so to speak, for the mixture.” Herodotus tells us that the Phœnicians had in their ship “Egyptian and Assyrian goods.”[84]

[84] G. Perrot and C. Chipiez, _Art in Phœnicia and its
Dependencies_, 1885, ii. p. 427.

Not only did the Phœnicians barter in foreign objects, but they manufactured articles for trade, and were expert craftsmen. At the funeral games in honour of Patroklos “the son of Peleus set forth other prizes for fleetness of foot; a mixing-bowl of silver, chased; six measures it held, and in beauty it was far the best in all the earth, for artificers of Sidon wrought it cunningly, and men of the Phœnicians brought it over the misty sea.”[85] As their home-made goods were intended for foreign markets, they probably copied more or less exactly from Egyptian and Assyrian sources. They were artificers rather than original artists, their object was gain.

[85] _Iliad_, xxiii. (Lang, Leaf, & Myers.)

On the whole it appears that the Egyptian influence was more patent on Phœnician art than that of Assyrian, but on the other hand, the Phœnician religion was Semitic, and by this they were far more closely allied to Chaldea and Assyrian than to Egypt.

Through far wanderings and endless trafficking the “Phœnician, practised in deceit, a greedy knave,” as Homer dubs him, introduced numberless objects into the Mediterranean littoral which were ornamented with lotus designs or with patterns of lotus origin.

The great skill of the Chaldeans and Assyrians in weaving and embroidery enabled them to produce textiles which were highly valued wherever they found their way. The appropriation of “a goodly Babylonish garment” from the loot of Jericho by the unfortunate Achan shows how much these fabrics were prized. We know that the decoration of these beautiful and precious commodities reacted on the designs of Phœnician manufacturers, and directly or indirectly had some effect in guiding the nascent art of Europe.

When the Greeks were a young and growing people they, like most of their neighbours, were forced to trade with the Phœnicians they so despised, and were thus acquainted with trade goods from Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Ionic Greeks were more particularly influenced by Oriental art. The designs from early Greek tombs and the spoils recovered by the spade in recent excavations clearly show the nationality of the foster-mothers of Greek art.

The lessons learnt in childhood are hard to forget, and so, following the traditions of their fathers, the decorators continued to employ the same general patterns and designs that they saw around them and which they had inherited. For centuries we see the anthemion reproduced in architecture (Fig. 82 and Pl. V., Fig. 7), painting, pottery, varied it may be in detail, but essentially the same pattern. Rarely going direct to nature for inspiration, the Greeks were content with endless repetitions of slight variants of the one eternal and highly unconventional design. The mental unrest of the Greeks, which was always seeking something new, was in marked contrast to their decorative conservatism.

When the trade of Europe was taken up by Greeks they further disseminated this dominant motive. In less chaste form we find it in Roman art. The Renaissance gave it, with other matters classical, a new lease of life.

But Europe was not dependent on Greek and Roman influences alone for the spread of the anthemion. The Crusaders brought away with them many Oriental goods, and that, too, from the meeting-place of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Later the Moors invaded Spain, and left as the jetsam of their retreat a wealth of matchless decorative art, amongst which our old patterns may also be traced.

By this time it is often flamboyant. (Fig. 81.) The isolated elements of the design may have been the origin of the _fleur de lis_, of which the Prince of Wales’ Feathers appear to be a variant.[86]

[86] The reader is also referred to Dr. E. Bonavia’s studies
(_The Flora of the Assyrian Monuments and its Outcomes_, 1894)
for another theoretical origin of these designs. He lays stress
on the practice of fixing horns on trees, and other places, by
the Assyrians. We not only see horns and modifications of horns
symmetrically used on the stem of their sacred trees, but we
meet with them as decorative terminations on the poles of the
royal tents (Plate VIII., Figs. 2 and 7). “They were symbols of
power against the evil eye and evil spirits” (p. 205). Sooner
or later they were sure “to have been taken up by artists,
and modified in various ways into decorations for walls of
temples, palaces, etc. And so, in truth, we see these horns, at
first probably used solely from superstitious reasons, passing
afterwards into motives for various decorative purposes” (p.
141).

“What is called the honeysuckle pattern, or anthemion, is
nothing but the date-tree head supported by horns.... This
so-called honeysuckle pattern is not, I think, the only outcome
of the superstition of tying horns on trees, for I believe
the fleur-de-lys, so much used in heraldry as a royal emblem,
and on many coats-of-arms, seems but a modified imitation of
the real horns tied on trees or posts” (p. 142). Dr. Bonavia
discusses the history of the latter motive. It appears probable
that it was introduced to French heraldry by Louis VII. on
his return from the Crusades, and it is also likely that the
device was independently associated with the lily and the iris
in various countries after its real origin had been forgotten.
(This applies equally to Goodyear’s or to Bonavia’s theory.)

“The top of the Assyrian sacred date-tree, with its supporting
horns, was probably taken up by the Greeks and modified into
ornaments for friezes.” In support of this proposition Dr.
Bonavia illustrates an anthemion from the Erechtheium (Fig. 82).

“There are numerous architectural and decorative designs which,
I think, are traceable to the Assyrian date-tree and its horns.
The Prince of Wales’ feathers are perhaps also a descendant
of the same motive. There are in it three elements held
together by means of a crown, which may be a modification of
the ligature” (p. 154). The trident and the caduceus are also
supposed by this author to be “luck-horns” attached to a wand.

It must be remembered that the ligatures are usually very
distinct in Assyrian anthemia (Plate VIII., Figs. 9 and 10),
and they require an explanation as much as any other detail
of the design. Dr. Bonavia regards them as the lashings of
luck-horns which have become modified into volutes. Dr. Colley
March, as we have seen, attributes them to a textile origin. On
the other hand, we find ligatures in Egyptian lotus designs, as
in Fig. 77, where there is no suspicion of Assyrian influence;
future research will doubtless show whether the central
ligatures in Figs. 85 and 89 A are Assyrian, Egyptian, or local
in origin.

Throughout the art of the civilised world of to-day we find repeated, again and again, the misnamed honeysuckle pattern, or the anthemion, as it is preferable to call it. Most of our modern examples can be traced to Ancient Greece, but even there it had a hoary antiquity and probably a multiple ancestry. It is not improbable that future research will demonstrate that the history of this pattern is far more complex than that which I have endeavoured to sketch out. Its amazing longevity may be due to the fact that it arose from various radicles, and when the branches met their differences were not too great to counterbalance their resemblances, and so a fusion or mingling of elements could easily and naturally result.

Mr. Goodyear has an elaborate study of the evolution of the Ionic capital (Fig. 82) from the anthemion. A German architect and critic, Semper,[87] appears to have been the first to derive the Ionic capital from the volutes of the Assyrian palmette (Pl. VIII., Figs. 9, 10) by a process of gradual suppression of the leafy portion and increase of the scroll. Dr. J. T. Clarke[88] supported and elaborated this theory. At Neandreia, near Assos, in Asia Minor, he discovered an Ionic capital (Fig. 83) which is a valuable “missing link.” But, according to Mr. Goodyear, there is no need to seek an Assyrian origin for this capital when all the intermediate stages can be found in Egypt and in the Greek Islands.

[87] G. Semper, _Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen
Künsten_ (2nd ed.), 1878.

[88] J. T. Clarke, “A Proto-Ionic Capital from the Site of
Neandreia,” _American Jour. of Archæol._, 1886, ii. p. 1.

In Fig. 84 and Fig. 130, F, we have a lotus with curling sepals on pots from Cyprus; no one can dispute that these are really lotuses. The curling sepals become more spiral in Rhodian (Fig. 130, G), and especially in Melian pottery (Fig. 85). The central rosette has now become more leaf-like, but there are numerous true Egyptian examples of this, as in a compound flower (Fig. 86) from a tomb ceiling, or again (Fig. 87), on a blue-glazed lotus pendant from a necklace in the British Museum, of the Nineteenth Dynasty. In the Owens College Museum, Manchester, there is a somewhat similar enamel tomb amulet of the Twelfth Dynasty (2778-2565 B.C.). The transition from these to the stone or terra-cotta anthemion of the Parthenon (Fig. 88) is very gradual.

Thus, according to this view, the volute of the Ionic capital is merely a drooping lotus sepal, which became spiral in the Grecian Archipelago. Many of the Ionic capitals, especially the earlier ones, exhibit distinct traces of the central palmette, but eventually only the spirals persisted, and the cleft between the curling sepals was gradually reduced so that their stems came to appear as a transverse band ending in volutes.

In following this view of the history of the Ionic capital we have practically traversed that of the anthemion. The more typical examples of this pattern not only present us with the element which we have already briefly studied, but alternating with it is a trefoil. For this again there are any number of Egyptian originals in which the trefoil indicates a lotus flower; in this case all the petals have been eliminated and only the sepals persist.

Lack of time prevents me from attempting to follow the fascinating evolution of various patterns and designs which adorn Grecian temples and vases; but I must permit myself to indicate a probable origin of an exceedingly common pattern which has also overrun our own art. I refer to the so-called egg-and-dart moulding of Greek entablatures (Plate V., Fig. 5), and the same motive painted on vases or moulded on the later Samian ware (Plate V., Fig. 6). In these two figures the pattern is drawn in its usual position, but, the better to follow the argument, a typical variety is figured (Fig. 89) reversed. There are many varieties, from a series of =U=-shaped figures with alternating dots, as many Greek vases (Fig. 89, E), through the Samian device (Plate V., Fig. 6) and Erechtheium variety (Fig. 82 and Plate V., Fig. 5), to others in which there is greater complexity and more floral forms (Fig. 89, D).

With any given series of designs it is possible to begin at either end—in the one case there is an ascending evolution, in the other a degeneration. Students of the biological method of treating decorative art will recognise that the latter is by far the most general order in the evolution of patterns, and by adopting it in this case Professor Goodyear has been able to demonstrate the life-history of this pattern to the satisfaction of many students.

In Fig. 89, A, we have a typical lotus flower and bud pattern or Greek pattern from Rhodes; the same design occurs in a simplified form on a fragment of Greek pottery from Naukratis (Fig. 89, B),[89] in which the lotus flower is now a lotus trefoil; and in Fig. 89, C, the pattern is disrupted.

[89] W. M. Flinders Petrie, _Naukratis_, i., 1884-85; _Egyptian
Exploration Fund_, 1886, Plate VII., Figs. 1, 6.

A. Lotus anthemion on a vessel from Rhodes; after Salzmann.
B, C. Lotus anthemia on pottery from Naukratis; after Flinders Petrie.
D. Egg-and-dart moulding from the Erechtheium.
E. Degraded egg-and-dart pattern painted on a Grecian vase.]

In Greek vases we usually find that decoration has been made with a fine feeling for appropriateness; thus the erect anthemion occurs when the vase is swelling, but where it is contracting an inverted anthemion is placed, because the decorative lines thus widen to correspond with the expansion of the vase. Again, in Egyptian tomb ceilings the bordering lotus pattern is inverted, as the base line of the design naturally is made to correspond with the peripheral line of the ceiling—in other words, the lotus anthemion was inverted.

We have then a painted lotus bud and trefoil pattern which was often inverted and as often a simple design. According to this view, the egg of the egg-and-dart pattern is simply a semi-oval left between two lotus trefoils, the dart being the central sepal. When this design came to be incised in stone, the new technique very slightly modified the pattern, and the flat oval areas necessarily came to be carved as rounded or leaf-shaped projections. On these latter occasionally appear reminiscences of the intervening buds, as on the Erechtheium leaf-and-dart moulding. Many variants occur in this device, especially in Roman sculpture.

Professor Goodyear points out that the egg-and-dart moulding as such is unknown to Egyptian patterns, owing to the almost entire absence in Egyptian art of carved or incised lotus borders of any kind, a preference for flat ornament in colour being the rule. Stone carved patterns of any kind in Egyptian art are quite rare before the Ptolemaic period. In Greek art the absence of patterns in projected carving is also a general rule down to the time of the Erechtheium. In Greek art also colour decoration on flat surfaces was the rule in architecture for earlier periods; for example, a leaf-and-dart pattern was painted on a Doric capital in Ægina.[90]

[90] W. H. Goodyear, “Origin of the Acanthus motive and
Egg-and-Dart Moulding,” _The Architectural Record_, iv., 1894,
p. 88.

“The Ionic capital, the ‘honey-suckle,’ the egg-and-dart moulding, the meander, the various forms of spiral ornament, the guilloche and the rosette, and some few other motives, belong to one ornamental system, and have never been used in Europe, apart from historic connections with their original system, since the Greeks, and have never been used in Europe since prehistoric ages, without distinct dependance on the Greeks. As found with the Greeks they can all be traced back to Egyptian sources; except the guilloche, which is only the later variant of the spiral scroll. The guilloche pattern has been found in Egypt on pottery dated to the Twelfth Dynasty (2700 B.C.), which was probably made by foreigners resident in the country, but it may easily be an Egyptian pattern which has not yet been specified as such.

“The Egyptian rosette can be dated to the Fourth Dynasty, 3998-3721 B.C. Since that time its history has been continuous. Since its first transmission to Europe it has never been reinvented in Europe, for there was never an occasion or a chance to reinvent it there.

“The spiral scroll is dated to the Fifth Dynasty, and the meander (at present) to the Thirteenth Dynasty, about 2500-2000 B.C. The Egyptian Ionic capital is dated to the Eighteenth Dynasty, 1587-1327 B.C. The Egyptian anthemion (‘honey-suckle’ original) is dated to the Twelfth Dynasty (2778-2565 B.C.). A considerably higher antiquity than the given date must be assumed in all cases.”[91]

[91] W. H. Goodyear, “Are Conventional Patterns Spontaneously
Generated,” _The Architectural Record_, ii., 1893, p. 291.

This in brief is Professor Goodyear’s theory;[92] it is ingenious, but time will show how far it will convince students of this subject. It is quite possible that the egg-and-dart pattern may have had a multiple origin. Dr. Colley March is still inclined to see in it a kind of artistic reminiscence of the ends of beams (Plate V., Fig. 1) of earlier wooden buildings; but it is highly improbable that the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Hulme is the correct one. He says: “The echinus, or horse-chestnut, is also called the egg-and-tongue or egg-and-dart moulding, a variety of names that may be taken as conclusive of the fact that it bears no great resemblance to anything at all, but is a purely arbitrary form.”[93] The variety of names is conclusive only of the ignorance of the name-givers as to what the pattern originated from. In future those who write on decorative art will have to prove that any pattern or design is a purely arbitrary form; that assumption is no longer permissible.

[92] Prof. Goodyear acknowledges (_Grammar of Lotus_) that P.
E. Newberry had independently arrived at a similar conclusion
in 1885, and that Owen Jones in 1856 and Léon de Vesley in 1870
had suggested a lotus original for the egg-and-dart pattern.

[93] F. E. Hulme, _The Birth and Development of Ornament_,
1893, p. 86.

We have left the lotus far behind, and though it is hard to believe that the multitudinous designs of so many ages and of such diverse countries are all derived from the sacred flower of Ancient Egypt, yet it may well be that the oldest stock was a lotus derivative, and that the symbolism of that flower gave to it sufficient vitality to spread and multiply and replenish the earth.

C. _Zoomorphs._

It is a matter of common observation that our children very early take delight in pictures of animals and in making delineations of them. It is further noticeable that the quality of the drawing makes no difference to children, and they are as pleased with the crudest representation of an animal as their elders are with a life-like portrait. In all this the child closely resembles the folk, whether they be the backward classes among ourselves or the less advanced peoples. All these agree in being satisfied with diagrammatic realism.

Savages, however, vary greatly in their power of representing animal forms. In Fig. 3 we have a number of outlines of animals which were etched on bamboo pipes or carved on wooden drums by the Papuan natives of the islands of Torres Straits or of the adjacent coast of New Guinea. The figures are all reduced to the same scale by photography from tracings of the original delineations, and are therefore faithful copies of the originals. A glance at the figure will show that the animals are drawn with a very fair degree of accuracy, so that in most cases it is perfectly easy to identify the genus of the animal intended. There are numerous little touches which appeal to the eye of the naturalist as indicating keen observation on the part of the artists; for example, the sharks (C, D) are always drawn with unequally lobed tails, the tail of the dugong (M) is accurately rendered; several characteristic details are, as a rule, well brought out in the drawings of the cassowaries (K). On the other hand, there are several anatomical mistakes, as for instance, giving shark-like gill-slits to a bony-fish, or even to a crocodile. The mouth is represented in a sucker-fish (F) as being on the upper side of the head, whereas it should be underneath, and the view of that fish’s tail would be impossible from that particular point of view; but these and numerous other similar examples which I could name are merely due to a desire to express several salient features, without regard to the possibility of their being all seen at once. The artists’ aim was to give a recognisable representation of animals, and in this they have as a rule succeeded perfectly; it is captious to expect more from them.

On other parts of the mainland of New Guinea one rarely meets with representations so life-like as these,[94] and nowhere else on that largest of islands are so many kinds of animals drawn. Animals are often depicted by the Australians, but usually these are very poor as works of art; they are also employed in pictography.

[94] O. Schellong, “Notizen über das Zeichnen der Melanesier,”
_Internat. Arch. für Ethnogr._, viii., 1895, p. 57. (Plates
VIII., IX.) A. C. Haddon, _The Decorative Art of British New
Guinea_.

Although animals are so frequently drawn by the Torres Straits Islanders, they never arrange them in groups or in series. They are pictures of individuals, drawn for decorative effect, but they have no story to tell. The only exception to this rule occurs in the case of certain animals, two of which are sometimes placed symmetrically on the decorated object.

Representations of animals are not uncommon in Melanesia, but they are distinctly of rare occurrence in Polynesia. They occur in great profusion in America from north to south, but here they are predominantly religious or pictographic in significance. Animal forms are not characteristic of African art, except among the Bushmen, and there we find pictures of animals which are comparable with those of the Eskimo or the natives of Torres Straits.

As far back as the time when men hunted the reindeer and wild horse in Western Europe do we find drawings of animals. This was at the time period when the glacial cold was abating and when men lived in caves, used chipped, unpolished stone implements, and were unacquainted with pottery. In archæological nomenclature this is known as the Epoque Magdalénienne of the Cave Period in the Palæolithic Age. The figures of the mammoth, reindeer, horse (Fig. 90), etc., are usually cleverly etched on bone or ivory, and sometimes they are wonderfully life-like and accurate; the representation of human beings are as a rule very weak indeed.

“The wild horse roamed in immense herds over Europe, and formed the chief food of the palæolithic hunters. In some of the caverns in France the remains of the horse are more abundant than those of any other animal, more even than those of the wild ox. Thus at Solutré, near Macon, the bones of horses, which had formed the food of the inhabitants of this station, form a deposit nearly 10 feet in depth and more than 300 feet in length, the number of skeletons represented being estimated at from 20,000 to 40,000. This primitive horse was a diminutive animal, not much larger than an ass, standing about 13 hands high, the largest specimens not exceeding 14 hands. But the head was of disproportionate size, and the teeth were very powerful. He resembles the tarpan or wild horse of the Caspian steppes. A spirited representation of two of these wild horses is engraved on an antler found at the station of La Madelaine in the Department of the Dordogne.”[95]

[95] Isaac Taylor, _The Origin of the Aryans_, p. 158.