Article contents
Early Greek and Oriental Ivories1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
Philostratus relates that Apollonius of Tyana, a sophist of the early Empire, was once at Peiraeus trying to find a passage on a ship sailing for Ionia. The skipper refused to take him, saying that she was a cargo-ship and did not carry passengers. Apollonius then asked of what the cargo consisted, and was told it consisted of statues of the gods, in gold and stone, or gold and ivory. Then there was some bantering, in which Apollonius chaffed the skipper for refusing to take him on board. ‘Are you so ignorant,’ he asked ‘as to drive away like this from your ship philosophers, men for whom the gods have a special fondness, and above all at a time when you are making a business out of the gods? This was not the way they made statues in olden times. They did not canvass the cities selling them the gods. They used to carry nothing but their own hands, their masons' and ivory-workers' tools; provided the raw material and fashioned the works of art in the temples themselves.’
From this, then, it appears that in olden times the craftsmen travelled freely about, carrying with them nothing but the secrets of their craft, a few tools and their materials. Apollonius does not say to what period he refers; but what he describes exactly fits the facts in the early history of the ivory craft from the Mycenaean period to the seventh or sixth century B.C., as far as we can make out the facts. In the Mycenaean period, the sites where ivories have been discovered are numerous.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1948
References
2 Life of Apollonius, V, xxGoogle Scholar.
3 For ivories of this period found in Greece see Barnett, , ‘Phoenician and Syrian Ivory Carving,’ Palestine Exploration Quarterly 1939, p. 12Google Scholar, n. 4 adding: from Mycenae, group representing two women and a boy; and from Athens (Agora) pyxis with animal scenes in relief—both JHS LIX, 1939, pl. XIVGoogle Scholar. There is also a remarkable carved tusk from Mycenae, quite Oriental in style, at Athens, Stais, Collection Mycénienne, p. 162. From Enkomi: roundels, Gjerstad, , Swedish Cyprus Expedition, pl. LXXIX, 21–29Google Scholar; figure of woman, pl. XC, 91; comb, id., pl. LXXXIX. From Delos, , de Santerre, Gallet and Tréheux, , BCH, LXXI–II, 1947–1948, pp. 148–284Google Scholar. From Dendra: Persson, New Tombs at Dendra. For the Megiddo collection, see now Loud, , The Megiddo Ivories, Chicago, 1939Google Scholar. The subject of Mycenaean ivories is one which deserves a separate paper to itself and cannot be treated here. (Since the above was written, Kantor's, Helène study, ‘The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium B.C.’ (AJA 1947, vol. LVI)Google Scholar has appeared. Her Chapter IV dealing with ivories fills a great want.)
4 The sources for ivory in ancient times were Syria, the Sudan, Somaliland, and India. The Phoenicians appear first to have exploited the native Syrian elephant herds (see Barnett, loc. cit., pp. 5 and 6). But as these became scarce—they were apparently exterminated by the eighth century B.C.—the Phoenicians began to look for fresh sources of supply elsewhere. Hiram of Tyre appears to have organised-expeditions jointly with Solomon of Judah ca. 1000 B.C. to procure it from India (Ophir?) together with apes and peacocks, the names of which are of unmistakable Indian origin (1 Kings, 10, 22; cf. Warmington, , The Commerce of the Roman Empire and India, 11)Google Scholar. This is in keeping with the fact that in 1938 Mr. Dollman of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, when shown some specimens of ivory from the collection of Nimrud considered they were Indian ivory. We know that by the sixth century B.C. the Phoenicians were importing ivory from Dedan (i.e., N. Arabia) (Ezek. 24. 15, this reading being preferred to the improbable ‛Ρόδιοι of the LXX)—that is to say, since there are no elephants in Arabia, it must have been carried from India or Somaliland by sea and thence across Arabia by camel. Indian provenance, too, is probable for the material of several ivory pieces discovered at Bahrein in the Persian gulf, probably of sixth or fifth centuries B.C. (see Harding, , Mackay, , and Petrie, , Bahrein and Hemamieh (1929), pp. 18–22Google Scholar; the female figures of ivory there stated to be in the Oriental Department of the British Museum are not there).
Egypt drew her ivory from Syria, the Sudan, and Somaliland. See Lucas, , Ancient Egyptian Materials (1938), p. 45Google Scholar.
Darius, describing how he built Persepolis, claims that his ivory came from Kush (Libya), India and Arachosia (Scheil, Inscription achémenide de Suse). This last Arachosian or Afghan source of supply must be connected with the fact that a brilliant school of ivory carvers grew up in Hellenistic times at Begram near there (see the ivories illustrated in Hackin, , Recherches archéologiques à Begram = Memoires de la délégation archéologique en Afghanistan, Tome 9)Google Scholar.
The Greeks drew their ivory in the fifth century B.C. largely from Libya cf. Hermippus, fr. ap. Athenaeus, (63 K).
5 On guilds see the evidence presented in Rostowzew, , Social and Economic History ofthe Hellenistic World, pp. 1590–1Google Scholar. He considers it likely enough that they existed before the Hellenistic period expecially in Asia Minor and Egypt. In fact, evidence has now been published that they existed as early as the fourteenth century B.C. at Ras Shamra in North Syria, and a whole list of them survives (Virolleaud, , ‘Les villes et les corporations du royaume d'Ugarit,’ Syria, 1940)Google Scholar. It is thus almost certain that they must then have existed in other contemporary countries. Hammurabi's Code (eighteenth century B.C.) implies the existence of families or tribes of craftsmen in his references to ‘a son of a craftsman’ meaning a member of such a group. He expressly recognises the hereditary principle, by laying down that a father must teach his son his trade. This was, in fact ‘common form’ and remained so in the ancient Near East. Thus a fourth century B.C. inscription from Cition (Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions, no. 21) refers to a man who is hereditary chief of the guild of brokers; while Dow publishes in Hesperia X, p. 351Google Scholar the family tree of a family of Grecised Phoenician sculptors from Tyre, whose works have been found at widely separated places.
Among the known guilds of ancient times, ivory workers are not specifically mentioned, except in India, where such a guild dedicated a finely carved gateway at Sanchi in the second century B.C. But the ivory craftsman was certainly recognised in Greece as we see from his having an individual name, though again, not till rather late: ἐλεφαντότομος Oppian, Cyn. 2514 and ἐλεφαντουργός in a second-century papyrus (Petropoulos, , no. 64) Liddell and Scott's ἐλεφαντεύς is now recognised (in P. Paris 5, col. 43., ll. 1, 3, de Presle, Brunet, ‘Notices et textes des papyrus grecs’ in Notices et extraits des manuscrits)Google Scholar as meaning not an ivory worker but a native of Elephantine. For a valuable collection of references to ivory and ivory workers in Hellenistic Egypt see Cumont, , L'Egypte des astrologues, 1937, pp. 99–100Google Scholar. I am obliged to Mr. T. C. Skeat for the last three references.
6 Ovid, , Metamorphoses XGoogle Scholar. According to Clement of Alexandria, the statue was of Aphrodite herself (Protr. 17, 31 ff.). Pygmalion's love-story reflects a form of Phoenician cult.
7 Plato possibly harps on this feeling in a curious passage in the Laws (956a), where he lays it down that a modest person should not make offerings to the gods consisting of ivory. For this he assigns the reason that since it comes ‘from a body that has given up the ghost,’ , it is unsuitable—a taboo quite alien to ordinary Greek practice, though fully understandable to a Persian. Mr. H. D. P. Lee considers it may be due to Pythagorean influence, comparing Burnet, , Early Greek Philosophers, p. 94Google Scholar, n. 3 and Diels, , Die Vorsokratiker, (ed. 5), vol. I, pp. 478 ffGoogle Scholar. and Index s.v. ἔμΨυχος
8 Berlin V.A. 5869. The carving is laid on a bronze background, a combination elsewhere unknown. I am obliged to Dr. W. Andrae for permission to publish the present piece, which was found by him ‘in einem Aussenwinkel der aüsseren Festungsmauer (Assur, Planquadrat b D 5 V) neben einem Tor im sogenannten Aussenhaken; dort vermutlich von der Stadtmauer hinausgeworfen.’ I think the fragment shown in the photograph as forming part of the stag's rear hind leg is really part of the other hind leg but has been displaced.
9 Loud, G. and Altman, C. B., Khorsabad, Part II (Chicago, Oriental Institute Publications) 1938Google Scholar.
10 Thureau-Dangin, F. and others, Arslan Tash, Paris 1931Google Scholar.
11 von Luschan, F. and Andrae, W., Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, VGoogle Scholar. Die Kleinfunde. Berlin, 1943Google Scholar.
12 Unpublished. From the courtyard of the temple of the Storm-god.
13 Crowfoot, J. and Crowfoot, G., Samaria-Sebaste II, The Early Ivories (1938)Google Scholar.
14 See Barnett, , ‘The Nimrud Ivories,’ Iraq, II, 1935Google Scholar, and Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 1939 (‘Phoenicien and Syrian Ivory Carving’).
15 Kunze, , ‘Orientalische Schnitzereien aus Kreta,’ AM LX–LXI, pl. 84. 1Google Scholar.
16 Blinkenberg, Fouilles de Lindos, nos. 1572, 1582.
17 Concerning the panel with the seated figures, he writes that it was found in 1935 ‘28 m. südlich des grossen Altars … 38 m. südlich des mitdem Relief gleichzeitigen–älteren Altars, und zwar + 115 über das Meer in einer Aufhöhungsschicht, die damals ausserhalb des eigentlichen Heiligtums lag, am Weg vom Meer zum Altar. Leider liess sie sich in der Höhe nicht genau abgrenzen; die keramischen Reste, die sie enthielt, möchte ich in die zweite Hälfte des 7ten und in das frühe 6te Jahrhundert ansetzen. Gewiss hat das Elfenbeinrelief eine längere Lebensdauer hinter sich gehabt als die mitgefundenen unverzierten Tongefässe. Nach allem, was man aus den Fundtatsachen des Heraions schliessen kann, ist so gut wie ausgeschlossen, dass das Relief vor dem 7ten Jahrhundert ins Heiligtum gekommen ist. Ich würde glauben: aufgestellt im Laufe des 7ten Jahrhunderts, weggeworfen im späten 7ten oder frühen 6ten Jahrhundert … Übrigens ist mit dem Relief zusammen ein bärtiger Elfenbeinkopf gefunden worden, den wie ich glaube E. Kunze auch in seinem Aufsatz (AM LX–LXI, 230) erwähnt. Für ihn gelten also die gleichen Fundangaben.’
18 Curtis, , Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, IV and VGoogle Scholar.
19 Museo Italiano, Atlante pl. 10, fig. 7.
20 See Barnett, , Iraq, II, pl. 11Google Scholar.
21 Hogarth, B.M. Excavations at Ephesus, pl. XXIX, 2, 4, 8.
22 Ibid., 7.
23 Dimand, , Bull. Met. Mus. New York, 1936, p. 221 ff.Google Scholar; 1937, p. 89 ff.
24 Illustrated London News, 9th Dec., 1939.
25 Kunze, , AM LX–LXI, pl. 84. 11Google Scholar.
26 See Hogarth, Ephesus, pls. XXX, XXXI. The ivories from Camiros were discovered in 1864 by Biliotti, heaped with many other objects of various periods in a ‘well’ or cistern on the Acropolis at Camiros. See Biliotti, and Cottrett, , L'Ile de Rhodes, p. 397Google Scholar. In 1932 the well was re-excavated by the Italian authorities, who discovered a few more ‘ivory’ buttons, etc. of the sort found by Biliotti. A small figure of Camiros type is in the Allard Pierson Museum at Amsterdam, Allgemeene gids, no. 481, pl. XI.
27 Kunze, , ‘Zu den Anfängen der griechischen Plastik,’ AM LV, 1930, 147 ffGoogle Scholar.
28 Athens, Nat. Mus. Poulsen, Orient und Frühgriechisch Kunst, fig. 118. The same interpretation applies to the draped figure ibid., fig. 57, which also holds a bowl.
29 Front view only, JHS LI, p. 192, fig. 5Google Scholar.
30 E.g. Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, IV, pl. LV (but see now 25, n. 153, for a solution of this mystery).
32 Burn, A. R., The World of Hesiod, pp. 243–9Google Scholar q.v., argues well that the Phoenician settlements in Greek waters were but small trading depots; nevertheless, they still elude discovery. On the Phoenicians in Greece, see Ed. Meyer, , Gesch. des Altertums II, 113–22Google Scholar.
33 Woolley, , JHS LI, 58Google Scholar; Robertson, C. M., JHS LII, 60Google Scholar.
34 Forrer, , ‘Paltos: eine altgriechische Siedlung des sechsten Jhdts v. Chr. in Phoenizien’; VIter Internat. Kongress für Archäologie, Berlin, 1939Google Scholar.
35 Although I cannot see very clear evidence of Phoenician craftsmen having powerfully influenced the Spartan ivory-workers, there are signs that they may have done so in other crafts. Cf. the clay masks at the Orthia site the earliest of which are of purely Phoenician appearance, with those from Carthage, Escudero, Vives y, La necropoli de Iviza (Estudio de arqueologia cartaginese, Madrid, 1917) pl. XCIIIGoogle Scholar.
36 There was, perhaps, some sort of market for ivories at Bahrein (see above p. 1, n. 3).
37 Hrozný, , Les Inscriptions hittites hiéroglyphiques (1934), p. 307Google Scholar.
38 Ionia and the East (1909).
39 Der Orient und die frühgriechische Kunst (1912).
40 ‘Orient und Hellas in archaischer Zeit,’ AM XLV (1920)Google Scholar.
41 Necrocorinthia, 67–8, 170–3 (1931)Google Scholar.
42 ‘Zu den Anfängen der griechischen Plastik,’ AM LV (1930)Google Scholar; ‘Orientalische Schnitzereien aus Kreta,’ AM LX–LXI (1935–1936)Google Scholar; and Kretische Bronzereliefs (1931). especially pp. 247–64Google Scholar.
43 Antiquaries' Journal XXII (1942)Google Scholar.
44 Cook, R. M., ‘Ionia and Greece in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.’ JHS LXVI (1946)Google Scholar.
44a The term is used broadly here, to mean both Muški, (Μόσχοι) and Tabal (Tibareni). The former then dwelt in Phrygia proper; the latter, in Lycaonia and Cappadocia, formed a neo-Hittite state which the Assyrians annexed in the 8th century B.C. See Landsberger, B., Samal, 19Google Scholar.
45 See Friedrich, art. ‘Phrygia’ PW (1941); Pedersen, Holger, ‘Lykisch und Hittitisch’, Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab (1945)Google Scholar; and Gurney, , ‘Mita of Pahhuwa,’ LAAA XXVIII (1948)Google Scholar.
46 Revue hittite et asianique IV, 1936, pl. IGoogle Scholar; Bossert, , ‘Santa und Kupapa’ MAOG VI 3 (1932), 26Google Scholar.
47 Hogarth, B.M. Excavations at Ephesus, pl. VII, 49. Dio Chrys. XXX, 113, remarked that Phrygians wore earrings like women.
48 Körte brothers, Gordion, , Jahrbuch, 1904, Tombs I, III and IVGoogle Scholar. See Blinkenberg, Fibules, type XII g.
49 Botta, Monument de Ninive, pl. 106a, Salle V.
50 See Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire, s.v. phrygio. It has been suggested that embroidery was, in fact, a late invention contemporary with the Roman Empire. But this is not so, as the discovery of embroidery in the tomb of Tutankhamen shows (see Davis, , ‘The Tomb of Tutankhamen,’ Journal of Egyptian Archaeology XXVII (1941), 125)Google Scholar. Patterned textiles also appear to be represented as door hangings on the facades of the rock-cut Phrygian tombs at and near Gordion, probably executed in the seventh century B.C. They are not likely to be earlier since certain of them bear inscriptions in an Ionic alphabet, no example of which can as yet be shown to be earlier than the seventh. It is also significant that the curious pattern, , into which the Phrygian tomb façade at Yazili-Kaya resolves itself, recurs on Rhodian seventh-century ware (Sieveking and Hackl, Die königliche Vasensammlung zu München, fig. 212).
51 Aristagoras told Cleomenes that ‘the Phrygians have the most flocks of any race that I know,’ Hdt. V, 49.
52 E.g. Garstang, Land of the Hittites, pl. LXXVI; for the slabs, see Güterbock, & Özgüc, , Eti Müzesi Kilavuzu, 74–80Google Scholar.
53 Özgüc, , ‘Archäologische Funde aus Anatolien’, Belleten (1946) 612Google Scholar.
54 Garstang, The Hittite Empire, pl. L.
55 Frankfort, , BSA XXXVII, 26–7Google Scholar; on the griffin in Egyptian art, see Leibovitch, , ‘Le griffon,’ Bulletin de l'Institut d'Egypte XXV (1943)Google Scholar.
56 B.M. 130670. This seal has a frieze consisting of a fish between (l) a winged goat with tail ending in a goat's head with snake's tongue; and a winged lion and (r) another winged goat with tail in form of an ibex' forepart; and on bottom of the seal, a bird of prey and a man's head. All the monsters are two-legged. For similar seal-impressions see Lehmann-Haupt, , Armenien Einst und Jetzt, I, figs. pp. 115, 358Google Scholar.
57 von Oppenheim, Der Tell Halaf, pl. 19a.
58 B.M. 91666. Published by Hall, , Babylonian and Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum (1928)Google Scholar, pl. LIX and Layard, , Nineveh and Babylon, 362Google Scholar. There is a fragment of another from Deve Hüyük near Carchemish in the British Museum (unpublished).
59 Curtis, , Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome V, (1925), pls. 28, 29Google Scholar. Another piece which apears to go closely with this crater and stand is the bowl from Capena, Poulsen, op. cit., fig. 121.
60 A possibly earlier example is a bronze griffin head, probably an axe, of the early first millennium B.C. at Susa, Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse VII, fig. 39, there called an eagle. Another early Oriental example of griffin, open-mouthed, winged, but earless and knobless is on a seal from Yunus (Carchemish), Woolley, , LAAA XXVI, pl. 20 (a) also of the early Iron AgeGoogle Scholar.
61 The same face-type occurs on the alabastron from Tumulus IV at Gordion, representing a goddess holding a small lion. For this reason I feel this piece also is Phrygian, not Phoenician as Poulsen argued.
62 Hogarth, Ephesus, pl. XXVI, 3.
63 Bittel, and Güterbock, , Bogaz-köy (Abh. der Preuss. Akad. Wiss. ph. hist. Kl., 1935), pl. 31, figs. 11, a and bGoogle Scholar.
64 Waldstein, The Argive Heraeum. pl. CXXIX.
65 Numismatic Chronicle, 1912, 140, no. 11Google Scholar.
66 E.g. Bossert, Altanatolien, figs. 681, 684, from Alaca Hüyük and Bogaz-köy).
67 JHS LIV, 1934Google Scholar. Miss Roes' comparsion with the composite figures on the bronze standards from Luristan goes too far. I believe that that is an accidental, not a real parallel, and that there was never any chimaera-like creature in the repertoire of Luristan. What appears to her to be one is a representation of a lion devouring a goat, ‘telescoped’ into a single body, after the fantastic manner of Luristan.
68 Antiquarium 2092.
69 Butler, , Sardis I, figs. 86, a and b.Google Scholar
70 Apud Hogarth, Excavations at Ephesus.
71 BMC Terracottas, A 67–75.
72 Dawkins, and others, The Temple of Artemis Orthia, (1929)Google Scholar; some stray pieces from the same site are in Munich, published JHS L (1930) pl. XIGoogle Scholar.
73 See above, n. 35.
73a For recent discoveries in Cilicia which go far to explain these obscurities, see below p. 25, n. 153.
74 The subject of lion and bull treated in the round in two planes at right angles seems to be derived from Asia Minor; cf. the Hittite relief of a lion leaping on a bull at Alac a (Bossert, Altanatolien, figs. 524, 525) and the lion and bull group on the Xanthos Monument (Akurgal, Griech. Reliefs des VIten Jhdt. aus Lykien) and fragments of a similar group from Ephesus (Pryce, , BMC Sculpture I, 64, fig. 71)Google Scholar. Cf., however, for an earlier stage in the development of this composition the suberb half Syrian, half Mycenaean jasper group from El Amarna, BM 22866, published by Hall, H. R., JEA XI (1925) 159–161Google Scholar.
75 E.g., at Ephesus (Hogarth, op. cit., pl. XXVI, 5) Ithaca, (BSA XXXVI, pl. X) Chios, , (JHS LIV, 1934, 199)Google Scholar.
76 Dawkins, op. cit., pl. CLX.
77 id. pl. XCIII, 1.
78 This is BM. 12550, one of five fragments of terracott a jar-rims, possibly all from the same jar, found by Rassam at Nimrud in the temple of Ishtar Kidmuri. The present example has been double-struck.
79 Dawkins, op. cit., pl. LXXVII. I am obliged to Mr. Stubbings for this photograph.
80 Kretische Bronzereliefs, p. 256.
81 Lane, , ‘Laconian Pottery,’ BSA XXXIII–XXXIV, 179Google Scholar.
82 Hampe, , ‘Die Korfugiebeln und die antiken Perscusbilder,’ AM LX–LXI, pl. 99. 2Google Scholar.
83 JdI LIV (1939), 266 and fig. 18. I owe my know ledge of this and the next piece to Mrs. StubbingsGoogle Scholar.
84 Dawkins, op. cit., pls. CLXXII, 2; CLXXXVI, 8.
85 BM 119445. Provenance uncertain. It is ascribed to Urartu, but in my view it more resembles the art of Luristan. A possibly Phoenician origin for the motif of man between winged horses is suggested by the sculpture from Amathus Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros & c. pl. CC, 4.
86 Amandry, , ‘Rapports préliminaires sur les statues chryseléphantines de Delphes,’ BCH LXIII, 1939Google Scholar.
87 idem, ‘Sur une statuette de dompteur de lion découverte à Delphes,’ Syria, XXIV, 1944.
88 loc. cit.
89 Amandry, loc. cit., p. 163; ibid., n. 1; he says that the closest relatives of the ivory are statuettes of ivory and wood found in the Heraeum at Samos. The latter are still un-published.
90 E.g. Barnett, , Iraq, II, pl. XXIII, 2Google Scholar.
91 Dimand, , Bull. Met. Mus. New York, 1936, p. 222Google Scholar, fig. 2. The locks also occur on a woman represented on Etruscan antefixes, van Buren, E. D., ‘Figurative Terracotta Revetments in Etruria and Latium,’ Etruria IV, xviiiGoogle Scholar. and other Etruscan figures cf. Poulsen op. cit., figs. 98, 99.
92 Herzfeld, Iran and the Most Ancient East, pl. 78.
93 Lev. XIX, 27. The custom was observed by youths both at Troezen and Hierapolis in Syria of dedicating to the temple a lock of hair on reaching maturity, having allowed it to grow from childhood. Clemen, , ‘Lukians Schrift über die Syrische Göttin,’ Alte Orient (1938) 57Google Scholar. For Troezen (dedications to Hippolytus) see Daremberg & Saglio I 1362 s.v. ‘coma.’
94 Above p. 9, n. 52.
95 Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli IV, pl. VII.
96 Bossert, Altanatolien, fig. 763 and Delaporte, Malatya, La Porte des Lions, pl. XVII.
97 Cf. Ivory panels of a box from Rhodes, , Annuario VI–VII, p. 323Google Scholar
98 BM 61.4-25.36. = Maximova, Vases Plastiques, pl. XXX, fig. 112.
99 Palestine Expl. Quarterly, 1939, pp. 9, 18Google Scholar. Since then, the fine Hittite piece from Megiddo has been published, Loud, Megiddo Ivories, pl. 10.
100 Figured on the title-page and cover of Belleten, IX, 1945Google Scholar.
101 Körte brothers, op. cit., p. 117, fig. 96.
102 Poulsen. op. cit., figs. 53, 54.
103 Il. IV, 141.
104 Horse's cheek-pieces exist in metal from Lindos, (Blinkenberg, Fouilles, fig. 621, 614, 615, 625) and Samos JHS L, 1930, 249, fig. 7)Google Scholar. All appear to be of Phoenician manufacture. One is represented on the sculptured horse's head, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli IV, fig. 248. They are frequent in Assyrian reliefs.
105 Iraq, II, Pl. XXIV, s = Hogarth, Ephesus, pl. XXVIII, 2.
106 Curtis, , Excavations at Sardis XIIIGoogle Scholar, pl. VIII, 87.
107 Xenophon, , Anab. IIIGoogle Scholar, l. 31. notes that Lydian men as well as women wore ear-rings.
108 For the cult of the moon in Lydia, see Keil, , ‘Die Kulte Lydiens’ in Anatolian Studies presented to Sir William Ramsay, 239 ffGoogle Scholar. The slave mark was an ancient Oriental custom, possibly referred to as abuttu in the code of Hammurabi. On slave marks and dedicatory markings by branding, tattooing etc. see Perdrizet, , Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, 1911Google Scholar (‘La miraculeuse histoire de Pandare et Echédore, suivie de recherches sur la marque dans l'antiquité’), pp. 54–130.
109 See BSA VIII, 280.
110 Koşay, , Les Fouilles de Pazarli (1941)Google Scholar, pl. XXXI, middle;’ see also Akurgal, , ‘Pazarlıda çıkan eserler,’ Belleten, 1943Google Scholar.
111 It also appears on a sphinx from Luristan, Pope, Survey of Persian Art, pl. 32.
112 Pryce, , BMC Sculpture IGoogle Scholar, pt 8, fig. 165.
113 Hogarth, Ephesus, pl. XXIII.
114 Bossert, Altanatolien, fig. 803.
115 Sardis, I, fig. 73 = X, fig. 5. The leaf pattern for locks of hair is well exampled on the lion from Bogaz-köy or that from Tell Taiyinat, Bossert, Altanatolien, fig. 873. The same treatment of hair as on the Ephesus lion, namely ‘leaf pattern’ locks with individual hairs delineated, the locks arranged in a series of sweeping lines, recurs notably in Persian art at Persepolis, Herzfeld, op. cit., pl. LXX, and Etruria, the Capitoline Wolf; both under Lydian or Ionic influence. On the rendering in Greek art of lion's hair, see Akurgal, op. cit., pp. 7–9.
116 Ephesus, pl. XXVI, 3.
117 Gjerstad, , ‘Studies in Archaic Greek Chronology II (Ephesus),’ LAAA XXIV (1937)Google Scholar. See also Cook, R., JHS LXVI, 90, n. 190Google Scholar.
118 Ephesus, pl. XXV, 1 a and b.
119 ibid., pl. XXVII, 6.
120 ibid., pl. XXVI, 6.
121 Kretische Bronzereliefs, p. 258.
122 Ephesus, pl. XXIV, 7 = 11.
123 ibid., pl. XXVI, 1, 5.
124 ibid., pls. XXV, 12; XXI, 1.
125 Op. cit., pp. 33, 34.
126 See Poulsen, op. cit., p. 106, quoting Hogarth and Garstang.
127 Ephesus, pl. XXIV, 7 = 11.
128 See Farnell, , Cults of the Greek States II, 480Google Scholar.
129 Ephesus, pl. XXIV, 1.
130 Hesychius has . For an admirable fresh contribution to the Ephesian problems, see also Prof. Picard's, ‘L'Ephésia, les amazones, et les abeilles’ in ‘Mélanges Radet,’ in Revue des études anciennes, 1940Google Scholar. He made here, I think, the first comparison of the bee in the cult of Ephesus with the bee in the story and cult of Telipinus; he admits the possibility of a connexion between the Ephesian cult and the Amazons, yet scouts the Hittite origin often proposed for them. It is true that there is no specific proof in the Hittite records of the existence in their day of Amazons, though it is possible that an obscure passage in the Hittite Laws, alluding to women going on a campaign, might be held to refer to women-warriors. (Hrozný, , Code hittite, 42.)Google Scholar However, in the present study we are using Hittite in the widest geographical sense. The Amazons existed, if at all, in the provincial or allied regions north or west of the Hittite Empire about which we are hardly informed at all in the Hittite texts and were presumably of non Indo-European stock, distinct from that of the rulers of Bogaz-köy. This is perhaps in keeping with the fact that Telipinus, though included in the official Hittite pantheon, is in reality a pre-Hittite god of the native population, with whom such a curious institution as the Amazons might well have been connected.
131 Hrozný, op. cit., § 91–2.
132 Otten, , ‘Der Telipinu-Mythus,’ Mitt. Vorderas. Gesellschaft 46, 1 (1942)Google Scholar.
133 Ramsay partly anticipated these recent discoveries in ascribing an Anatolian origin to the bee-cult at Ephesus. ‘.. it is highly probable that the employment for domestic use of the bee and of various domestic animals was either originated or carried to remarkable perfection in Asia Minor’ (Letters to the Seven Churches, 1904, p. 222)Google Scholar. But his immediately preceding statement ‘The life history of the bee was correctly understood in primitive Ephesian cults’ is more debatable. It seems indeed plausible to hold that at Ephesus the true facts were known about the fertilisation of the queen bee, which involves the emasculation of her partner, and that this formed the explanation there for the practice of eunuchdom. We may note the gold ornaments in the British Museum (BMC Jewellery, no. 1118, pl. 12) from Camirus which apparently represent a figure of the type of the Great Goddess potnia theron, with the body of a bee. Nevertheless, by Aristotle and all the other ancients whose views survive, the bee we call queen was thought male, and called βασιλεύς, and the nuptials of the queen bee which take place at a great height in mid-air have not, so far as I know, ever been witnessed. If the Ephesians shared the usual ancients' views, the βασιλεύς or male was the ruler of the hive, and presumably the ἐσσήν or chief eunuch priest correspondingly ruled the μέλισσαι. If so the practice there of eunuchdom must have been explained by other than apicultural analogies. Eunuchdom was, in fact, a feature of many branches of the related Ishtar cults of the ancient East, and eunuchs formed part of the clergy of Ishtar in Babylon from the earliest times. At Pessinus in Phrygia the ἱερὸς λόγος which explained the castration of Attis had nothing to do with bees and the Phrygian cult was established in Ephesus itself, having a cult of its own on Panayir Dagh (Keil, , ‘XII Vorlaüfiger Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Ephesus’ Öjh XXIII, 1926)Google Scholar.
133a For the figure with hawk on pole, Ephesus, pl. XXII; for hawks in gold, ibid. pls. IV, VII, X; in silver, pl. XIX; in bronze, pl. XV; in glass and paste, pl. XLIII and fig. 39; ivory, pl. XXV; statuette holding two hawks, pl. XXIV, 8.
134 Paraphrased from Dhorme, , Les religions de Babjlonie et d'Assyrie. p. 73Google Scholar.
135 A figure of the naked goddess is among the Ephesus ivories, Hogarth, op. cit., pl. XXIV, 2.
136 N.A. XII, 4.
137 There is a further implication in the presence of these birds at Ephesus. They imply augury, and of course a good omen. The pole may be that on which they alighted. Ramsay, (Historical Commentary on Galatians, p. 92)Google Scholar pointed out that the augury of Cilicia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, Pisidia, and Lycia followed a completely different system from the Romans' principles of interpretation, sometimes drawing a conclusion exactly the opposite of the Romans, and that this Anatolian system was practised in Ephesus itself, for an inscription of about the sixth century B.C. found there is, in fact, a fragment of an announcement laying down the principles of the art (Hicks, , British Museum Inscriptions, p. 678)Google Scholar. ‘The Great Goddess first made Phrygian birds fly, and taught her priests to interpret the signs’ (Ramsay),.
138 Richter, , ‘Ivory Relief in th e Metropolitan Museum,’ AJA, XLIXGoogle Scholar.
139 See above, p. 16, n. 86.
140 von Massow, , ‘Die Kypseloslade,’ AM XLI, 19–21Google Scholar and pls. II and III. These pieces then in Würzbürg illustrate an astonishing survival of the stylistic devices of the Nimrud ‘Loftus’ group in rendering of belly, hair, ribs and hindquarters of animals.
141 Andrae, Das Wiedererstandene Assur, pl. 54.
142 Manuel de l'archéologie grecque, La sculpture, I, 159, 586Google Scholar.
143 A possible example where the sculptor has used ivory models for free stone sculpture is the lion from Olympia, with scale-patterned mane (Crome, , ‘Löwenbilder des 7ten Jahrhunderts,’ Festgabe Theodor Wiegands)Google Scholar closely resembling the ivory from Sparta (Orthia, pl. CLI).
144 Some have laid stress on this replacement of ivory by bone, e.g., at Sparta at the beginning of the sixth or end of the seventh century and connect the breakdown of supplies of ivory there with the the sack of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar in 573 B.C., Orthia, p. 245; Carpenter, , Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in Homeric Epics (1946), p. 101Google Scholar, wishes to use it to prove the date of the Homeric poems. Yet, in fact, ivory continued to be widely used and procured during the sixth century elsewhere than at Sparta, for example at Ephesus. Doubtless Naukratis filched much of the ivory trade from Tyre, but the reasons why Sparta fell out of the market are simply unknown to us. The substitution of bone for ivory was no new discovery of the sixth century nor even the seventh, for it occurs already at Nimrud frequently. The factors which most likely caused it were the extermination of the Syrian elephant herds and the foreign policy of Egypt.
145 See Strzygowski, , ‘Hellenistische und Koptische Kunst,’ Bull. Soc. d'Archéol. d'Alexandrie, 5Google Scholar.
146 On the influence of Syrian ivory carvers in preserving the continuity of motifs from Oriental into early Romanesque art of Southern France, see Smith, E. Baldwin, Early Christian Iconography and the School of Ivory Carvers in Provence, Princeton 1918, pp. 205 ffGoogle Scholar.
147 See Minto, Marsigliana d'Albegna; a situla in the Drouot Sale, 16335 (1910); Pyxis at Vienna, Inv. 167, formerly in Tyskiewicz collection, Froehner, , Collection Tyskiewicz, VI, 167Google Scholar, small ed. Graeven, H., Antike Schnitzereien aus Elfenbein (1903)Google Scholar. The Vienna pyxis has an extremely Oriental appearance.
148 For the survival of the craft system of the late Roman Empire into mediaeval times, see Mickwitz, , Die Kartellfunktionen der Zünfte (Comm. humanarum litterarum, Soc. Scient. Fenn. Helsingfors, 1936)Google Scholar.
149 Bone and ivory fragments, probably Carthaginian, from Acebucal, Collection Pelaez, , Bonsor, , ‘Les colonies agricoles pré-romaines,’ RA XXXV 126 ff.Google Scholar, figs. 14–33.
150 Cf. certain of the ivories from Begram (above, p. 1 n. 4) as yet unpublished (Catalogue of Exhibition of Indian Art, Burlington House, 1948, nos. 32–53). with Coptic work e.g. painted ivory casket, B.M. 5555.
151 Above p. 23, n. 140.
152 Emery, Ballanas and Qustul, pls. 87, 109.
153 Since the above article was written the remarkable series of sculptured orthostats and other carvings from Karatepe in N.E. Cilicia has been published (Alkım, B., ‘Karatepe Kazısının Arkeolojik Sonuçları,’ Belleten XII (1948)Google Scholar, pls. CXIII–CXXXIV). These sculptures, dating from about the 8th century B.C., belong to a local palace of the King of the Danunim (? Danaoi) also called Bt Mpš, ‘the House of Mopsus’ whose capital was at Adana. They represent a provincial mixture of Anatolian, Phoenician and North Syrian influences which must have been characteristic of the Cilician plain, and which, through half-Greek cities such as Tarsus and Mallus, seems to have played an important part in the creation of the Orientalizing style in early Greek, Cypriot and even Etruscan art. The ivory head from Perachora (see above, p. 6) may be compared with the sphinx, Alkim, loc. cit., pl. CXXVIII and seems to be at home at Karatepe: while the earliest of the Spartan ivories (see above, p. 14) seem to me there to find their explanation. In particular the ship scene, Orthia, pl. CX, might almost have been copied from the relief of a similar ship, Alkim, loc. cit., pl. CXXXII; and the squat little horseman, Orthia, pl. XCII, is very much like that on a relief at Karatepe. On another of these reliefs a man is shown wearing a Greek helmet of “Carian” type.
- 20
- Cited by