History of Phoenicia eBook

George Rawlinson
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 508 pages of information about History of Phoenicia.

History of Phoenicia eBook

George Rawlinson
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 508 pages of information about History of Phoenicia.
and gold beads have as pendant a carnelian cone, a symbol of Astarte.[1227] Occasionally the sole material used is glass.  Necklaces have been found composed entirely of long oval beads of blue or greenish-blue glass; others where the colour of the beads is a dark olive;[1228] others again, where all the component parts are of glass, but the colours and forms are greatly varied.  In a glass necklace found at Tharros in Sardinia, besides beads of various sizes and hues, there are two long rough cylinders, four heads of animals, and a human head as central ornament.  “Taken separately, the various elements of which this necklace is composed have little value; neither the heads of the animals, nor the bearded human face, perhaps representing Bacchus, are in good style; the cylinders and rounded beads which fill up the intermediate spaces between the principal objects are of very poor execution; but the mixture of whites, and greys, and yellows, and greens, and blues produces a whole which is harmonious and gay."[1229]

Perhaps the most elegant and tasteful necklace of all that have been discovered is the one made of a thick solid gold cord, very soft and elastic, which is figured on the page opposite.[1230] At either extremity is a cylinder of very fine granulated work, terminating in one case in a lion’s head of good execution, in the other surmounted by a simple cap.  The lion’s mouth holds a ring, while the cap supports a long hook, which seems to issue from a somewhat complicated knot, entangled wherein is a single light rosette.  “In this arrangement, in the curves of the thin wire, which folds back upon itself again and again, there is an air of ease, an apparent negligence, which is the very perfection of technical skill."[1231]

The bracelets worn by the Phoenician ladies were of many kinds, and frequently of great beauty.  Some were bands of plain solid gold, without ornament of any kind, very heavy, weighing from 200 to 300 grammes each.[1232] Others were open, and terminated at either extremity in the head of an animal.  One, found by General Di Cesnola at Curium in Cyprus,[1233] exhibited at the two ends heads of lions, which seemed to threaten each other.  The execution of the heads left nothing to be desired.  Some others, found in Phoenicia Proper, in a state of extraordinary preservation, were of similar design, but, in the place of lions’ heads, exhibited the heads of bull, with very short horns.[1234] A third type aimed at greater variety, and showed the head of a wild goat at one end, and that of a ram at the other.[1235] In a few instances, the animal representation appears at one extremity of the bracelet only, as in a specimen from Camirus, whereof the workmanship is unmistakably Phoenician, which has a lion’s head at one end, and at the other tapers off, like the tail of a serpent.[1236]

A pair of bracelets in the British Museum, said to have come from Tharros, consist of plain thin circlets of gold, with a ball of gold in the middle.  The ball is ornamented with spirals and projecting knobs, which must have been uncomfortable to the wearer, but are said not to be wanting in elegance.[1237]

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
History of Phoenicia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.