Chapter 7

Fig. 65.—Zuñi prayer-meal-bowl; after Cushing.

Mr. Cushing[53]has drawn attention to a bowl of which the form as well as its decoration is symbolic. He says, “Thus, upon all sacred vessels, from the drums of theesoteric medicine societies of the priesthood and all vases pertaining to them, to the keramic appurtenances of the sacred dance orKâ’kâ, all decorations were intentionally emblematic. Of this numerous class of vessels I will choose but one for illustration—the prayer-meal-bowl of theKâ’kâ. (Fig.65.) In this both form and ornamentation are significant. In explaining how the form of this vessel is held to be symbolic, I will quote a passage from the ‘creation myth,’ as I rendered it in an article on the origin of corn, belonging to a series on ‘Zuñi Bread-stuff,’ published this year [?1882] in theMillstoneof Indianapolis, Indiana. ‘Is not the bowl the emblem of the earth our mother? For from her we draw both food and drink, as a babe draws nourishment from the breast of its mother; and round, as is the rim of a bowl, so is the horizon, terraced with mountains, whence rise the clouds.’ This alludes to a medicine bowl, not to one of the handled kind, but I will apply it as far as it goes to the latter. The two terraces on either side of the handle are in representation of the ‘ancient sacred place of the spaces,’ the handle being the line of the sky, and sometimes painted with the rainbow figure. Now the decorations are a trifle more complex. We may readily perceive that they represent tadpoles, dragon-flies, with also the frog or toad. All this is of easy interpretation. As the tadpole frequents the pools of springtime he has been adopted as the symbol of spring rains; the dragon-fly hovers over pools in summer, hence typifiesthe rains of summer; and the frog, maturing in them later, symbolises the rains of the later seasons; for all these pools are due to rainfall. When, sometimes, the figure of the sacred butterfly replaces that of the dragon-fly, or alternates with it, it symbolises the beneficence of summer; since, by a reverse order of reasoning, the Zuñis think that the butterflies and migratory birds bring the warm season from the ‘Land of everlasting summer.’

“Upon vessels of special function, like these we have just noticed, peculiar figures may be regarded as emblematic. On other classes, no matter how evidently conventional and expressive decorations may seem (excepting always totemic designs), it is wise to use great caution in their interpretation as intentional and not merely imitative.”

The study of symbols is a peculiarly difficult one, and there is no branch of our subject which contains so many pitfalls for the unwary. The two following paragraphs, respectively by Messrs. Holmes and Cushing,[54]afford a usefulwarning:—

“There are those who, seeing these forms already endowed with symbolism, begin at what I conceive to be the wrong end of the process. They derive the form of the symbol directly from the thing symbolised. Thus the current scroll is, with many races, found to be a symbol of water, and its origin is attributed to a literal rendering of the sweep and curl of the waves. It is more probable that the scroll became the symbol of the sea long after its development through agencies similar to those described above, and that the association resulted from the observation of incidental resemblances. This same figure, in use by the Indians of the interior of the continent, is regarded as symbolic of the whirlwind, and it is probable that any symbol-using people will find in the features and phenomena of their environment, whatever it may be, sufficient resemblance to any of their decorative devices to lead to a symbolic association” (p. 460).

“To both the scroll or volute and the fret, and modifications of them ages later, the Pueblo has attached meanings. Those who have visited the South-west and ridden over the wide, barren plains during late autumn or early spring have been astonished to find traced on the sand, by no visible agency, perfect concentric circles and scrolls or volutes yards long, and as regular as though drawn by a skilled artist. The circles are made by the wind driving partly broken weed-stalks around and around their places of attachment until the fibres by which they are anchored sever and the stalks are blown away. The volutes are formed by the stems of red-top grass and of a round-topped variety of the Chenopodium drifted onward by the whirlwind, yet around and around their bushy adhesive tops. The Pueblos, observing these marks, especially that they are abundant after a wind storm, have wondered at their similarity to the printed scrolls on the pottery of their ancestors. Even to-day they believe the sand marks to be the tracks of the whirlwind, which is a god in their mythology of such distinctive personality that the circling eagle is supposed to be related to him. They have naturally, therefore, explained the analogy above noted by the inference that their ancestors, in painting the volute, had intended to symbolise the whirlwind by representing his tracks. Thenceforward the scroll was drawn on certain classes of pottery to represent the whirlwind and modifications of it (for instance, by the colour-sign belonging to any one of the ‘six regions’) to signify other personified winds” (p. 515).

It is interesting to note that colours are often symbolic. Thus in a footnote to p. 111,loc. cit., Dr. Fewkes says:—“Red is the colour of the south, yellow of the north, blue of the west, and white of the east. For the west the available pigment used has, however, a green colour, although blue is the colour corresponding to west.” A correspondence on the colours of the winds was carried on in theAcademyin 1883. Dr. Whitley Stokes points out (p. 114) thatamong the Mayas of Yucatan red was associated with the east, white with the north, black with the west, and yellow with the south. (Cf. Brinton,Folk-Lore Journal, i. p. 246.) In Ireland, east was purple; south, white; north, black; and west, dun; the sub-winds between S. and E. were red and yellow respectively; between S. and W., green and blue; between N. and W., grey and dark brown; between N. and E., dark grey and speckled. Professor Max Müller (p. 302) notes that among the Navajos E. is dark; S., blue; W., yellow; N., white (cf. Mathews,Amer. Anth., April 1883); and in the Veda E. was red; S., white; W., dark or dark blue; and N., very dark. Lastly, Mr. Hilderic Friend (p. 318) says that in China and ancient Java there were five deities or rules—(1) black, water, N.; (2) red, fire, S.; (3) green, wood, E.; (4) white, metal, W.; (5) yellow, earth, middle. Colonel Garrick Mallery has also some notes on this subject,Fourth Ann. Rep. Bureau Ethnol., Washington, p. 53, andTenth Ann. Rep., p. 618.

It is very rarely that landscapes are drawn by savages purely for decorative purposes. Maps or plans, or diagrams which are virtually a kind of elevation section, or even a sort of bird’s-eye view, may be limned for mnemonic or directive purposes (p.209); but pictorial views are so rare that it is worth while giving an illustration of one (Fig.66) which I found etched on a bamboo tobacco-pipe, from Torres Straits, in the Museum für Völkerkunde, in Berlin.

Fig. 66.—Tracing of a landscape etched on a bamboo tobacco-pipe, in Berlin; three-eighths natural size.

I have little doubt that the island of Mer is here intended, on account of the shape of the hill and the presence of dome-shaped structures, which I take to be the beehive huts which characterise the eastern tribe of Torres Straits. I add for comparison a rough sketch (Fig.67) I took of this island, as seen from the south-west by west.

Fig. 67.—Sketch of Mer (Murray Island), by the author, from the south-west-by-west, showing the hill Gelam.

The natives have a legend that this hill, “Gelam,” was originally a dugong; and I believe the eye-mark in the native’s drawing is intended for the eye of Gelam, “Gelam dan,” and the projection to the extreme left to indicate Gelam’s nose, “Gelam pit,” a small jutting rocky escarpment at the head end of the island, which is enormously exaggerated in the drawing. I take it that the break in the ground of Fig.66, below the first bird, indicates the hill “Korkor,” which forms the tail of the dugong in my sketch, and which is one end of the horse-shoe shaped crater of a volcano. The part extending beyond this is the lava-flow which forms the north-eastern half of the island.[55]The vegetation is suggested in a very perfunctory manner. I do not know what the lines that stream from the apex of the hill are intended for. I should add that to make it approximately topographically accurate, the native picture should be reversed,[56]assuming my identification to becorrect. What I imagine to have occurred is as follows:—The artist intended to represent Mer (Murray Island), and he drew the peak of the principal hill, Gelam, from a very characteristic point of view (I have sketches of my own similar to this); in order to give a realistic touch he inserted the eye, which is a prominent block of volcanic ash, and added the nose. The view is suggestive, but it is an impossible one, and it appears to me that this is characteristic of a great deal of the pictorial art of savages.

The terms “zoomorph” and “phyllomorph” have been employed for the representations in art of plants and animals. Although man is, zoologically considered, only a higher animal, it is convenient to retain the term “anthropomorph,” which has been used by some writers to express representations of the human form. All three terms have reference to living beings, hence the appropriateness of classing them under the general designation of “biomorph.” The biomorph is the representation of anything living in contradistinction to the skeuomorph, which, as we have seen, is the representation of anythingmade, or of the physicomorph which is the representation of an object or operation in the physical world.

The fact that there is life in the original of the biomorph appears in most cases to exert an influence on the biomorph itself, so that it comes to have what might almost be described as a borrowed vitality.

The distinctive activities or qualities of any living being, more especially in the case of animals, very often cause them to be taken as symbolic of that particular quality. For example, the harmless, gentle, and affectionate dove, which only busies itself with parental cares, has come to be symbolic of peace. There are other reasons to which allusion will be made which have conspired to render biomorphs very important in decorative art.

Biomorphs partake of one characteristic of their originals. They have a life-history. All organisms are born, they grow, they die. During their growth they all pass through greater or less changes. Sometimes these changes, as in the metamorphoses of most insects, have attracted the attention of the least observant, and have appeared to be of such significance as to have been utilised for the illustration of religious doctrines. Whether taking place in full daylight, open to casual observation, or hidden in obscurity, or encapsuled within an egg-shell, marvellous transformations invariably accompany the earlier stages of the development of animals, from the egg stage. The development records an evolution, the history of which is being worked out in detail by the patient investigators of one of the most fascinating of all branches of study—embryology.

We have now to trace the birth, the evolution, and the decay of biomorphs, and we shall find that the subject is scarcely less suggestive and interesting than that of the very animals themselves.

Biomorphs are represented for varied purposes, and with other representations may be classified according to the diagram given in the introductory section (p.8).

Even such an abstract idea as the Principle of Life, or Vital Energy, has been indicated in decorative art. “On every class of food- and water-vessels, in collections of both ancient and modern Pueblo pottery (except on pitchers and some sacred receptacles), it may be observed as a singular, yet almost constant feature, that encircling lines, often even ornamental zones, are left open or not, as it were, closed at the ends,” writes Cushing[57](p. 510), who adds, “I asked the Indian women, when I saw them making these little spaces with great care, why they took so much pains to leave them open. They replied that to close them was ‘fearful!’—that this little space through the line or zone on a vessel was the ‘exit trail of life or being.’ How it came to be first left open, and why regarded as the ‘exit trail,’ they could not tell. When a woman has made and painted a vessel she will tell you with an air of relief that it is a ‘Made Being’; as she places the vessel in the kiln, she also places in and beside it food. The noise made by a pot when struck or when simmering on the fire is supposed to be the voice of its associated being. The clang of a pot when it breaks or suddenly cracks in burning is the cry of this being as it escapes or separates from the vessel. That it has departed is argued from the fact that the vase when cracked neverresounds as it did when whole. This vague existence never cries out violently unprovoked; but it is supposed to acquire the power of doing so by imitation; hence, no one sings, whistles, or makes other strange or musical sounds resembling those of earthenware under the circumstances above described during the smoothing, polishing, painting, or other processes of finishing. The being thus incited, they think, would surely strive to come out, and would break the vessel in so doing.” In their native philosophy and worship of water, the latter is supposed to contain the source of continued life, hence life also dwells in a vessel containing water, and having once held water, and in virtue of having done so, it contains the source of life. “If the encircling lines inside of the eating bowl, outside of the water jar, were closed, there would be no exit trail for this invisible source of life, or for its influence or breath.” In attempting to arrive at the origin of this, Cushing points out that it is very “difficult to smoothly join a line incised around a clay pot while still soft, and that this difficulty is greater when the ornamental band is laid on in relief. It would be a natural outgrowth of this predicament to leave the ends unjoined, which indeed the savage often did. When paint instead of incision or relief come to be the decorative agent, the lines or bands would be left unjoined in imitation. As those acquainted with Tylor’sEarly History of Mankindwill realise, a ‘myth of observation’ like the above would come to be assigned in after ages.”

Fig. 68.—Pueblo water-jar; after Cushing.

The soul or spirit as it is supposed to emerge from a person at death is often represented in Christian art as a miniature man or as a winged monstrosity, as a butterfly by the ancient Greeks, or in various ways by different peoples. Souls of deceased persons may be enshrined in living fruit-eating bats,[58]frigate-birds,[59]crocodiles,[60]lizards,[61]sharks,[62]or other animals. Under certain conditions the representation of any of these forms would be emblematic of the soul.

The dove, flames (or tongues) of fire, wind, and other emblems are symbolic of spirit in Christian art.

It has been frequently remarked that plant forms are rarely represented by savages. A possible explanation may be found in the fact that plant life is so passive, it does nothing actively or aggressively as compared with the irrepressible vitality of animals. Thus it does not impress itself on the imagination of backward peoples.

Another explanation has been suggested to me by Dr. Colley March. The need of ornament is based on expectancy. The eye is so accustomed to something in a certain association, that when this is not seen there is experienced a sense of loss. Among savage peoples the eye is accustomed to dwell on vegetal forms which are always present. It is only when they cease to be present, as in the exceptional circumstances of desert places, or walled towns, that the sense of loss can arise.

Fig. 69.—Design based on a palmito leaf, Bakaïri tribe, Central Brazil; after Von den Steinen.

It is very probable that the reputed paucity of ornamentation derived from the vegetable world amongst primitive folk may be partly due to our not recognising it as such. Their conventions are not the same as ours, and they are often satisfied with what appears to us to be a very imperfect realism. Who, for example, would recognise in Fig.69the leaves of a small“cabbage”-bearing wild palm? Yet the pattern on this painted bark-tablet of the Bakaïri tribe of Central Brazil has this significance, according to Professor von den Steinen (cf. p.175).

Backward people have to be taught to see beauty in nature, and it is very doubtful if the elegance of the form of flower or leaf appeals to them. Bright colours we know please all, and it is the colour or scent of flowers and leaves which causes them to be worn or used in decoration.

One of the very few instances known to me in which vegetable forms are employed in ornamentation by the natives of British New Guinea occurs along the Fly River (Figs.4,8). These natives are fond of decorating their drums with leaves, hence it may happen that, on the principle of expectancy, leaves become mentally associated with drum decoration, and in consequence often carved upon drums, and thence, by the constraint of the feeling of expectancy transferred to pipes and other objects; the casual decoration becomes an engraved ornament. On the other hand, the Fly River appears to have been a culture route (pp.28,70), and the employment of plant motives (if the majority of these devices are really such) may be partly due to influence from Malaysia. Dr. M. Uhle[63]points out that “The influences of the plant ornamentation of the East Indian Archipelago are also found in Western New Guinea. Although essentially peculiar to the western portion of the East Indian Archipelago it is not wanting in isolated cases in the eastern. Plant ornamentations in perforated carving are known from Halmahera which form a precise parallel with the carvings from Geelvink Bay. Further, the plant ornamentation occurs in Geelvink Bay also in isolated four-petalled flowers, as in Celebes, Halmahera, Timor, and Borneo. [Plant garlands are found on objects from the neighbourhood of Geelvink and Humboldt Bays.] A completetendril with four-rayed leaves [or flowers] occurs as a pattern on a pottery-beater from Humboldt Bay.[64]Trustworthy examples from further east in North New Guinea are either absent or are as yet unrecorded. The influence of the western plant ornament is also felt in South-west New Guinea in the district between Kamrao and Etna Bays. The formation of a cruciform pattern through the arrangement of four Nassa shells, which occurs not only in Geelvink Bay but also in South-west New Guinea at Wamuka River, appears to be due to the influence of a plant pattern, the frequent four-petalled flower.”

In the central district of British New Guinea plant forms appear to be again met with (Fig.21). I say “appear,” as unless there is direct information from natives it is always risky to hazard a guess as to the meaning of a particular design. The reason for these designs is at present quite obscure, but there can be no doubt that there is a reason for them, and a good one too.

Where plants are represented by savage peoples we shall probably find that as a rule their employment is primarily due to other causes than the selection of beautiful forms and graceful curves for their own sakes. A very good example of this is found among the magic patterns on the combs of the Negritos of Malacca, and I would refer the reader to the section on Sympathetic Magic (p.235), where this is dealt with at considerable length. It may be that this four-rayed flower which is credited with magical properties is the same which, as Dr. Uhle has pointed out, is so widely spread in the decorative art of the Malay Archipelago and Northern New Guinea.

Few plants have penetrated into the psychical life of man to the same extent as the lotus. The food-plants, which afford sustenance to his body, rarely, as such, enter the portals of art. Even those used in fermentation do notnecessarily fare much better. The chief exception is the vine, which from its graceful habit of growth and its decorative leaves and clusters of grapes readily lends itself to artistic treatment, but in this case it was probably on account of the “wine that maketh glad the heart of man,” rather than the beauty of the vine, that this creeper became a favourite motive in decorative art. Having once effected an entrance by appealing to the lower senses, the vine retained its position by gratifying the higher. This chapter in the history of art has, however, yet to be written.

Neither mere utility nor intrinsic beauty appear to be a necessary qualification for the establishing of plant-life in decorative art. It is only, so to speak, when plants are provided with a soul, when an inner meaning is read into them, that they become immortalised.

The best example of this is found in the history of the lotus in decorative art. Religion introduced it, symbolism established it, and habit or expectancy retained it.

As many mistakes have arisen from the confusion of the Egyptian lotus with the rose water-lily it is necessary to clearly distinguish between them.

The White lotus (Nymphæa lotus) and the Blue lotus (N. cœrulea), which is only a colour variety of the former, have a disc-like leaf, cleft nearly to its centre, which floats on the surface of the water. The calyx has only four coarse sepals which are dark green in colour, and which entirely encase the bud until it begins to open. As it expands the delicate white or sapphire blue petals offer a marked contrast to the sepals. From four points of view of the open flower a central and two lateral sepals will be evident, often when the flower begins to fade the sepals bend downwards, but the petals do not expand to a greater extent than is shown in the accompanying figure (Fig.70), in which will also beseen the characteristic seed-capsule with its rosette-like apex.

Fig. 70.—Rough sketch of the Egyptian lotus (Nymphæa lotus); after original drawings by Professor Goodyear.

The rose water-lily, or water-bean (Nelumbium speciosum), according to Professor Goodyear,[65]is not represented in Egyptian pattern ornament. Its leaves (Fig.71), standing erect out of the water, are bell-shaped and not slit. The calyx has numerous, over-lapping, scale-like sepals. The flower opens widely and the broad petals disappear from view by the expansion of the blossom. The seed-pod resembles the spout of a watering-pot. Sir J. G. Wilkinson says,[66]“The Nelumbium, common in India, grows no longer in Egypt, and the care taken in planting it formerly seems to show it was not indigenous in Egypt.”

Fig. 71.—Sketch of the Indian lotus (Nelumbium speciosum); afterDescription de l’Egypt: Histoire Naturelle, from Goodyear.

In every book dealing with Ancient Egypt numerous figures of the lotus will be noticed either in scenes illustrating the cult of some divinity and as sacred symbols, or in later times employed merely for decorative effect. The same remark applies, though to a less extent, to the art of Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, India, Phœnicia, and several of the Mediterranean countries.

Why should this motive be so widely spread? The most obvious answer has already been suggested. Religion introducedthe lotus to art. We have already noticed the earthly original, now allusion must be briefly made to its symbolism; then its original home must be sought; and finally, some of its wanderings traced, and a few of its variations and transformations noted.

It appears that in Ancient Egypt the lotus was symbolic of the sun; a text at Denderah says, “The Sun, which was from the beginning, rises like a hawk from the midst of its lotus bud. When the doors of its leaves open in sapphire-coloured brilliancy, it has divided the night from the day.”[67]At Denderah a king makes an offering of the lotus to the Sun-god, Horus, with the words, “I offer thee the flower which was in the beginning, the glorious lily of the Great Water.”[68]

Fig. 72.—Lotus flowers and bud, painted on the coffin of a mummy from the Necropolis of Thebes, Twentieth Dynasty; after Prisse d’Avennes.

Fig.72is a detail taken from a plate in the second volume of the magnificent atlas by Prisse d’Avennes;[69]it is part of the offerings on an altar before Osiris, who is crowned with the solar disc. Osiris is the sun in the Lower World—i.e., during the night, and the father of Horus. Horus is sometimes depicted seated on a lotus.

The various animals which were symbolic of the sun or associated with sun-divinities are also placed in direct connection with the lotus, as if to emphasise its solar significance; forexample—

The solar-bull is well recognised in Egyptian mythology, the Bull-god Apis being an incarnation of Osiris, and an offspring of the Sun-god, Ptah of Memphis. Similarly also for Assyria, Merodach, “the Bull of Light,” was originally a Sun-god; his Syrian equivalent was Baal. The Phœnician Moon-goddess, Astarte, had the bull as her symbol, and the bull of Europa was its counterpart. The Taurus of the Chaldean Zodiac commenced the year.

The lion was another sun-animal both in Egypt and in Chaldea and Assyria.

Among birds the hawk and the eagle were sun symbols, especially the former, and it is sometimes depicted standing on a lotus. The solar-goose is also important in its association with the lotus. (Fig.129,G.)

In early Cyprian pottery we find lotus derivatives grouped with the solar cross and other symbols of the sun. (Fig.129,F.)

The association of the lotus with the sun probably led to its other symbolic relations, and these latter have rather drawn attention away from what is here regarded as the more primitive symbol.

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.

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 Egyptianswas 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.

Fig. 73.—Lotus flower with two leaves, on a vase from the Necropolis of Memphis, Fourth to Fifth Dynasties; after Prisse d’Avennes.

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, 3998-3503B.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 PlateVIII., 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 Egyptiandecorative 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.

Fig. 74.—Lotus border; from Goodyear, after Prisse d’Avennes.

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.

Fig. 75.—Lotus scroll detail on a Melian vase; from Goodyear, after Conze.

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.

Fig. 76.—Pattern from the ceiling of a tomb, Necropolis of Thebes, Eighteenth Dynasty; from Coffey, after Prisse d’Avennes.

In Fig.76we 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.

Fig. 77.—Pattern from the ceiling of a tomb, Necropolis of Thebes, Eighteenth to Nineteenth Dynasties; from Coffey, after Prisse d’Avennes.

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.78in 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.

Fig. 78.—Pattern from the ceiling of tomb No. 33, Abd-el-Kourneh, Thebes, Seventeenth to Twentieth Dynasties; from Coffey, after Prisse d’Avennes and Goodyear.Fig. 79.—Pattern from the ceiling of a tomb from Thebes, Seventeenth to Twentieth Dynasties; from Coffey, after Prisse d’Avennes.

Fig. 78.—Pattern from the ceiling of tomb No. 33, Abd-el-Kourneh, Thebes, Seventeenth to Twentieth Dynasties; from Coffey, after Prisse d’Avennes and Goodyear.

Fig. 79.—Pattern from the ceiling of a tomb from Thebes, Seventeenth to Twentieth Dynasties; from Coffey, after Prisse d’Avennes.

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 3,500B.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 formsto 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 2565B.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 AmenophisIII., 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 1500B.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.

“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]

Among the most frequent of the decorative designsemployed 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 centuriesB.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.

“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 forcethe 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 ThothmesIII.[1481-1449B.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 (PlateVIII., 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, PlateVIII., 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, PlateVIII., 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, PlateVIII., 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 ShalmaneserII., 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 722B.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, PlateVIII., 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, PlateVIII.). 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, PlateVIII.). 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 temporaryresting-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.

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 alternatemembers 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, PlateVIII.) 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, PlateVIII.) 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, PlateVIII., 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 plausibleexplanation 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 (PlateVIII., 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.

Goodyear[78]points out (p. 101) that no dated example of the rosette is known in Assyria or Chaldea before the twelfth centuryB.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, 3998-3721B.C.As previously stated, the earlier Egyptian kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty conquered Assyria. The reign of ThothmesIII., who, according to a contemporary expression, “drew his frontiers where he pleased,” is placed by Professor Flinders Petrie[79]from 1481-1449B.C.The Egyptian empire then comprised Abyssinia, the Soudan, Nubia, Syria, Mesopotamia, part of Arabia, Khurdistan, and Armenia.[80]

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 thepatterns 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 studiedin 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 artwe 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 centuryB.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.”

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 fromB.C.250 to aboutA.D.700; and any of them which are later than the fourth centuryA.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 theMohammedan Arabs, during the seventh centuryA.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]

“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 centuryB.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 (PlateVIII., 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, PlateV., which are purely Greek, it will be evident that borrowing has takenplace. 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 DateHom, 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.

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