s;[115]
and one might believe a colony which came from Egypt or Assyria
settled there. These scarabs are usually cut in dark green jasper,
some are made of cornelian, others of a glass-paste, rarely in
amethyst or sardonyx. The work is variable sometimes carefully done,
but none of the scarabs have the clearness of those found in Egypt,
nor of the Assyro-Chaldean of Asia. Most of these scarabs, which are
always made in nearly the same form, were mounted, some in gold and
others in silver; also sometimes in other metals which the corrosions
from age had already caused to disappear when they were found.

These intaglios can be divided from the nature of the subjects into
three varieties. The first those imitating the Egyptian; the second,
the Assyro-Chaldean; and the third, the Persian. All these scarabs are
of Phoenician manufacture, but they were probably made in Sardinia, as
the remains of the workshops and materials used in making them, have
been found there. They do not go back of 500 B.C. The Phoenicians in
their colonies, showed no more originality in their work than they did
in the mother country, and have been only the intermediary agents
between the civilization of the Orient and that of the Occident. This
people even counterfeited Egyptian manufactures and antiquities in
order to sell them, and the borrowings in their own religion show,
they were governed more by the gains of trade than the desires or
depths of piety. There are a number in the Cesnola collection in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

There is a magnificent scarab in green jasper in the British Museum,
but where it was produced is not known. It appears to be from the
chisel of an Egyptian artist. The base however has been engraved by
another; its subject is clearly Assyrian, in the style of work done
with the drill, by the artists of Calah. In the field of the signet is
a symbol unknown to Assyria or Egypt, below this is evidently the
Egyptian _ankh_ or _crux ansata_ and below this is the inscription:
"(Signet) of Hodo, the Scribe." This a beautiful specimen of the
intelligent work of the Phoenicians.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] Such contracts written on terra cotta, have been found sealed
with impressions of the finger nails on the margin of the terra cotta
before it was baked; others have had something as to the act done,
referred to on the margins, written in Phoenician letters. There has
been found an example of this as early as 78