barbarians, contented
with worthless objects of barter; their clients included the inhabitants
of the iEgean, who, if inferior to the great nations of the East,
possessed an independent and growing civilization, traces of which are
still coming to light from many quarters in the shape of tombs, houses,
palaces, utensils, ornaments, representations of the gods, and household
and funerary furniture,--not only in the Cyclades, but on the mainland
of Asia Minor and of Greece. No inferior goods or tinsel wares would
have satisfied the luxurious princes who reigned in such ancient cities
as Troy and Mycenae, and who wanted the best industrial products of
Egypt and Syria--costly stuffs, rare furniture, ornate and well-wrought
weapons, articles of jewellery, vases of curious and delicate
design--such objects, in fact, as would have been found in use among the
sovereigns and nobles of Memphis or of Babylon. For articles to offer in
exchange they were not limited to the natural or roughly worked products
of their own country. Their craftsmen, though less successful in general
technique than their Oriental contemporaries, exhibited considerable
artistic intelligence and an extraordinary manual skill. Accustomed at
first merely to copy the objects sold to them by the Phoenicians,
they soon developed a style of their own; the Mycenaean dagger in the
illustration on page 299, though several centuries later in date than
that of the Pharaoh Ahmosis, appears to be traceable to this ancient
source of inspiration, although it gives evidence of new elements in
its method of decoration and in its greater freedom of treatment. The
inhabitants of the valleys of the Nile and of the Orontes, and probably
also those of the Euphrates and Tigris, agreed in the, high value they
set upon these artistic objects in gold, silver, and bronze, brought
to them from the further shores of the Mediterranean, which, while
reproducing their own designs, modified them to a certain extent; for
just as we now imitate types of ornamental work in vogue among nations
less civilized than ourselves, so the iEgean people set themselves the
task through their potters and engravers of reproducing exotic models.
The Phoenician traders who exported to Greece large consignments
of objects made under various influences in their own workshops, or
purchased in the bazaars of the ancient world, brought back as a return
cargo an equivalent number of works of art, bought in the tow