silver. On the walls of one of the tombs at Beni Hassan there is an interesting representation of a gold- and silver-smith's workshop, showing the various processes employed—weighing, melting, or soldering with the glow-pipe, refining the metal, and polishing the almost finished bowl or vase. Owing to the Egyptian practice of burying with their dead personal ornaments and jewelry, rather than other possessions less intimately connected with the person of the deceased, but few specimens of either gold or silver plate have survived to our times, whereas the amount of gold jewelry that has been discovered is very large, and shows the highest degree of skill in working the precious metals. We can, however, form some notion of what the larger works, such as plates and vases in gold and silver, were like from the frequent representations of them in mural sculpture and paintings. In many cases they were extremely elaborate and fanciful in shape, formed with the bodies or heads of griffins, horses, and other animals real or imaginary. Others are simple and graceful in outline, enriched with delicate surface ornament of leaves, wave and guilloche patterns, hieroglyphs, or sacred animals. Fig. 1 shows a gold vase of the time of Tethmosis (Thothmes) III. (Dynasty XVIII., about 1500 B.C.), taken from a wall painting in one of the tombs at Thebes. The figure on its side is the hieroglyph for “gold.” Others appear to have been very large and massive, with human figures in silver or gold supporting a great bowl or crater of the same metal. Vases of this type were, of course, manufactured in Egypt itself, but many of those represented in the Theban tombs were tribute, mostly of Phoenician workmanship. Already as early as the time of Tethmosis III., when, as we know, the Phoenician cities had already existed for centuries, we find the ships of Arvad, of Byblos and of Tyre well known in the harbours of the Delta, and even bringing tribute of foreign vases to the river quays of Thebes itself. We cannot doubt that much of the precious plate of gold and silver used by the Egyptians at this time and specifically described as foreign tribute was made in Egyptian or egyptizing style by Phoenician artists. But plate of really foreign type as well as origin was also brought to Egypt at this time by the Phoenician “Kefti ships” from Kefti, the island of Crete, where the “Minoan” culture of Cnossos and Phaestus was now at its apogee. Ambassadors from Kefti also brought gold and silver vases as presents for the Egyptian king, and on the walls of the tomb of Senmut, Queen Hatshepsut's architect, at Thebes, we see a Keftian carrying a vase of gold and silver which is the duplicate of an actual vase discovered at Cnossos by Dr Arthur Evans. The art of the “Minoan” and “Mycenaean” goldsmiths exercised considerable influence upon that of the Egyptians; under the XXth Dynasty, about 1150 B.C., we find depicted on the tomb of Rameses III. golden stirrup-vases (Bügelkannen) of the well known Mycenaean type, and in that of Imadua, an onicer of Rameses IX., golden vases imitating the ancient Cretan shape of the cups of Vaphio. In fact, it is more than probable that the Egyptians and Phoenicians manufactured plate of “Minoan” and “Mycenaean” types long after the ancient culture of Crete and the Aegean had come to an end. In the time of Rameses III., about 1300 B.C., a clearly defined Asiatic influence appears in the decoration of some of the gold plate. A gold basket represented in the tomb of this king at Thebes, has on its side a relief of the sacred tree between two beasts, an Asiatic idea.
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| Fig. 1.—Gold Vase, from wall-paintings at Thebes. |
The chief existing specimens of Egyptian plate are five silver phialae (bowls), found at the ancient Thmuis in the Delta, and now in the Cairo Museum (Nos. 482-486 in the catalogue). These are modelled in the form of a lotus blossom, most graceful in design, but are apparently not earlier than the 4th century B.C. Of the splendid toreutic art of a thousand years before, of which we gain an idea from the wall-paintings mentioned above, but few actual specimens have survived. The Louvre possesses a fine gold patera, 6½ in. across, with figures of fishes within a lotus border in repoussé work; an inscription on the rim shows it to have belonged to Thutii, an officer of Tethmosis III. (Mém. soc. ant. de France, xxiv. 1858). Thutii's bowl is a typical specimen of the Egyptian plate of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and its design is precisely that of the hundreds of blue glazed faience bowls which were made at the time, and of which some perfect specimens and many fragments (especially from Deir el-Bahri) are in our museums. These were imitated from metal originals, just as most of the early Cretan pottery vessels were.
A splendid bronze bowl, which shows us what some of the finer gold and silver plate was like, was found in the tomb of Hetaai, a dignitary of the XVIIIth Dynasty, at Thebes a few years ago, and is now in the Cairo Museum (No. 3553 in von Bissing's catalogue). The engraved decoration, representing birds and animals in the papyrus-marshes, is very fine and evidently of native Egyptian work. The silver bowl at Berlin, said by di Cesnola to have come from Athienou in Cyprus, is certainly of XVIIIth Dynasty date, but, though purely Egyptian in style, more probably of Phoenician than Egyptian workmanship.
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| Fig. 2.—Silver Bowl, about 7 in. in diameter, found in a tomb in Cyprus, with repoussé reliefs of Egyptian and Assyrian style. |
Assyrian and Phoenician Plate.—The art of making gold and silver plate, whether it originated in Egypt and passed thence to Crete or not, was evidently on its own ground in Egypt and in Minoan Crete. In Asia it was an exotic art, introduced from Egypt through the Phoenicians. In fact, it may be doubted whether any of the bronze imitations of plate found in Assyria are of Assyrian manufacture; they are probably Phoenician imports. The British Museum possesses a fine collection of these bowls, mostly found in the palace at Nimrud, and so dating from the 9th and 8th centuries (reigns of Assur-nazir-pal to Sargon). Though they are made of bronze, and only occasionally ornamented with a few silver studs, they are evidently the production of artists who were accustomed to work in the precious metals, some of them in fact being almost identical in form and design with the silver phialae found at Curium and elsewhere in Cyprus. They are ornamented in a very delicate and minute manner, partly by incised lines, and partly by the repoussé process, finally completed by chasing. Their designs consist of a central geometrical pattern, with one or more concentric bands round it of figures of gods and men, with various animals and plants, such as antelopes amid papyri, which are derived from the Egyptian designs of the XVIIIth Dynasty. Often there is a strange admixture of Assyrian and Egyptian style.
