114 History of Art in Antiquity. of Persepolitan architecture confirms the above assertion. We have already pointed out and shall again advert to more than one trace of the imitation of forms proper to Egypt. ^ Thus, the composite or second type of the Persian capital, one at least of the elements of which it is composed, seems to have been borrowed from certain Egyptian columns (Fig. 32, a). If the cross-like brackets upon which rest the bulls are so peculiar as to find no parallel anywhere else, there is a curious analogy between the member below the brackets and capitals such as those at Soleb and Sesebi.' Here and there, in Persia as in Egypt, some think to recognize in the form introduced by the builder in that situation a presentment of the elegant bunch of leaves that crown the date-palm tree, which the ornamentist grouped after Nature's own system, the mass at the top falling about in two divisions or lobes. Slight differences of detail may be noticed. Thus, the rim of the lobes, which in nature is next to the stem, is adorned by a row of beads in Persia, whilst in Egypt it is left quite plain. With this exception the data are identical, and the profiles coincide in every respect. On the other hand» Egypt does not exhibit, at any rate m such columns as have come down to us, the model of the lower member of the capital, which in our estimation seems to recall sere leaves curling at the tips and falling around the trunk of the tree (Fig. 32, b). The same savant has tried to prove that the origin of this device was to be sought in a capital that occurs once only in the Nile valley, in "ihe Avenue ol Totmes;"* but we fail. to perceive any relation between the two types. The Egyptian capital is bell-shaped and widens below,* whereas the Persian is a mere cylindrical shape, whose diameter is little more than that of the shaft. The latter does not look as if it ended here, but as though it continued through this kind of sheath, much after the fashion of a tree which merges and is lost to view amidst a wealth of decaying (?) leaves. To find a form recalling this, it is not to Egypt we should apply, but rather to Phoenicia and Assyria, where, among the ivories and fragments of certain pieces of furniture and stone colonnettes from Nimrud,
- Hist. 0/ Art, torn. V. pp. 460, 462, 524.
- Ibid,^ torn. i. Figs. 337, 348.
- DiniLAiov, L'Art antique^ torn, il p. 83.
- HUt, o/Artt torn. I pp. 571, 57a, Fig. 350.
Digitized by Google
