  In speaking of New Caledonia Baron L. de Vaux (L. de Vaux, “Les Canaques de la Nouvelle-CalÉdonie,” Rev. d’Ethnog., ii., 1883, p. 340) says, “formerly the women of PouÉbo, Oubatche, and Pam had the monopoly; now the art tends more and more to disappear as the natives find it more practical to buy trade vessels. They succeeded in making pots to the height of two feet, and very often decorated externally with lizards and frogs in relief. The base being ready, they superimpose rings of well-prepared clay the one above the other, holding them and joining them from the interior with the left hand, whilst they smooth their work externally by means of the right hand and of a little beater of smooth, hard wood.” Mr. Atkinson (J. J. Atkinson, “Notes on Pointed Forms of Pottery among Primitive Peoples,” Journ. Anth. Inst., xxiii., 1893, p. 90) also describes the New Caledonian method of making pottery, and draws attention to the fact that the occasional traces of faint horizontal marks occasioned by the technique “imitate the marks left by pottery made on the system of plastering wickerwork employed by some people,” and therefrom he suggests a necessary warning not to take the latter method as having been of universal occurrence. “What is called the honeysuckle pattern, or anthemion, is nothing but the date-tree head supported by horns.... This so-called honeysuckle pattern is not, I think, the only outcome of the superstition of tying horns on trees, for I believe the fleur-de-lys, so much used in heraldry as a royal emblem, and on many coats-of-arms, seems but a modified imitation of the real horns tied on trees or posts” (p. 142). Dr. Bonavia discusses the history of the latter motive. It appears probable that it was introduced to French heraldry by Louis VII. on his return from the Crusades, and it is also likely that the device was independently associated with the lily and the iris in various countries after its real origin had been forgotten. (This applies equally to Goodyear’s or to Bonavia’s theory.) “The top of the Assyrian sacred date-tree, with its supporting horns, was probably taken up by the Greeks and modified into ornaments for friezes.” In support of this proposition Dr. Bonavia illustrates an anthemion from the Erechtheium (Fig. 82). “There are numerous architectural and decorative designs which, I think, are traceable to the Assyrian date-tree and its horns. The Prince of Wales’ feathers are perhaps also a descendant of the same motive. There are in it three elements held together by means of a crown, which may be a modification of the ligature” (p. 154). The trident and the caduceus are also supposed by this author to be “luck-horns” attached to a wand. It must be remembered that the ligatures are usually very distinct in Assyrian anthemia (Plate VIII., Figs. 9 and 10), and they require an explanation as much as any other detail of the design. Dr. Bonavia regards them as the lashings of luck-horns which have become modified into volutes. Dr. Colley March, as we have seen, attributes them to a textile origin. On the other hand, we find ligatures in Egyptian lotus designs, as in Fig. 77, where there is no suspicion of Assyrian influence; future research will doubtless show whether the central ligatures in Figs. 85 and 89 A are Assyrian, Egyptian, or local in origin. “The stellar symbolism that I here advocate is, I maintain, a different thing from the sun-myths, dawn-myths, and so forth, which are now to a large extent deservedly repudiated. We cannot ascribe to the civilised nations of antiquity the puerile conceptions of nature that are congruent with a stage of awakening intelligence and with the crude results of untrained observation. Rather are we dealing with the elaborated gain of ages of scientific knowledge, with the thoughts of a people whose very temples were oriented to particular stars, or to critical points in the journey of the sun; whose representations of Art, on frieze and pediment, in tragedy and epic, were governed by what would at first appear to be a tyrannical convention, which convention, however, so far from hampering their genius, seems, under the influence of a wholesome restraint, to have moulded their art into more beautiful, more poetic, and more sanctified forms.... The dominant priesthood, whose domain was knowledge, holding the keys of treasured learning opened the lock with chary hand, and veiled plain speech in fantastic allegory. In such allegory Egyptian priests spoke to Greek travellers, who came to them as Dervish-pilgrims or Wandelnde Studenten.... At Olympia, in the beginning of each Leap-year cycle, the noblest youth of Greece raced, round the symbolic pillars, their horses emblematic of the Horses of the Sun; thereby glorifying a God whom they thus ignorantly worshipped. Even so, we read in the Second Book of Kings [xvii. 16; xxi. 3, 5; xxiii. 5] how their Phoenician cousins worshipped with like ceremony the same God. And all the while, in the evening and the morning, priests and p??sp???? watched, measured, and compared the rising and setting of sun and stars, in temples that were astronomical observatories, to the glory of a religion whose mystery was astronomic science.” An extra title has been removed. The illustrations have been moved slightly for reader convenience. A, B, and I were missing in Fig. 3, these have been added. An alphabetic jump table has been added to the index. The footnotes were renumbered, and gathered at the end of the book. Errors in punctuation and spacing have been corrected silently. Also the following corrections were made, on page Otherwise the original has been preserved, including unusual spelling and inconsistent hyphenation. Additional: some footnotes have more than one anchor. The index has not been checked for errors in alphabetization or page numbers. |
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