In The Levant 42

In The Levant 42

When General di Cesnola had satisfied himself of the probable site of

an ancient city or temple, it was difficult to obtain permission to dig,

even with the authority of the Sultan's firman. He was obliged to wait

for harvests to be gathered, in some cases, to take a lease of the

ground; sometimes the religious fanaticism of the occupants could not be

overcome, and his working parties were frequently beaten and driven away

in his absence. But the consul exhibited tact, patience, energy, the

qualities necessary, with knowledge, to a successful explorer. He evaded

or cast down all obstacles.

 

In 1868 he discovered the necropoli of Ledra, Citium, and Idalium, and

opened during three years in these localities over ten thousand tombs,

bringing to light a mass of ancient objects of art which enable us

to understand the customs, religion, and civilization of the earlier

inhabitants. Idalium was famous of old as the place where Grecian

pottery was first made, and fragments of it have been found from time to

time on its site.

 

In 1869 and 1870 he surveyed Aphrodisium, in the northeastern part of

the island, and ascertained, in the interior, the site of Golgos, a city

known to have been in existence before the Trojan war. The disclosures

at this place excited both the wonder and the incredulity of the

civilized world, and it was not until the marvellous collection of the

explorer was exhibited, partially in London, but fully in New York,

that the vast importance of the labors of General di Cesnola began to be

comprehended. In exploring the necropolis of Golgos, he came, a few feet

below the soil, upon the remains of the temple of Venus, strewn with

mutilated sculptures of the highest interest, supplying the missing link

between Egyptian and Greek art, and indeed illustrating the artistic

condition of most of the Mediterranean nations during the period from

about 1200 to about 500 b. c. It would require too much space to tell

how the British Museum missed and the Metropolitan of New York secured

this first priceless "Cesnola Collection." Suffice it to say, that it

was sold to a generous citizen of New York, Mr. John Taylor Johnson, for

fifty thousand dollars,--a sum which would not compensate the explorer

for his time and labor, and would little more than repay his pecuniary

outlay, which reached the amount of over sixty thousand dollars in 1875.

But it was enough that the treasure was secured by his adopted country;

the loss of it to the Old World, which was publicly called an "European

misfortune," was a piece of good fortune to the United States, which

time will magnify.

 

From 1870 to 1872 the General's attention was directed to the

southwestern portion of the island, and he laid open the necropoli of

Marium, Paphos, Alamas, and Soli, and three ancient cities whose names

are yet unknown. In 1873 he explored and traced the cities of Throni,

Leucolla, and Arsinôe, and the necropoli of several towns still unknown.

In 1874 and 1875 he brought to light the royal cities of Amathus and

Curium, and located the little town of Kury.

 

It would not be possible here to enumerate all the objects of art or

worship, and of domestic use, which these excavations have yielded. The

statuary and the thousands of pieces of glass, some of them rivalling

the most perfect Grecian shapes in form, and excelling the Venetian

colors in the iridescence of age, perhaps attract most attention in the

Metropolitan Museum. From the tombs were taken thousands of vases of

earthenware, some in alabaster and bronze, statuettes in terra-cotta,

arms, coins, scarabæi, cylinders, intaglios, cameos, gold ornaments, and

mortuary _steles_. In the temples were brought to light inscriptions,

bas-reliefs, architectural fragments, and statues of the different

nations who have conquered and occupied the island. The inscriptions

are in the Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, and the Cypriote

languages; the last-mentioned being, in the opinion of the explorer, an

ancient Greek dialect.

 

At Curium, nineteen feet below the surface of the ground, were found the

remains of the Temple of Apollo Hylates; the sculptures contained in it

belong to the Greek period from 700 to 100 B.C. At Amathus some royal

tombs were opened, and two marble sarcophagi of large dimensions, one

of them intact, were discovered, which are historically important, and

positive additions to the remains of the best Greek art.

 

After Golgos, Paleo Paphos yielded the most interesting treasures. Here

existed a temple to the Paphian Venus, whose birthplace was in sight

of its portals, famous throughout the East; devotees and pilgrims

constantly resorted to it, as they do now to the shrines of Mecca and

Jerusalem. Not only the maritime adventurers and traders from Asia Minor

and the Grecian mainland crowded to the temple of this pleasing and

fortunate goddess, and quitted their vows or propitiated her favor by

gifts, but the religious or the superstitious from Persia and Assyria

and farthest Egypt deposited there their votive offerings. The collector

of a museum of antiquity that should illustrate the manners and religion

of the thousand years before the Christian era could ask nothing better

than these deposits of many races during many centuries in one place.

 

The excavations at Paphos were attended with considerable danger; more

than once the workmen were obliged to flee to save their lives from the

fanatic Moslems. The town, although it has lost its physical form, and

even its name (its site is now called Baffo), retains the character

of superstition it had when St. Paul found it expedient to darken the

vision of Elymas there, as if a city, like a man, possessed a soul that

outlives the body.

 

We spent the afternoon in examining the new collection of General di

Cesnola, not so large as that in the Metropolitan Museum, but perhaps

richer in some respects, particularly in iridescent glass.

 

In the summer of 1875, however, the labors of the indefatigable explorer

were crowned with a discovery the riches of which cast into the shade

the real or pretended treasures of the "House of Priam,"--a discovery

not certainly of more value to art than those that preceded it, but well

calculated to excite popular wonder. The finding of this subterranean

hoard reads like an adventure of Aladdin.

 

In pursuing his researches at Curium, on the southwestern side of the

island, General di Cesnola came upon the site of an ancient temple, and

uncovered its broken mosaic pavement. Beneath this, and at the depth of

twenty-five feet, he broke into a subterranean passage cut in the rock.

This passage led to a door; no genie sat by it, but it was securely

closed by a stone slab. When this was removed, a suite of four rooms

was disclosed, but they were not immediately accessible; earth sifting

through the roofs for ages had filled them, and it required the labor

of a month to clean out the chambers. Imagine the feverish enthusiasm

of the explorer as he slowly penetrated this treasure-house, where every

stroke of the pick disclosed the gleam of buried treasure! In the first

room were found only _gold_ objects; in the second only _silver_

and silver-gilt ornaments and utensils; in the third alabasters,

terra-cottas, vases, and groups of figures; in the fourth _bronzes_, and

nothing else. It is the opinion of the discoverer that these four rooms

were the depositories where the crafty priests and priestesses of the

old temple used to hide their treasures during times of war or sudden

invasion. I cannot but think that the mysterious subterranean passages

and chambers in the ancient temples of Egypt served a similar purpose.

The treasure found scattered in these rooms did not appear to be the

whole belonging to the temple, but only a part, left perhaps in the

confusion of a hasty flight.

 

Among the articles found in the first room, dumped in a heap in the

middle (as if they had been suddenly, in a panic, stripped from the

altar in the temple and cast into a place of concealment), were a gold

cup covered with Egyptian embossed work, and two bracelets of pure gold

weighing over _three pounds_, inscribed with the name of "Etevander,

King of Paphos." This king lived in 635 B.C., and in 620 b. c. paid

tribute to the Assyrian monarch Assurbanapal (Sardanapalus), as is

recorded on an Assyrian tablet now in the British Museum. There were

also many gold necklaces, bracelets, ear-rings, finger-rings, brooches,

seals, armlets, etc., in all four hundred and eighty gold articles.

 

In the silver-room, arranged on the benches at the sides, were vases,

bottles, cups, bowls, bracelets, finger-rings, ear-rings, seals, etc.

One of the most curious and valuable objects is a silver-gilt bowl,

having upon it very fine embossed Egyptian work, and evidently of high

antiquity.

 

In the third room of vases and terra-cottas were some most valuable and

interesting specimens. The bronze-room yielded several high candelabra,

lamp-holders, lamps, statuettes, bulls'-heads, bowls, vases, jugs,

patera, fibula, rings, bracelets, mirrors, etc. Nearly all the objects

in the four rooms seem to have been "votive offerings," and testify a

pagan devotion to the gods not excelled by Christian generosity to

the images and shrines of modern worship. The inscriptions betoken the

votive character of these treasures; that upon the heavy gold armlets is

in the genitive case, and would be literally translated "Etevandri Regis

Paplii," the words "offering of" being understood to precede it.

 

I confess that the glitter of these treasures, and the glamour of these

associations with the ingenious people of antiquity, transformed the

naked island of Cyprus, as we lay off it in the golden sunset, into a

region of all possibilities, and I longed to take my Strabo and my spade

and wander off prospecting for its sacred placers. It seemed to me,

when we weighed anchor at seven o'clock, that we were sailing away from

subterranean passages stuffed with the curious treasures of antiquity,

from concealed chambers in which one, if he could only remove the stone

slab of the door, would pick up the cunning work of the Phoenician

jewellers, the barbarous ornaments of the Assyrians, the conceits in

gold and silver of the most ancient of peoples, the Egyptians.

 

 

 

 

XIX.--THROUGH SUMMER SEAS.--RHODES.

 

|AT daylight next morning we could just discern Cyprus sinking behind

us in the horizon. The day had all the charm with which the poets have

invested this region; the sea was of the traditional indigo blue,--of

which the Blue Grotto of Capri is only a cheap imitation. No land was in

sight, after we lost Cyprus, but the spirit of the ancient romance

lay upon the waters, and we were soothed with the delights of an idle

existence. As good a world as can be made with a perfect sea and a

perfect sky and delicious atmosphere we had.

 

Through this summer calm voyages our great steamer, a world in itself,

an exhibition, a fair, a _fête_, a camp-meeting, cut loose from the

earth and set afloat. There are not less than eight hundred pilgrims on

board, people known as first-class and second-class stowed in every nook

and corner. Forward of the first cabin, the deck of the long vessel is

packed with human beings, two deep and sometimes crossed, a crowd which