because, having been found at Pompeii together with the bust of
Scipio Africanus, it might have been its companion. He discovers
an African cast in the features of the bust, although he does not
enable us to understand what African peculiarity he means; and he
forgets that Hannibal ought to portray the true Shemitic, not any
African type. Visconti refers likewise to the peculiar head-dress of
the bust, as being analogous to that of king Juba; but Juba was a
Humidian, (inheriting some Berber blood, probably,) not a Carthaginian
by lineage; and the resemblance is altogether imaginary.
Lastly, he identifies the features of the bronze with those of a fine
bearded and helmeted head often found on gems,27 and traditionally
ascribed to Hannibal, because one of the copies bears evidently the
half-effaced inscription HA. . .BA. .28 Unfortunately for Visconti,
the gems and the bronze bust have not one single feature in common
between them; and we are even able to trace the origin of the tradition
and of the inscription mentioned by the renowned author of the
“ Iconographie ”—to a rather modem date. There exists a celebrated
colossal marble statue in the ante-room of the Capitoline Museum,
which had always puzzled antiquaries. It represents a bearded
warrior, with a stern and majestic countenance; and would have
been taken for Mars, did we not know, that all the statues of the god
of war, with the exception of the earliest archaic representations,
were beardless. Another designation was therefore wanted; and
inasmuch as among the adornments of the magnificent armour of
the colossus, two elephant heads occupy a prominent place, he was
called Pyrrhus, and sometimes Hannibal,—both generals having
made use of elephants in their wars against Rome. The gems mentioned
by Visconti are evidently antique-copies of the head of the
Capitoline statue, from which they obtained the name. As to the
inscription of the Florentine gem mentioned by Gori, we can a ffirm
that it is a mediaeval forgery; because, on another repetition of the
same head,29 we find an analogous imposition, viz: the same Phoenician
letters which are struck on the Cilician coins of Datames, and
were transferred from the medal to the gem by some mediaeval
engraver under the (false) belief that they read: “Hannibal.” Besides,—
the Capitoline statue and the gems resembling it are no portraits
at all, they have ideal features, and represent Zeus Areios, the
martial Jupiter, as beheld on the coins of the town Iasus in Caria,30
v G o r i. M us. Flor., 11, 12. 38 G o r i, Inscriptions p e r Elrur., 1 pi. 10, p. 4.
■ W in c k k lm a n n , Pierres gravies du feu Baron Sloseh, p. 415, nos. 43:—R a s p e , Catalogue
p. 559, No. 9598.
” Streber, Abhandl. der philologischen Classe, der Münchner Academic, Theil 1, Tafel 4,
No. 6.
no less than on several unpublished bronze statuettes in different
collections.
V. It is more difficult to object to the portrait of J uba I., king of
Uumidia; the original of the head published by you31 being the type
of a silver coin which bears the
Roman inscription “ Juba Rex.”
Still, an anonymous archaeologist,
(Steinbüchel,)32 suggests, that this ef-
figy, with its peculiar African headdress,
might represent an African Jupiter,
rather than a king, since his
features are somewhat ideal, and the
sceptre on the shoulder of the bust is
an attribute of Jupiter, or of Juno,
exceptionally only given to kings.
As your object in exhibiting the portrait
of Juba was principally to show,
Fig. 5.
to some illiterate Phil Ethiopians, that
the inhabitants of Northern Africa
were not negroes, the explanation of
Steinbüchel becomes a still stronger argument for your views. If
it can be maintained, then the published head is not the effigy of an
individual Mauritanian king, by descent and marriage closely allied
to several Greek dynasties (for instance, to the Ptolemies), but is the
representative type of the population of the northern shores of
Africa; and the slight modification of the Arab features, observed in
his face, becomes, therefore, a new argument for the affinity of Berber
and Shemitic races. The peculiar head-dress of the bust is mentioned
as African by Strabo,33 who says that the same costume prevailed
all along the northern coast of Africa up to Egypt, where it
borders on Libya. Silius Italicus describes it very characteristically
as a rigid bonnet formed by long hair overshadowing the forehead.34
We see it on the triumphal arch of the Emperor Constantine, as dis-
mguishmg the Numidian auxiliary horsemen;35 and it seems that it
extended even beyond the limits mentioned by Strabo, since it is
ound upon Egyptian reliefs representing Nubians as well as fulll
i l 1!6®1’068I for instance> compare “Types,” page 249, and figs.
166,167, 168, 169, 170, and 171. .
__VL Besides these effigies belonging to the domain of Greek art,
„ Of Mankind, p. 136, fig. 38:—Afrique Ancienne, Carthage.
!S ^ atal°9 einer Sammlung geschnittener Steine, Wien, 1834, p. 11 No. 144.
» ™AB0’ xvu' P- 528- " B e ilo r i, Arcus triumph.
Bunioorum, lib. 1, v. 404