and the Peloponnesus, though rich in silver-mines, possessed neither
colonies nor extensive and uninterrupted foreign commerce, which
alone can have given rise to the desire of a circulating medium of
currency. Lydia, equally devoid of colonies and foreign extensive
commerce, had not even a supply of gold before the conquest of
Phrygia. The first money could not have been struck by any hut
a merchant nation, hi either Pharaonic Egypt, nor the empires of
Assyria and Babylon, nor the Hebrew kingdoms, knew the use of
coins. They weighed the gold and silver as the price for commodities
bought and sold; but they never tried to divide it into equal
pieces, or to mark it according to its weight and value. It was at a
comparatively late period, scarcely prior to the seventh century
before our era, that gold and silver were struck by public authority,
to he the circulating medium. Aleidamas, the Athenian rhetor of
the fourth century b. o., tells us, that “ coins were invented by the
Phoenicians, they being the wisest and most cunning of the Barbarians;—
out of the ingot they took equal portions and stamped them
with a sign, according to the weight, the heavier and the lighter.” 103
— ’OtWo'scg y .o - k «n'poáotfíag IIecXap.i¡5oU£r.— (S e e Á l c i d ^ j
Such are the lasting benefits mankind owes to the Shemitic race,
which, besides, was in antiquity the forerunner of Indo-European
civilization on the Mediterranean, and along the Eastern shores of
the Atlantic, and subsequently again in Hindostán and Java during
the middle ages. Even now it paves the way for European culture
and commerce in the Soodán, and central Africa. These highly gifted
carriers of civilization never rose, notwithstanding, to any eminence
in imitative arts, and were unable to invent or establish a national
style of painting or sculpture. As to the Hebrews and the Arabs,
this deficiency is often attributed to the prohibitions of the Pentateuch
and the Kur’án: hut it will probably he safer to derive the
prohibition from the want of artistical feeling among the nations for
whom the law was framed. Besides, the Arabs, even before Mohammed,
had few or no idols of human form, no plastical art and
no pictures; at the same time that the Kur’án could not prevent the
103 The standard weights of Nimrood, in the British Museum, carry now even the Babylonian
talent further back, to Assyria, and it is not unimportant that their inscriptions are either
purely Phoenician, or bilingual.—As to coinage, it is everywhere originally connected with
the standard of weights: it is its result, its most practical application to silver and gold as
measures of value. The standard of measures must have preceded the standard of coinage,
and cannot be a contemporary invention. Pheidon may indeed have been the first who
struck coin in Greece, and have introduced coinage together with the Babylonian standard
->f measures and weights from Phoenicia; but the Greek tradition which attributes to him
the invention both of the standard of weights and of coinage, is as illogical as regards
coins, as it is historically false as regards weights.
Perso-Affghän Mussulmans, both the Sheeä and the Sunnee, to continue
drawing and painting, and even sculpturing reliefs. Down to
the present day, portraits are painted at Delhi and Cabool and Teheran
by true believers, without any religious scruples; whereas the
Arab envoy of the Sultan of Morocco to Queen Victoria, whoso
daguerreotype was taken without his knowledge at Claudet’s in Regent
Street, felt himself both insulted and defiled for having had
his form “ stolen from him,” as he expressed himself.
With the polytheistic branch of the Shemites, sculpture and painting
were not prohibited by religion; and still no national style of
art ever developed itself among the Syrians and Phoenicians, notwithstanding
their wealth and industry, and love of display.
The extent and number of the monuments of art in Syria, Phoenicia,
Palestine, and Idumaea, and of those remains which, by their
Phoenician or Punic inscription, are designated as Shemitic, is not
at all insignificant; although, measured by the standard of Egyptian,
Greek, or Etruscan antiquities, they are, indeed, comparatively small.
Still, these monuments form together no homogeneous class, characterized
by certain peculiarities common to them all. Nothing but
the place where they were found, or the Phoenician characters with
which they are inscribed, designates them as Shemitic. They might
all have been made by foreigners: Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks,
Etruscans, or barbarians. Of the ruins still extant, Petra, the rock-
town of the Nabatseans, exhibits late Greek; Baalbek (Heliopolis)
and Palmyra, late Roman forms of architecture. The rock-tombs
of Jerusalem were evidently excavated by artists perfectly conversant
with the Dorian column, who remained faithful to the Hellenic spirit
of art, notwithstanding that they introduced grapes and palm-trees,
and some oriental forms, into the decoration of their rock-structures.
As to Shemitic statues and reliefs, the most important among them
undoubtedly is the black basalt-sarcophagus of E shmunazar, king o f
Sidon, discovered in February, 1855, near Sayda, the old Sidon. The*
French Consul, M. Peretie, acquired it, and sent it to Prance, where
it has been deposited in the Louvre, as a worthy companion to the
kingly monuments of Egyptian Pharaohs and Assyrian monarchs.
The Phoenician inscription of the sarcophagus, read and analyzed by
the Duc de Luynes,104 is one of the most striking expressions of She-
Rfitie feelings. It runs as follows:
104 Mr. Dietrich of Marburg, Dr. Rüdiger, Prof. Land, and others, likewise published
ranslations of, and observations on, this inscription, independently of the French Duke,
whose translation, however, was read at the Institute previously to the publications of the
earned Germans. Besides, his Memoir, published in 1856, is by far more complete as
regards the analysis of the inscription, and the geographical, philological, and historical