the beetle of the Nile with its hind legs rolling a hall of mud, which
contained the eggs of the insect, from the river to the desert, saw in
the scarabseus the symbol of the Creator, shaping the hall of the
earth out of wet clay, and planting in it the seeds of all life.154 The
Egyptian artist often represented this symbol of godhead; and when
he had to carve a seal, (the sign of authenticity by which kings and
citizens ratify their pledged word and engagements,) he cut it on
stone, which he carved into the shape of a beetle, as if thus to place
the seal under the protection and upon the symbol of godhead, in
order to deter people both from forgery and from falsehood. Placed
over the stomach of a mummy, according to rules specially enjoined
in the “ funereal ritual,” it was deemed a never-failing talisman to
shield the “ soul” of its wearer against the terrific genii of Amenthi.
The Egyptian symbol, however, possessed no analogous religious
meaning for the Etruscans when they adopted the form of the
scarahseus: and even after they had abandoned it, they still retained
the Egyptian cartouche, which encircles nearly all the works of Etruscan
glyptic.
Besides the scarabasi, we find in Etruria several other Egyptian
reminiscences,—head-dresses similar to the Pharaonic fashion,155 and
even idols of glazed earthenware, entirely of Egyptian shape; for
instance the representation of Khons, the Egyptian Hercules; 156 of
Onoukis, the Egyptian Mars; or of sistrums and cats,157 all of them
most strikingly Egyptian in their style.
A certain class of black earthenware vases decorated with stamped
representations in relief, many of the earliest painted vases, some
gems mostly of green jasper, and the marble statue of Polledrara
now in the British Museum, are by style and costume so closely connected
with the monuments of Assyria, that it is now difficult to
doubt of a connection between Etruria and inner Asia. The disbelievers
in the Lydian immigration explain the Oriental types of
Etruria by intercourse with Phoenician merchants, and by the importation
of Babylonian tapestry, celebrated all over the ancient
world, —which might have familiarized the Etruscans with the
Assyrian style and type of art. But the use of the arch in Tuscan
architecture finally disposes of this explanation, since we learned that
the arch was known to the Assyrians, hut not to the early Greeks.
It was introduced into the states of Hellas at a rather late period, about
154 Horapollo N ilous, Hieroglyphica, transl. Cory, London, 1840; — “ How an only
begotten,” g X, pp. 19-22.
155 Monumenti, delV Institute, vol. 1, pi. XLI. fig. 11-12.
156 Micali, Monumenti Antichi, tav. 45-46.
157 Idem, Monum. Inedili, tav. I, II, XVII, L.
the times of Phidias. Had this architectural form been brought to
Etruria by the Phoenicians, it would have reached Greece at the same
time as Italy, or earlier; whereas the contrary is the case. The
earliest architectural arch we know is in Egypt, and belongs to the
reign of Bamesses the Great.158 Monsieur Place and Dr. Layard have
discovered brick arches in the palaces of Saroon and his successors
in Assyria, and on the Ninevite reliefs we often see arched gates with
regular key-stones. Etruria was the next in time to make use of the
arch. The Lydians, neighbors of Assyria, must have been acquainted
with arched buildings, and in their new home made a most extensive
use of this architectural feature for gates, and for sewers; of which
the celebrated Cloaca Maxima of Rome, built by the Tarquinii, is the
most important still-extant example. It is, therefore, rather amusing
to perceive that Seneca,159 having before his eyes this monument of his
country’s early greatness, thoughtlessly alleges that Democritus, the
contemporary of Phidias, invented the principle of the arch and of the
key-stone. Indeed, the Romans were no great critics: Seneca extracted
the above-mentioned fact(!)from the Greek author Posidonius,
and trusted his Grecian authority more than his own knowledge.
Democritus was probably the man who introduced the arch from
Italy into Greece, and got the credit of its invention among his vain
fellow-eitizens.
Of all the foreign influences on Etruscan art, the Greek was the
most powerful. It soon superseded both the Egyptian and the
Oriental types. But here we ought not to forget that many of the
Italic colonies of Grsecia Magna came from Asia, not from European
Greece, and that the art of Ionia proper and of the neighboring
countries exercised at least an equal influence on the Italiots with
that of Greece proper. Our histories of art, hitherto, have not paid
sufficient attention to the development of art among the Asiatic
Greeks; although the monuments discovered and to a certain extent
published by Sir Charles Eellowes, Texier, Flandin and others, yield
ample material for a comprehensive work on the subject, which
might probably show that not only the poetry, history or philosophy,
of the Greeks, but even their art, had its cradle in Asia Minor. At any
rate, the numerous colonies of Miletus, Phocaea, Heraclia, Cyme,and
other states of Ionia and HSolis, carried the principles of Greek art
further than Greece proper.
As to the Greek influence on Etruria, we have to distinguish two
if not three periods: the early Asiatic Ionian, which introduced the
168 Sir Gardner Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, v. 1, p. 18, & II, p. 300: — crude brick
arches are, however, certainly as old as Thotmes III.
159 Epistol. 90.