DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29898#0105
part ir.
INTRODUCTION.
69
spot with auy architectural forms, though after that epoch we find
abundant traces of a tendency towards that especial form of Turanian
idolatry. But even then the adornment of their tombs with architec-
tural magnificence cannot be traced back to an earlier period than the
time of the Romans ; and all that we find marked with splendour of
this class was the work of that people, and stamped with their peculiar
forms of Art.
Painting and sculpture were absolutely forbidclen to the Jews
because they were Turanian arts, and because their practice might
lead the people to idolatry, so that these nowhere existed : though we
cannot understand a people with any mixture of Turanian blood who
had not an eye for jcolour, and a feeling for beauty of form, in detail
at least. Music alone was therefore the one sesthetic art of the Semitic
races, and, wedded to the lyric verse, seems to have influenced their
feelings and excited their passions to an extent unknown to other
nations; but to posterity it cannot supply the place of the more
permanent arts, whose absence is so much felt in attempting to realise
the feelings or aspirations of a people like this.1
As regards the useful arts, the Semites were always more pastoral
than agricultural, ancl have not left in the countries they inhabited
any traces of such hydraulic works as the earlier races executed ; but
in commerce they excelled all nations. The Jews—from their inland
situation, cut ofl' from all access to the sea—could not do much in
foreign trade; but they always kept up their intercourse with Assyria.
The Phoenicians traded backwards and forwards with every part of
the Mediterranean, ancl first opened out a knowledge of the Atlantic ;
and the Arabs first commenced, and for long afterwards alone carried
on, the trade with India. Prom the earliest dawn of history to the
present hour, commerce has been the art which the Semitic nations
have cultivated with the greatest assiduity, and in which they
consequently have attained the greatest, and an unsurpassed success.
In Asia and in Africa at the present day, all the native trade is
carried on by Arabs; and it need hardly be remarked that the mone-
tary transactions of the rest of the world are practically managed by
the descendants of those who, one thousand years before Christ, traded
from Eziongeber to Ophir.
1 All round the shores of the Medi-
terranean are found the traces of an art
which has liitherto been a stumbling-
block to antiquarians. Egyptian car-
touches and ornaments in Assyria, which
are not Egyptian; sarcophagi at Tyre,
of Egyptian form, but witli Phceuician
inscriptions, and made for Tyrian kings ;
Greek ornaments in Syria, which are not
Greek ; Roman frescoes or ornaments, and
architectural details at Carthage, and all
over Northern Africa, which however are
not Roman. In short, a copying art
something like our own, imitating every-
thing, understanding nothing. I am in-
debted to my friend Mr. Franks for tlie
suggestion that all this art may be Phon-
nician, in other words, Semitic, and I
believe he is right.
INTRODUCTION.
69
spot with auy architectural forms, though after that epoch we find
abundant traces of a tendency towards that especial form of Turanian
idolatry. But even then the adornment of their tombs with architec-
tural magnificence cannot be traced back to an earlier period than the
time of the Romans ; and all that we find marked with splendour of
this class was the work of that people, and stamped with their peculiar
forms of Art.
Painting and sculpture were absolutely forbidclen to the Jews
because they were Turanian arts, and because their practice might
lead the people to idolatry, so that these nowhere existed : though we
cannot understand a people with any mixture of Turanian blood who
had not an eye for jcolour, and a feeling for beauty of form, in detail
at least. Music alone was therefore the one sesthetic art of the Semitic
races, and, wedded to the lyric verse, seems to have influenced their
feelings and excited their passions to an extent unknown to other
nations; but to posterity it cannot supply the place of the more
permanent arts, whose absence is so much felt in attempting to realise
the feelings or aspirations of a people like this.1
As regards the useful arts, the Semites were always more pastoral
than agricultural, ancl have not left in the countries they inhabited
any traces of such hydraulic works as the earlier races executed ; but
in commerce they excelled all nations. The Jews—from their inland
situation, cut ofl' from all access to the sea—could not do much in
foreign trade; but they always kept up their intercourse with Assyria.
The Phoenicians traded backwards and forwards with every part of
the Mediterranean, ancl first opened out a knowledge of the Atlantic ;
and the Arabs first commenced, and for long afterwards alone carried
on, the trade with India. Prom the earliest dawn of history to the
present hour, commerce has been the art which the Semitic nations
have cultivated with the greatest assiduity, and in which they
consequently have attained the greatest, and an unsurpassed success.
In Asia and in Africa at the present day, all the native trade is
carried on by Arabs; and it need hardly be remarked that the mone-
tary transactions of the rest of the world are practically managed by
the descendants of those who, one thousand years before Christ, traded
from Eziongeber to Ophir.
1 All round the shores of the Medi-
terranean are found the traces of an art
which has liitherto been a stumbling-
block to antiquarians. Egyptian car-
touches and ornaments in Assyria, which
are not Egyptian; sarcophagi at Tyre,
of Egyptian form, but witli Phceuician
inscriptions, and made for Tyrian kings ;
Greek ornaments in Syria, which are not
Greek ; Roman frescoes or ornaments, and
architectural details at Carthage, and all
over Northern Africa, which however are
not Roman. In short, a copying art
something like our own, imitating every-
thing, understanding nothing. I am in-
debted to my friend Mr. Franks for tlie
suggestion that all this art may be Phon-
nician, in other words, Semitic, and I
believe he is right.