DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0068
44
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
their bitter foes, and at last their conquerors, it was no
time to remember that all came of one stock, but the old
tradition stands sure. Ham and Shem were brothers ;
of Ham came, as we saw, Nimrod and Canaan as well
as Sheba and Dedan (Arabia) and Sidon. Of Shem
came Asshur and Elam, and the chosen nation them-
selves. Abraham, the father of the faithful, went forth
from Ur of the Chaldees. More remotely it seems pro-
bable that Egypt was also akin.
It is important to us to grasp this, and specially impor-
tant just at this point in our art history. Egypt stands for
the most part alone, developing her civilization, silent and
remote in the narrow valley that shuts her in. Only after
that civilization was developed, trade and conquest—as we
shall later see—brought her into contact with the outside
world. But in passing to the Euphrates we enter on a
new phase ; we have to realize a more complex condition,
we have to gather up the threads of that great web of
Semitic life and Semitic art and thought, that whole of
which Elam, Chaldaea, Assyria, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine,
and even far-off Arabia are but parts, whose influence
on Hellas we must watch and seek to measure, that
great and ancient East which ever and again has stood
in conflict and contrast with the younger civilizations of
the West.
Let us seek to get some notion rough but clear, and
for our purpose sufficient, of the chronology of our
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
their bitter foes, and at last their conquerors, it was no
time to remember that all came of one stock, but the old
tradition stands sure. Ham and Shem were brothers ;
of Ham came, as we saw, Nimrod and Canaan as well
as Sheba and Dedan (Arabia) and Sidon. Of Shem
came Asshur and Elam, and the chosen nation them-
selves. Abraham, the father of the faithful, went forth
from Ur of the Chaldees. More remotely it seems pro-
bable that Egypt was also akin.
It is important to us to grasp this, and specially impor-
tant just at this point in our art history. Egypt stands for
the most part alone, developing her civilization, silent and
remote in the narrow valley that shuts her in. Only after
that civilization was developed, trade and conquest—as we
shall later see—brought her into contact with the outside
world. But in passing to the Euphrates we enter on a
new phase ; we have to realize a more complex condition,
we have to gather up the threads of that great web of
Semitic life and Semitic art and thought, that whole of
which Elam, Chaldaea, Assyria, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine,
and even far-off Arabia are but parts, whose influence
on Hellas we must watch and seek to measure, that
great and ancient East which ever and again has stood
in conflict and contrast with the younger civilizations of
the West.
Let us seek to get some notion rough but clear, and
for our purpose sufficient, of the chronology of our