784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



all intellectual and religious creations that had any moral or 

 artistic value. But the investigations of the last half -century 

 have given positive bases for the ancient history of the East ; and 

 that in turn permits us to restore to their true plane in the per- 

 spective of the ages the principal centers of artistic culture which 

 have reacted upon one another since the beginning of civilization. 



There may be differences of opinion as to whether the Ionic 

 capital borrowed its volutes from the horns of the ibex or the 

 half-opened petals of the lotus. There may be discussion as to 

 whether Ionia received it directly from Golgos on the Phoenician 

 vessels, or from Pteria with the caravans of Asia Minor. But 

 no one who has observed its presence on the monuments of Khor- 

 sabad and Koyoundjik will refuse to locate in Mesopotamia the 

 point of its departure toward the ^Egean Sea. This is only an 

 example of the types and motives the development to importance 

 of which is doubtless due to the autonomous inspirations of Greek 

 genius, but the origins of which are to be sought in Phrygia, 

 Lycia, Phoenicia, and beyond, in the valleys of the Tigris and the 

 Nile. In India, likewise, the most ancient works of sculpture and 

 carving — wherever they do not attest a direct influence of Greek 

 art — associate themselves with the monuments of Persia by the 

 adoption of motives in some way classic in the Persepolitan archi- 

 tecture — like the capitals formed of animals sometimes affronted, 

 sometimes backed ; which are, as a plastic signature, in the former 

 case of Assyria, in the second case of Egypt. In fact, when we 

 depart from Greece or India, or even Libya, Etruria, or Gaul, 

 we always come at the end, stage by stage, upon two grand cen- 

 ters of artistic diffusion, partially irreducible to one another — 

 Egypt and Chaldea ; but with this difference between them : that 

 about the eighth century before our era, Mesopotamia went to 

 school to the Egyptians, while Egypt never went to school to any 

 one. Now, symbols have not only, as we have shown more than 

 once in the course of this study, followed the same routes as 

 purely decorative themes, but they have also been transmitted in 

 the same fashion, at the same times, and, we might say, in the 

 same proportion. I am far from disputing that there may have 

 been independent and autonomous centers of creation among 

 nearly all peoples. But, besides autochthonous types, we find 

 everywhere the deposits of a strong current whose more or less re- 

 mote origins lay in the symbolism of the shores of the Euphrates 

 and the Nile. In short, the two orders of importations are so con- 

 nected that in writing the history of art we write in great part the 

 history of symbols, or at least of their migrations — as is exem- 

 plified in the studies of MM. Perrot and Chipiez in the history of 

 ancient art.- 



A distinction, however, should be observed, in researches rela- 



