89 SOME EARLY FORMS OF ART. 
the cow or a donkey’s shadow at mid-day you will understand what 
I suggest. 
Who made these quaint drawings, this wonderful picture book 
for grown-up children. No trace of any implement has been found 
on the spot. It was not likely. The artists were not highly skilled 
like Kgyptians or Assyrians. They scratched an outline and punched 
out a pattern. Certainly, Hannibal’s soldiers had something else to 
occupy them. Historians tell us he crossed the Alps at the Little St. 
Bernard Pass, and in the time it would have been impossible to carry 
out such a gallery of illustration. Moreover the Pheenicians were 
far more civilised and advanced. They would never have wasted 
their time drawing ploughs or oxen, though weapons of war might 
have amused them. Were these thousands of pictures made for 
amusement in idle hours? Many are begun and left unfinished. 
There are no signs of writing or inscriptions. There is no resemblance 
to hieroglyphics, no system or ordered design, but many hands, 
many epochs, and a haphazard covering of the most attractive and 
smoothest and most accessible planes. Was there a religious motive ? 
Was Monte Bego a Sinai, a centre for worship? Were these designs 
votive offerings, or prayers in stone, or are they archives or records 
like the picture-writings of North American Indians? 
I think, probably, there was no ulterior meaning. That they 
were primitive forms of art for art’s sake, like decorations on pot- 
tery or bone for ornament’s sake. Gradually the pattern grew, 
more figures were added, Time was no object, men had plenty of. 
leisure in those days. The shape of the weapons points to a bronze 
age, the workmanship toa stone age. But just as we go on using 
candles and oil though electric light is discovered, so men used flints 
long after bronze was at hand, and bronze when iron existed. 
Incised work is older than low relief and much easier, Profile 
is universal in ancient art. This “ view from above” is unique. 
There are toa certain extent similar rock carvings in Ireland, at 
