ANCIENT CARVED IVORIES 19 



Dawkins suggests may possibly have contained inlays of 

 amber.* 



These products of the ivory carvers' art were certainly 

 executed in Sparta, although the material must have come 

 from Africa. This is conclusively demonstrated by the 

 evidence of a specimen in which the design has only been 

 sketched out, in summary incision, prior to being definitely 

 worked up.f 



In the Homeric age the Iliad relates that reins and harness 

 of ivory, sometimes stained a red colour, were valued posses- 

 sions of the heroes, as appears in the following lines : 



As when some Carian or Mseonian maid 

 With crimson dye the ivory stains, designed 

 To be the check-piece of a warrior's steed: 

 By many a valiant horseman coveted. 

 As in a house it lies, a monarch's boast 

 The horse adorning, and the horseman's pride. 



II. IV, 141 sqq.. 

 Lord Derby's translation. 



The Odyssey tells of palaces resplendent with ivory.} 

 The tombs of Mycense yielded to Schliemann a few ivory 

 objects, the most noteworthy being a thick flat piece which 

 may have served for a dagger handle, decorated with a 

 spiral design.** The elephant itself, however, is not alluded 

 to; indeed, Herodotus writing in the fifth century B. C. is 

 the first writer to employ this name in the Greek form 

 elephas, which has been derived by some from the Hebrew 

 (or Phoenician) eleph, an ox. 



An ivory casket found at Ruvo, Italy, and now in the 



*0p. cit., Plate IV; for description see pp. 100 sqq. 



tOp. cit., p. 78. 



JOdyssey IV, 73. 



**Schliemann, "Mycenae," New York. 1878, p. 329. 



