606 THE EXCAVATIONS OF CARTHAGE. 



enables us in a measure to reconstruct what it might have been on 

 earth. For the tomb is the only place that preserves the secrets of 

 life when its last trace and memory have been obliterated from the 

 world of the living. 



ii. 



Till within the last few years it would have been difficult to convey 

 a fairly precise idea of Carthaginian life and civilization. One man has 

 tried, and he could try, because he was a novelist, Gustave Flaubert. 

 Not that his description is literally true, but he was an extremely con- 

 scientious student, and to his conscientiousness he joined the gift of 

 correct and vivid perception. Apart from the inevitable exaggerations 

 of romance, which can sometimes be attributed to the authors from 

 whom Flaubert drew his information, Salammbo gives the sensation of 

 forceful, sensual realism. It is cumbered with an accumulation of dec- 

 orative detail not in contradiction with the glimpses obtained from 

 monuments. Flaubert seems to have had somewhat of a Carthaginian 

 soul. 



But one thing he could not bring out clearly, namely, the composite 

 character of this civilization and its Egyptian aspect, strikingly dis- 

 played in the costume of the priestesses of Tanit and in the ornaments 

 which, to use the expression of Moutesquieu, burdened their superb 

 heads. 



The Carthaginians, like all Phoenicians, gave little scope to the ideal. 

 This is shown by the realism of their art and their religion. They were 

 not endowed with a powerful, creative genius; they did not, like the 

 Greeks, create types which compelled the admiration of the world and 

 enriched humanity with new forms. Like all realists, they excelled in 

 the art of imitating whatever struck the eye. They imitated the forms 

 of nature as well as the art-forms of the people with whom they came 

 in contact. The Phoenicians lacked the independence to elaborate 

 from them a new conception of art, distinguished by certain constant 

 characteristics. They were indebted to all their neighbors in succes- 

 sion. Their art, Chaldean when in contact with Chaldean, became 

 Egyptian near Egypt and Greek in the Hellenic period. The Greeks 

 themselves derived the models for their masterpieces from the Orient, 

 but they transformed them by a new idea. The Phoenicians departed 

 from their models only as an interpreter varies what he interprets; 

 they fashioned them in their own image, thereby giving them a some- 

 thing peculiar to themselves. They were great animal painters, also, 

 and under their treatment even the human face assumed a singularly 

 lively expression. From this point of view such a thing as Phoenician 

 art may be said to exist. 



The excavations of Carthage have brought out the profound influ- 

 ence of Egypt on this ancient Carthaginian civilization. The sight of 

 the objects unearthed from the tombs transports one to the borders of 



