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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
 
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SALAMIS

SALAMIS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS.
BY ALEXANDER PALMA DI CESNOLÀ, F.S.A.,
page 27

C. Park of Russell Square. These golden lips are considerably thicker than the very thinly beaten foil which I and others have found in Cypriote tombs. According to Ebers,1 the late Mariette Pacha found in an older portion of the Apis catacombs of Memphis, a human body, with a golden mask8 on the face, and with many costly ornaments and amulets on the breast. From the accompanying inscriptions, it became known that these were the remains

1 Egypt, vol. i, p. 164. 2 Now in the Museum of the Louvre.

of Khamûs, the eldest son of the monarch Rameses II, who was high priest at Memphis, and is often mentioned as a particularly pious prince. He died during the lifetime of his father, and seems to have been buried among the sacred Apis Bulls as a special distinction above others. There are several fine examples of necklaces in the collection, and more fragments of such ornaments, being pendants and separate beads. The first which I shall mention consists of a linked chain of gold wires and oblong cornelian beads, the angles of which are, after a fashion which frequently'

occurs in Etruscan as well as in Greek works, chamfered off (fig. 9). To this is attached an oval Greek gem representing Ceres, and of a good style and period of design. On the back of the gold setting of the stone is the same lattice-like ornament which we observe in the cornelian pendant of the necklace itself. This "may be said to attest the idea that the antiquity of the ornament is, comparatively, not very considerable; for the style it exhibits is somewhat indefinite, probably Roman derived from Greece, as was commonly the case in many good instances of the same kind and origin. With this the worn state of the surface of the gem agrees well enough, because it contrasts with the sharpness of the state of the oblong beads; it may be, however, that the gem is a comparatively recent addition to the carcanet, with which it is now associated. There is also a smaller example than the last, which is unquestionably due to the same period and mode of art; it consists of alternate beads of cornelian, orsard, and twisted links of gold wire. Another necklace which I have found is composed of a group of fragments of several necklaces, probably including some relics of widely differing dates, brought together here for convenience of exhibition and preservation; among the objects in question is one of the conventional grapes, or granulations, en repoussé, and a pendant of spiral flutings, which may be of late Greek or Roman-Greek origin; there are double cones

of gold which suggest the Assyrian type of jewellery, to which the mode they illustrate undoubtedly pertains. It appears to me that these cones show traces of provincial art, of the period of the Assyrian domination in Cyprus, which may be called ancient even with regard to the exceptional antiquity of works in gold. Similar types appear in another specimen, which comprises, Avith many other examples of differing types, two curious emblems, well-known to anthropologists, delicately and neatly modelled, evidently designed, like numerous similar relics found elsewhere, to be used as personal ornaments. I have no doubt these phallic emblems are pure Greek, and of the best period of the art of that country. They show, with the conventional treatment which could hardly be dispensed with, even in Greece of old or Cyprus, Avhere there would be few scruples as to

the use of such ornaments, a fine order of execution and a great amount of naturalistic character. To the same grouped necklace is appended a lotus flower of gold, with hollows designed to hold enamel or coloured pastes. It is doubtless Greek, with Egyptian characteristics, the latter being more distinctly marked in the choice of the subject than its execution (fig. 10). Similar jewels have been found in Lower Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Cyprus furnished similar relics to the Metropolitan Museum of New York; and it is certain that

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