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SALAMIS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS.
BY ALEXANDER PALMA DI CESNOLÀ, F.S.A.,
page 31

has been discovered at Veii, Cervetri, Corneto, Chiusi, and Bologna, ancient cities of the " pre-historie" people whom he designates as " Tyrrhenes", as well as in places not inhabited by the Etrurians, between whose works and those commonly attributed to the "Tyrrhenes" a great difference is recognisable, to the disadvantage of the former. He is inclined to ascribe the superior works to the Phœnicians, who were always renowned as goldsmiths, workers and dealers in metal. Amber is not mentioned in the English version of the Scriptures. On amber found in Etruria, see Cities and Cemeteries, by Dennis, 1878 (new edition).

Hair pins are represented in the collection by numerous examples, formed of several materials, such, as glass and ivory. Among the superior works is one the head of which is composed of a disk of cornelian, sculptured to represent the full face of a chubby child, surrounded by well-grown hair; the stone is encircled by a flat ring of lead, probably the matrix of a gold or silver ornament from which the more precious metal has perished in course of time. The reader should refer to what is said of the use of lead in Greek jewellery, as shown by excavations in tombs of the Cyrenaica. There is also, among these miscellaneous gold objects, a scarabǽus (fig. 20) of green stone, set in a gold band, enriched by a wreath of laurel of exquisite workmanship, in very fine Greek taste.

Of ear-rings, the number in this collection is greater than that of any other class of personal ornaments. It is the same in all other collections. This may be not wholly due to the fact that such jewels were usually worn in pairs, for this was by no means invariably the case. One ear-ring is said to have been part of the costume of a slave, and examples occur which illustrate the practice of wearing a single ornament of this kind. I may refer to the account given further on of the spirited and admirably-modelled black terra-cotta lamp, which, while representing the laughing face of a young negress, retains in its right ear a gold ring of the lion's head type, which is so common in Phœnician, Assyrian, and Greek jewellery, and has been so often found in Egyptian tombs.1.

1 See the Ancient Egyptians of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, the chapter on ornaments, and the index to that work.

All the forms of this class of jewellery were found in Egyptian remains. Some represent Assyrian types, but with a difference, which, as has been hinted above, seems to suggest that a considerable number of the specimens are by Tyrian workmen, who supplied the ladies of the Nile, and those who resided in "Chittim", or the Isles of the Sea, Cyprus among them, with innumerable personal ornaments. These were alluded to in the terrible denunciation of Ezekiel:—" Thus saith the Lord God to Tyrus; Shall not the isles shake at the sound of thy fall ? Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold", (xxvi, 15; xxviii, 13). The number of ear-rings in this collection is not only relatively but actually considerable. The variety of then-patterns is probably as great as the difference of their ages, which extend from very early times to the Byzantine period; at least, the later class includes examples which exhibit Byzantine fashions as in Venetian use to a date which is, in relation to others, quite modern. It is noteworthy that the extreme simplicity of the forms of some of these relics does not allow us on that account alone to declare the age of many of the works to be great, or even to predicate that they are archaic in their origin. On the contrary, the flat lunettes (fig. 21), which were evidently cut from plates of gold, sometimes from mere films of the metal, are simply of indefinite antiquity; the works may be, so far as this peculiar pattern enables us to affirm, of almost any age. These specimens are chiefly interesting as illustrating popular goldsmiths' work as it was in vogue in Cyprus, and all other countries in the east of the "Great Sea". Other instances of these peculiar types may also be recognised. For example, there is a pair of lunette-shaped ear-rings, of which the grape-like granulations of gold remind us of the so-called granulated jewellery attributed to the ancient Etruscans, of which so much gold work is preserved in the British Museum (fig. 22). Another of crescent form with a bunch of grapes at the base (fig. 23) is worthy of consideration.

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