BEAUTY FROM THE DESERT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 233, 30 March 1912, Page 10

BEAUTY FROM THE DESERT

SCULPTURES OF TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO. ' Four hundred years before the birth of Christ an unknown Grecian sculptor in the city of Gyrene, in Tripoli, carved a-beautiful marble head of the goddess Athene. v'yrene vanished from the face of the earth only some tombs and half-buried ruins remaining—and for 2000 years the exquisite work of the sculptor who lived before the Ptolomies lay buried in the wreck of the dead city. Last year Professor Richard Norton, excavating at Cm ene, dug up this relic of a lost civilisation. and to-dav the head of the goddess j whom the Greeks in old Cyrene worshipped is shown for the first time to En<ri lish eyes. ° Fortunate is the excavator," writes J I rofessor Norton, in his preliminary report just issued, ''who can add to' the world's store of beauty an object such as this—from the best period of Greek sculpture. The goddess wears the Corinthian helmet pushed back on her head, ; leaving a diadem of heavy hair rippling across her broad, serene brow, and gath- ! ered behind in a simple, massive braid that falls on the nape of her neck. \erv striking is the contrast of the strong, unruffled curve of the helmet above the lovely face. The head bends slightly to the left, like a flower on its stem. The eyes are clear, straightlooking, gentle; the cheeks full, above the vigorous chin; the mouth sensitive as the dew on the grass, but strong and firm as one of Nature's laws. A great individual master was he who carved the face, wliicft looks at us across the ages of vanished time with the tranquility of perfectly accomplished beauty." A WONDERFUL fSTATUE. A wonderful statue of a woman found in the same place is, in similarity of feeling, says Professor Norton, strikingly like the famous Nike of Samothrace. "There is the same magnificent flux and flow of life," he writes, "the same same grandness of design, the same mastery of execution, that enabled the sculptor to represent a splendid large body which is neither clumsy nor dumpy, and which, though heavily draped, is neither hidden nor swaddled by the garments that take life from and flutter around the pulsing shape within." Professor Norton, who is the head of the American School of Archaeology at Rome, spent the latter hall of 1910 and the early months of 1911 at Cyrene, delving amid ruins of the Arcopolic of the old I Greek city. -Just after the war between I Italy and Turkey began he returned to the Tripoli coast in an American warship with the intention of resuming his excavations, and was prohibited by the Ital--1 ians from landing, although the site of j Cyrene is ten miles inland, and therefore out of the area of Italian activity. j Even before the war the digging among the ruins of the lost city—once one of the most famous centres of thought in the world, and noted among the ancientß for the intellectual life of its inhabitants —had its perils. One of Professor Norton's colleagues, Mr. de Cou, was murdered by three ruffians, who, Professor Norton states, "were hired and sent from more than 50 miles to commit murder." A MISTAKE! A story was current in Tripoli at the cime—although Professor Norton does not mention this—that the murder was tt mistake, in so far as Mr. de Cou was the victim. It was said that Professor Norton was the person whom the murderers were paid to slay. One morning while Mr. de Cou was walking to the place of digging, shots rang out, and he fell pierced by two bullets fired by Arabs hidden behind a wall. The assassins escaped, but the Turkish authorities did their best to discover them, although in vain. It is believed that the object of the intended murder of Professor Norton was to put a stop to the excavations. Rumor gave a name to the instigator of the crime, but circumstances have not yet justified the publication of a charge which would create a sensation. Once before, half a century ago, Cyrene was visited by excavators—two English officers —who returned with sculptures of astonishing beauty, now in the British Museum. A British Consul afterwards brought home*some fine painted vases from the tombs; but with these exceptions, Cyrene, with all its hidden wealth of art, has been left untouched from the days when the Arabs swept away its life, and Professor Norton was the first to delve in the Arcopolis, where his treasures were found. His workmen were wild Arabs, who at first came to work covered with knives and pistols and guns. The top of the Arcopolis hill was first attacked, and here a colonnade, with adjoining wings and rooms, was unearthed. Behind the colonnade ran a rather long corridor with a painted \ plaster door, which, with some coins which were, found, suggests, says Professor Norton, the third century B.C. as the date of the work. / ANCIENT VENEER. It is amusing to find that the very modern plan of covering up walls with a thin layer of marble was practised so long ago. In some of the rooms a larg« quantity of various colored marble!

which had once formed a veneer on the walls, and also probably a floor," was found. Layers of terra-cotta pipes, which may have been part of the latest system of steam-heating, were unearthed, as well a3 floor mosaics and ceiling tiles, stamped generally with the name of the Greek god, Zeus. Miniature figures, a half life-size figure of an athlete, "Antonianos, otherwise known as the Fool, the Ephesian," a torso of a Nereid, and 15 half-length lifesize figures of women, dating from 300 B.C. to 300 A.D., were among the treasures discovered. These statues are "peculiar in many respects," Professor Norton states. They are apparently figures from tombs, and two of theni have the carved drapery "drawn acro&s the face and held in the left hand, leaving only the eyes and brow visible, covering the faces exactly as the women of Cyrene do to-day." Four fine semi-colossal statues of women, dating from 300 8.C., were found in an enclosure, and near one of them were several figures representing the eame goddess, but dating from GOO B.C. "The sculptor who made them is forgotten," Professor Norton writes of the larger figures. "The religion that drove his chisel has vanished as the wind over the sea, but these figures rise before us to 6tir our tired bodies and our jaded senses with the reminder of a great valor which has gone from the world."