ORNAMENTS AND DECORATION 405
meters
in diameter, to which the three strands are secured. If there was any
other setting, it has evidently disappeared, although it is quite
possible that there may only have been a string at each end, as in the
East Indian necklaces.
This
ornament was found on the site of the ancient Susa or Shu-shan by M. J.
de Morgan, February 10, 1901, in a bronze sarcophagus, which contained
the skeleton of a woman, adorned with a great number of gold ornaments
set and incrusted with precious stones. M. de Morgan gives circa 350 b.c. as
the probable date of these objects. The pearls were much deteriorated.
About 238 were found, but many of them crumbled away when they were
touched. M. de Morgan considers that the necklace was of the type of
the "dog-collar" of to-day, and he believes that it originally
comprised from 400 to 500 pearls.
According
to a personal communication from M. P. Cavvadias, of the Société
Archéologique d'Athènes, there are no pearls on the ancient ornaments
preserved in the National Museum at Athens. This is hardly surprising
in view of the fact that the greater part of these ornaments belong to
the archaic period of Greek art ; that is to say, to a time when the
pearl was evidently unknown to the Greeks.
The
fact that we do not find more evidence of the use of pearls in Greece
at a later period need cause no surprise, when we consider how many of
the treasures of Greek art have disappeared in the course of more than
twenty centuries. There can be no question that they were known arid
used as ornaments at an early time, as we can infer from the
description of them by Theophrastus and later Greek authors.
Dr.
Edward Robinson of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other
authorities on Greek art and archaeology, maintain that the Arethusa
necklace, and other ornaments of that time, depicted on coins, etc.,
were meant to represent gold ornaments, as it is believed by many that
pearls were unknown in Greece at that period.
One
of the most interesting specimens showing the use of a pearl in ancient
times is a very beautiful pearl pin from Paphos, on the Island of
Cyprus, which is mounted with a large marine pearl, probably the
largest antique pearl ever found, measuring fourteen millimeters in
diameter, and weighing about 70 grains. This, unfortunately, has been
very much abraded and worn away, although more than half of the pearl
is still present. It is surmounted by a small fresh-water pearl, four
millimeters in diameter, weighing about two grains and in a much better
state of preservation. This unusually interesting example of
prehistoric pearl is in the Greek and Roman department of the British
Museum, and we are able to show it by the courtesy of the keeper of
that department, Dr. Charles Hercules Read.
