Oriental Influences in Western Art (An Old and Rare Book)

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The World Owes much to those twin sources of civilization Egypt and Babylonia. Through the fertile imaginations of their thinkers and craftsmen came inventions which were to lay the foundations of civilized life in antiquity and to serve thereafter as a permanent inheritance for mankind Some of the myths, motifs and techniques created in these lands were to have repercussions far removed from their place of origin, long after these places had been dead and forgotten.

The thread connecting the present with the past can often be traced by careful observation and by diligent questing. This is the task we have taken upon ourselves in the work at hand. Some-times we have been unable to find the connecting links which may yet lie buried beneath the soil waiting their turn to be discovered. Sometimes our sources have been deficient and have not yielded the true implication of a picture or a symbol The right procedure, we have assumed, is to attempt to interpret the symbol by bringing to bear contemporary ideas relating to it, and if that is not avail-able then to juxtapose the object with later ones of the same genera which could conceivably bear a similar connotation. Text and artifact should, in conjunction, help yield the full meaning, and we have thus pored over the literatures of the past for explanations and hints that may serve toward this end. We have had to cast our net widely in Asia and in Europe over a span of many millennia so as not to leave any important aspect out of our survey. But we have not thought it necessary to multiply examples ad infinitum and have stopped short where they would not yield any fresh result.

The emphasis is on detail and close footnoting which, it is hoped, will enable this book to be useful to a wide variety of art historians, and will at the same time enable them to see their particular interest in the context of the whole. Finally we have not hesitated to explore some general ideas connected in a family way with the special themes, because the humanist cannot resist reaching into outlying areas in his search for significant values. Besides, he is acutely aware that having passed this way once he may not pass again.