[ Previous ][Contents][ Next ]

Along with the skeletal remains already described, many other valuable articles were revealed when this massive sarcophagus was opened. These articles include a gold finger ring and twelve small statuettes of Egyptian faience representing Egyptian deities pierced for stringing. Another article of interest was a richly carved toilet tray formed from A peculiar green stone. One handle of this was broken, but even so it is a very fine example of Phoenician art.(23)

The sarcophagus itself is of beautiful Parian marble. The cover is beatifully proportioned and carefully adjusted to the lower part of the sarcophagus. It stands about 2.7 meters high, with handles at shoulder and feet. The head presents curly "red" hair, wide set eyes, broad nose, lips heavy and drooping. The chin is massive and determined, exactly the manner of man who in life one would expect to find built around the massive mandible and skeleton interred tinder this beautiful lid. All this would seem to indicate that the cover was posed for by the subject himself before death.

The Ford specimen was an attempt to keep diseased teeth in the mouth by retentive prosthesis, and not an attempt to replace lost dental organs, as is very evidently the purpose of the Gaillardot and Etruscan specimens. If the Ford and the Gaillardot appliances are both specimens of purely Phoenician dental art it would seem to any dentist that the Ford specimen was the older of the two, for the bridging in of lost teeth, as observed in the Gaillardot specimen, shows a more highly developed dental art than that which placed the retentive appliance which we know as the Ford specimen. The cruder appearance of the two Phoenician specimens as compared to Etruscan remains can possibly be ascribed to the fact that gold soldering was unknown in Phoenician dentistry even as late as the 5th Century. In the art of soldering alone does Etruscan dentistry seem to excel. Wire making is certainly more difficult than band making, but all Etruscan appliances were of gold bands which they were able to use because of their knowledge of soldering.

In concluding the discussion of ancient dentistry it would seem safe to say that Phoenicia borrowed only her therapeutic and not her mechanical knowledge of dentistry from Egypt. She added to it the simplest forms of retentive prosthesis, using mechanical proceedings different from those employed by the Etruscans.

In closing, the writer wishes to explain on what he bases the importance attributed to the Ford specimen of retentive prosthesis.

1. It is one of the few existing dental appliances from antiquity in which we can plainly see that the owner derived service as well as esthetics by its application.
2. The skeletal remains and the appliance are in such a splendid state of preservation that we do not have to draw upon our imagination to understand its function.

[ Previous ][Contents][ Next ]

980519 pas - Email: hseeden@aub.edu.lb