There are other Eastern characteristics both here and in other places on the coast, such as the sheet of lead upon which the bases of columns are set, as in Byzantine work; the free-standing apse, found at Salona in two places, and in the earlier church at Parenzo; the plan of S. Maria delle Grazie, Grado, with the apse in the centre, and the two chambers flanking it, an arrangement found in a temple of 192 A.D., at Is-Sanamên in the Northern Hauran, by Mr. H.C. Butler, while the former arrangement was seen by Miss Lowthian Bell in many ruins in Lycaonia, as has been already noted.
The Egyptian influence also appears to be made out. Upon heathen tomb monuments of the second and third centuries at Ghirza in Tripoli are columns supporting arches cut out of a thin slab, not constructional, an arrangement just like the Lombard ciborium tops. The connection appears clear. The ciborium was a tomb generally erected over a martyr's grave or the relics of a saint to whom the altar was dedicated, and the form of these tombs appears to have thus been perpetuated. That there were links between North Africa and the Adriatic towns is suggested by various facts. Coptic objects have been noted in the treasury at Spalato, and the patriarchal chair once at Grado has been described.
At Agram a stele is preserved, found at Salona, which is of the shape of Coptic altars. On it is a representation of Jonah being vomited by the whale, and a head, with a curious kind of form at the bottom like the plan of an apse with a rail returned across the entrance. Dr. Strzygowski gives similarly shaped stelai from Alexandria and Cairo, with incised awkward scrolls, and some of Arab date. He suggests that the shape originated with the altars in the apses above the relics of martyrs, and says that the Salona example (which is of the eighth century) is the most ancient that he knows, and the only Western example. The ivory chair of Maximian at Ravenna is another case in point. Maximian, before he was chosen bishop of Ravenna, had made a journey in the East, and visited Alexandria. Agnellus gives extracts from his own account of his visit. Apparently he ordered the chair from the ivory carvers there after his elevation, for the costume in the Joseph subjects, and the choice of that history, as well as the admixture of animal forms in the ornament, point to an Egyptian origin. It seems probable that Ravenna was the centre from which the influence spread westwards. There were many Orientals in the city, Syrians being so numerous that they were able to nominate one of their number for the episcopal dignity. With the taking of the place by the Lombards the way was made open for the best craftsmen to migrate to the more important city of Pavia, the Lombard capital, and so to spread the Oriental influence farther and farther westward, though of course it also penetrated France by the ordinary trade routes through Narbonne and Marseilles. It is a curious fact that the plan of the great Rhenish churches, with the apses and transepts at each end, is found in North Africa at a much earlier date, which suggests direct intercourse, of which no record has survived.