CHAPTER VIII.

_PHŒNICIAN AND CYPRIOTE ART._

The Phœnicians, established on the coast of northern Syria, were not

simply the agents of commerce; they also carried the art of the great

Asiatic civilisations to all the coasts upon which they set up their

factories, and among all the races with whom they formed relations of

business. Their manufactured products have no more marked originality

than those of the Jews and Canaanites: a mixture of Egyptian and

Assyrian art is observed in them. These two powerful foreign factors, if

they had been brought into action by an ingenious and enquiring people,

would no doubt have begotten a new art which would have summed them up

and absorbed them, by combining them with the peculiar inventions of the

national genius: this was the case in Greece, for example. But the

Phœnicians, exclusively occupied with business, were content to seek

sometimes from Assyria and sometimes from Egypt the elements of a

bastard industry, in which the exotic forms are so little disguised and

so imperfectly fused that it is as easy as possible to detect them.

If ancient authors and epigraphic texts attest the importance of the

Phœnician factories in Greece, Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, and

Africa, none of the great nations of antiquity has left fewer material

traces than this of its industrial and artistic life. In Syria, Cyprus,

Malta, and Carthage we have great trouble in finding vestiges of the

structures raised by the Phœnician architects, or statues or

ornaments which can be attributed to the craftsmen of this nation: the

historian of art is obliged to glean in any direction that he can the

poor waifs and strays which he considers, in spite of himself, as

extremely precious, but which he would often disdain if they came from

Assyria or Egypt. Cyprus, partly inhabited by a Hellenic population and

thrown by nature like a bridge between Asia and Greece, scarcely forms

an exception to this rule, although it offers by itself alone a larger

material for oriental archæology than all the other Phœnician

countries put together.

§ I. TEMPLES.

Before the introduction of Egyptian and Assyrian influence into Syria,

the Semitic and Canaanitish races of this country held the high places

(_bâmoth_) in veneration. On the highest summit of the mountains, in

spots which recalled ancient memories, on peaks that had been struck by

lightning, stone altars were raised and victims were immolated upon

them; the surrounding forest became a sacred grove. In the same way our

Celtic ancestors erected their dolmens.

Soon, under Egyptian influence, the Phœnicians began to construct

temples. The _maabed_ (temple) of Amrith[90] is still an Egyptian temple

on a small scale; as in the latter, there is a _cella_ or tabernacle of

stone, within which the divine image was contained. It is composed of

slabs erected on three sides. One side remained open, and was only

closed by a curtain. The monolithic slab of the roof is adorned on its

four edges with a light border with mouldings, and projects like eaves

above the door; in the interior it is cut in a semicircular form, so

that it presents the appearance of a shallow vault. The rock which forms

the base has been isolated from the mountain by sapping, and thus the

chapel, including this natural pedestal, reaches 22 feet in height. At

the edge of the surrounding court were certain structures, doubtless a

colonnade bordering the sacred enclosure; but this has disappeared.

The _maabed_ of Amrith is the most important remaining representative of

the temples of Phœnicia. At Ain el-Hayât, however, two shrines have

been discovered similar to that of Amrith; one (fig. 188) tolerably well

preserved, consists of a monolithic _cella_, resting on a substructure

of large blocks; the whole is 17½ ft. high. Above the door a row of

Egyptian uræi is seen; the ceiling within is perceptibly cut into the

form of a vault on which two pairs of wings, surrounding the Egyptian

solar disk, are sculptured in relief.

[Illustration: Fig. 188.--Shrine at Ain el-Hayât (Renan, _Mission de

Phénicie_).]

The famous temples of Melkarth at Tyre, and of Astarte at Sidon and at

Gebal (Byblos), which excited the admiration of ancient travellers, are

no longer known except in memory. The _maabed_ of Amrith alone gives us

some idea of their architectural arrangement; they consisted of courts,

in the centre of which rose the shrine of the deity built upon a

platform. The Phœnician and Canaanitish temple showed therefore a

strong resemblance to the temple of Jerusalem and also to the great

mosque of Mecca,--the only monument which perpetuates this architectural

type among us.

[Illustration: Fig. 189.--Coin of Paphos]

Nothing but a few fragments is now left of the temples built by the

Phœnicians in Cyprus. The great prosperity of this island under the

Romans and in the middle ages is the direct cause of the destruction of

the monuments of an earlier age. The superb cathedrals of Famagusta and

Nicosia, the fine churches built under the Lusignan dynasty, the

formidable ramparts constructed by the Venetians, rose at the expense of

ancient buildings, the materials of which were turned to profit as

stone-quarries. The celebrated sanctuary of Astarte at Paphos, for

instance, is only known to us by the conventional representation of it

upon coins belonging to the Roman period. We are able to distinguish in

this figure a court surrounded by a balustrade, and beyond the court a

structure which reminds us of the pylons of Egyptian temples: it is a

gigantic gate between two towers, provided with a large aperture through

which we perceive the sacred stone, flanked by two candelabra; above

hover the star and crescent. The roof, on which doves are resting, was

supported by columns forming a portico. Tacitus, who relates the visit

of Titus to the temple of Paphos, says that the goddess was represented

in it under “the form of a circular block, rising in the form of a cone,

gradually diminishing from the base to the summit.” This description

corresponds with the stone which the medals show us. According to the

excavations carried on by P. di Cesnola on the site of the temple, the

building was almost 220 ft. long by 164 ft. broad; the peribolus

measured 688 ft. by 540 ft.; the principal gate, perhaps that which

figures on the coin, had an aperture more than 16 ft. broad.

The temple of Golgoi (Athieno), the ruins of which were disinterred by

Cesnola, was a rectangular building constructed of bricks dried in the

sun; the substructure alone was of stone. On the north and on the east

were doors with wooden frames. Within, wooden pillars, surmounted by

stone capitals, supported the roof, formed of pieces of wood placed

close together, on which mats and reeds were arranged with a thick layer

of beaten earth. The exterior of the temple, coated with white

rough-cast, must have been of a most modest appearance. The interior, on

the contrary, was laden with the richest ornaments. In the middle of the

enclosure a tall cone of grey stone was found, a yard high, which must

have been the sacred stone of the goddess, and reminds us of the image

at Paphos described by Tacitus. Round the mystic cone, a whole

population of stone statues painted in brilliant colours, set in a line

along the walls or ranged in files in the centre of the building,

formed, as at Tello, the dumb train of worshippers of the goddess.

Votive offerings were hung on the walls above a row of bas-reliefs,

analogous to those of the Assyrian palaces. Stone lamps in the form of

shrines, fastened to the walls, lighted up this curious scene.

In the temple of Curium, Cesnola ascertained the existence of a crypt to

which a staircase gave access; it was composed of four subterranean

chambers cut in the form of apses in the rock and communicating with one

another by doors and a passage. These chambers are about 22½ ft. long on

each side, and 13 ft. high; it was here that the famous treasure of

Curium was found, consisting of the plate of the temple, and of votive

offerings made to the deity.

The recent excavations which we have shortly described, though they have

scarcely brought more than substructures to light, yet enable us to

describe the Cypriote temples with some exactness. While those of

Phœnicia are built on heights, reminding us of the primitive

high-places, the sanctuaries of Cyprus are generally in the plain, in

the midst of fertile fields, like the temples of Egypt. The shrine of

the deity was under the open sky like the Greek temples; around, and at

a greater or less distance, rose a gallery covered with a roof supported

within by colonnades forming a portico, and without resting upon the

wall of enclosure.

A Phœnician inscription of the fourth century before Christ relates

the erection of several temples to various deities, notably to the god

Sadambaal and to the goddess Astarte in the island of Gaulos (Gozo). The

remains of these sanctuaries are still in existence: they are called the

_Giganteja_, or “Giant’s dwelling,” and consist of two neighbouring

enclosures not communicating with one another. Constructed of irregular

masonry, formed of enormous blocks, they are parallel, and their gates

open on the same façade; though one is larger than the other they both

follow the same interior arrangement. Each is composed of two oval or

elliptical chambers next to one another, and communicating by a narrow

passage; the farther chamber contains also a semicircular apse. The

great temple is 119 feet long from the entrance to the bottom of the

apse; its greatest breadth is 75 feet. The area is uncovered; in one of

these enclosures a conical stone has been discovered analogous to those

in the temples of Phœnicia and Cyprus.

[Illustration: Fig. 190.--Plan of the Giganteja. (_Nouv. Annales de

l’Institut arch. de Rome_, 1832, pl. ii.)]

At Malta, ruins of temples have been discovered constructed on the same

principles as the Giganteja of Gozo. The _Hagiar Kim_, “stones of

adoration,” near the village of Casat Crendi, presents identical

architectural features, with the enormous blocks of its irregular

masonry. The plan, however, is a little more complicated: it is a series

of seven ellipsoid chambers built next to one another.

Not a single stone is left above ground of the temples raised by the

Phœnicians in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain,

[Illustration: Fig. 191.--Roman wall at Byrsa (Boulé, _Fouilles à

Carthage_).]

and even Carthage, The famous sanctuary of Astarte, which stood on the

scarped peak which overlooks Eryx, in Sicily, has perished; so has the

temple of Baal-Hammon at Marsala (Lilybæum) and the Sardo-Phœnician

sanctuaries of Baal-Samaim, Astarte, Eshmun, and Baal-Hammon indicated

by the Punic inscriptions discovered at Sulci. The temple of Melkarth,

at Gades, so much resorted to in the time of Strabo has left no traces.

It is in vain that the name of the powerful city of Carthage and of the

illustrious men whom she brought forth excite our enthusiastic

curiosity; to no purpose has the site upon which she was built become

French soil: the Romans respected nothing in the city of their most

formidable enemies. The destruction which followed Scipio’s conquest, in

the year 146 before our era, was systematic, and extended to the very

foundation of the walls. What did escape was altered and transformed for

the profit of the Roman colony which rose upon the Punic ruins, and

which was itself upon two occasions the object of a savage demolition.

There is, therefore, nothing Phœnician to be expected from the

archæological excavations at Carthage from the architectural point of

view; except mutilated inscriptions, almost all that is discovered is

Roman, Christian, or Byzantine. The Chapel of Saint Louis, near which

Boulé undertook his excavations, stands on the site of the famous temple

of Eshmun in the middle of the acropolis of Byrsa; on the neighbouring

hill was the temple of Tanit, whom the Romans called _Virgo

cœlestis_; between Byrsa and the harbour, beside the forum, in the

neighbourhood of which I carried on some excavations with M.S. Reinach

in 1884, rose the temple of Baal-Hammon. To these topographical

indications the memorials of the sanctuaries of Hannibal’s city are

limited.

§ II. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE.

If hardly anything is left of the Phœnician temples on all the shores

of the Mediterranean, it must be admitted that the state of the case is

almost the same with regard to civil monuments. The position of the

formidable ramparts of Tyre, which held conquerors of cities like

Sargon, Nebuchadnezzar, and Alexander so long in check, can with

difficulty be recognised at a single point: it is probably marked by a

submarine wall of enormous blocks, bonded with a concrete in which lime

is mixed with crushed bricks; these walls, according to Arrian, were 147

ft. high.

The enclosure of Banias (Balaneum), between Tortosa and Latakieh, is

still partly standing; but is it of Phœnician or of Pelasgic origin?

It extends to a length of about 1,970 ft.; the wall, pierced by three

gates, from 26 ft. to 32½ ft. broad, is built of blocks of grey

limestone of irregular form, which are neither trimmed nor cemented. It

is from 16 ft. to 26 ft. thick, and, in places, is still as much as 32½

ft. high. Broken lines, recesses and projections seem to announce the

approaching appearance of bastions and towers in the art of

fortification. The Pelasgic walls of Eubœa, Tiryns and Sipylus

present analogous features.

What remains of the substructures of the walls of Aradus, Berytus, and

Sidon, indicates the employment of large and fine blocks irregularly

laid. In the Carthaginian ramparts of Eryx, in Sicily, the stones bear

Phœnician letters which acted as position marks for the masons, but

this fortified enclosure does not date from an earlier period than the

fourth century, and the Punic architects must have imitated their

neighbours the Greeks. The walls of Carthage, which roused the

astonishment of the ancients, were from six to seven leagues in

circumference; they consisted, at least at certain points, of three

concentric walls, arranged in steps in consequence of the declivity of

the ground. Nothing is left of them except a sort of talus at intervals,

which serves as the boundary of cultivated fields. Constructed of hewn

stone, they were, according to the statements of ancient writers, 77 ft.

high and 34 ft. thick; the towers were still higher and stronger.

Since temples and ramparts have always been constructed in the most

solid form, and that most capable of resisting the attacks of time and

of men, if very little of these is left there is a much stronger reason

why hardly anything should remain of civil monuments and private houses.

In the soft limestone of the Phœnician coast the primitive

inhabitants hewed out their dwellings like Troglodytes. In later times,

by the aid of civilisation, the tombs alone were opened in the sides of

the mountains, and the living cut out enormous blocks of stone with

their picks, in which they hewed doors and chambers. At Amrith there is

a monolithic house cut in this fashion, which M. Renan considers as the

type of the genus. It is 98 ft. square and 71 ft. high; the walls are 2

ft. 7 in. thick; in the interior three chambers are divided by thin

partitions contrived during the hollowing of the rock. Sometimes only

the lower part of the walls have been hewn in the rock, which thus only

forms a monolithic plinth one or several yards high, and completed to

the roof by light masonry.

At Cyprus traces of structures which could be attributed to the period

of Phœnician dominion are sought in vain. The only monuments which

give some idea of the civil architecture of this famous island are

models of houses in terra-cotta, found at Dali and preserved at the

Louvre (7¾ in. high). The most remarkable of these little buildings has

a door guarded by a sphinx. At the two windows appear the heads of

women; on each side of the door, columns with capitals in the form of

lotus-flowers support a projecting roof. But of what architectural value

can such a toy, modelled in so coarse a manner, be?

[Illustration: Fig. 192.--Terra-cotta house. (Louvre.)]

The poverty of monuments is even more absolute in the case of Carthage

and the western basin of the Mediterranean. What travellers who visit

the site of the old city admire above everything are the unheard-of

efforts made by the ancients to catch the water from the sky and store

it in vast covered basins, or else to bring water from springs at great

distances. Nowhere throughout the East, where there has always been the

greatest anxiety to provide water--not at Jerusalem, where the Siloam

aqueduct was tunnelled, nor at Tyre, where the aqueduct was dug which

brought the waters of Ras el-Ain into the city--are such grand traces

left of the works undertaken with this useful object. Only the gigantic

viaduct which goes for several leagues to bring the waters of Mount

Zaghouan to Carthage, does not date, as it is at the present day, from

an earlier period than the reign of Hadrian; and the same must be said

of those immense vaulted cisterns, near Byrsa, in which a whole Arab

village lodges at the present day, and in which tourists take drives: it

has never been possible to say exactly how much is anterior to the

period at which the Roman colony was founded. The Carthaginians, two

hundred years before our era, certainly knew the vault and the dome, the

natural and primordial elements of oriental architecture, as well as the

Romans. The walls, vaults, and domes of the cisterns of Carthage are of

a mediocre stone, furnished by the quarries of Zaghouan: small irregular

blocks are buried in a very thick mortar of lime, so excellent that it

unites with the stone and gives to the whole structure the homogeneous

character of one single immense block. The Byzantine ruins which cover

the plain of Carthage are built with equally bad materials and an

equally good cement.

We must now enquire whether any trace remains of the constructions which

the Phœnicians must have

[Illustration: Fig. 193.--Plan of the harbours at Carthage (after Daux,

_Emporia phéniciens_).]

undertaken in order to establish or maintain those ports on the

Mediterranean coasts in which their vessels found a sure refuge. These

works must have shown the most characteristic side of the art of

building among this nation of merchants. However, they have perished

almost entirely like the rest, or else they are still buried under the

sand. Tyre and Sidon had two harbours, of which only the site is now to

be distinguished. The two harbours at Carthage, the commercial harbour

and the cothon or military harbour, are still there, but three-quarters

of them are covered with sand, and they no longer contain more than a

pool of shallow water. Lengthy and costly excavations, of which those

undertaken at Utica may give some idea, could alone tell us what they

formerly were. At present we can only confirm the exactness of Appian’s

description when he says: “The harbours of Carthage were constructed in

such a way that ships passed from one into the other; on the side of the

sea they had only one entrance, 70 ft. broad, which was closed by iron

chains. The first harbour, intended for merchant vessels, was furnished

with numerous and various mooring-cables. In the middle of the second

there was an island; round this island, as on all the edges of the

basin, were large quays. The quays presented a series of docks which

could contain a hundred and twenty vessels. Above the docks, storehouses

had been constructed for the rigging. Before each dock rose two columns

of the Ionic order, which gave to the circuit of the harbour and the

island the appearance of a portico. In the island a pavilion had been

built for the admiral, from which trumpet-signals sounded, and orders

were transmitted by the herald, and in which the admiral kept his

look-out. The island was situated near the mouth; its surface had a

perceptible elevation above the plane of the water, so that the admiral

might see all that passed on the sea without those who were coming from

the open being able to distinguish what was being done within the

harbour. Even the merchants who found shelter in the first basin could

not see the arsenals in the second; a double wall separated them from

it, and a special entrance gave them admission into the town without

having to pass through the military harbour.” Go at the present day to

Carthage, and you will observe with astonishment the modest extent of

these two reservoirs, which formed the harbour of the great African

city. They are parallel to the sea, from which a narrow strip of land

separates them; the admiral’s island is still in the centre of the

cothon, which is circular in form, and communicates by a narrow canal

with the merchant harbour; the latter forms a large rectangle, and opens

into the Mediterranean by a mouth a few yards wide. The Carthaginian

vessels were scarcely larger than our fishing-smacks. The jetty which

sheltered them on their entrance into the harbour of Carthage has left a

trace marked by large blocks, which at certain points reach the level

of the sea. The two harbours of Utica were not more spacious: one was

only 328 ft. by 108 ft., the other 780 ft. by 327 ft.

[Illustration: Fig. 194.--Jetty of Thapsus. (Restoration by Daux,

_Emporia phéniciens_.)]

Of all the Phœnician towns, that which has preserved the most

remarkable remains of its ancient jetty is Thapsus (Dimas), on the

eastern coast of Tunis. The mole which, though dilapidated, still rises

8 ft. above the waves, is 850 ft. long, and its breadth is 35 ft. The

peculiarity of its construction is that it is pierced by a series of

small passages, arranged in three rows: their object was to deaden the

violence of the shock of the waves, by allowing them to pass through the

openings. Here again it is uncertain whether we are looking at a work

exclusively Phœnician, Roman, or Byzantine.

§ III. TOMBS.

[Illustration: Fig. 195.--Tomb at Amrith. Plan (after Renan).]

[Illustration: Fig. 196.--Tomb at Amrith. Section (after Renan).]

The most important of the monuments discovered in Phœnicia are the

tombs. Nearly all are hewn in the rock, and are, as in Judæa and Arabia,

great caves in which the sarcophagi of an entire family were deposited.

The necropolis of Marath (Amrith), explored by M. Renan, furnished

specimens of tombs which seem to be the most ancient, the most spacious,

and hewn with the greatest skill. The descent into them is by a shaft,

as in Egypt, and notches are cut in the wall of the rock into which the

hands and feet must be inserted; but in the more recent tombs a flight

of steps is substituted for the shaft. At the bottom a low door is found

on two sides, leading into a larger or smaller number of rectangular

chambers. These rooms communicate with one another by means of passages

in which a few steps are generally found, so that the most distant

chambers are at a lower level than the others. Sometimes there are even

two stories of chambers; in the partition of rock which forms the

intermediate ceiling a shaft is pierced by which they are entered from

above. The sarcophagi are ranged round the walls, or placed in niches or

cavities for coffins, hollowed out on the sides: once filled, these

niches were closed by a large slab, on which an inscription might be

written in honour of the dead. The necropoles of Tyre and Adlun present

the same types of sepulchral caves.

[Illustration: Fig. 197.--Sepulchral chamber at Amrith (after Renan).]

[Illustration: Fig. 198.--Mighzal at Amrith (Restoration by M. Renan).]

Now, may we ask, what was the outer aspect of a Phœnician necropolis

in which the tombs were thus hidden under the ground? Often, especially

when the tombs were those of rich men, a stela or cippus of small size

appeared above them, and marked the position of the cave and the opening

of the shaft. Tombstones of this kind, either monoliths or constructed

of masonry, are scattered over the plain of Amrith; they are called on

the spot _meghazil_ (in the singular, _mighzal_); one of them (fig. 198)

is described by M. Renan as “a master-piece of proportion, elegance, and

majesty”: it is 32½ ft. high, and consists of a base from which four

lions project, two cylindrical drums placed one above the other and

decorated with denticulated sculpture, and, finally, a small

hemispherical dome carved in the block.

[Illustration: Fig. 199.--The Burj el-Bezzâk. Section (after Renan).]

[Illustration: Fig. 200.--Chamber of the Burj el-Bezzâk (after Renan).]

A sepulchral monument at Amrith, the Burj el-Bezzâk, is entirely

distinguished from caves and structures of the form which we have just

described; it rises above the ground, like an ordinary house, and is

built, without mortar, of regular masonry, with blocks 16 ft. long. It

terminated formerly in a pyramidal roof, and its full height was 52½ ft.

In the interior, there are only two chambers one above the other, each

communicating with the outside by a narrow aperture. Round the walls of

these chambers there were numerous niches for coffins, separated one

from another by partitions.

[Illustration: Fig. 201.--The Burj el-Bezzâk. Restoration. (Renan,

_Mission de Phénicie_.)]

The necropolis of Sidon, which is more considerable than that of Amrith,

presents the same peculiarities: the caves are constructed in the same

manner; only at the present day no _meghazil_ are any longer to be seen

near the orifice of the shaft. In the poorest caves the corpses were

laid upon the ground or deposited in graves; in other sepulchres

cavities for coffins are hewn out all round the chambers; in the

richest, finally, the bodies were placed in sarcophagi buried in the

floor of the chamber. The hypogæa of Gebal differ from the type observed

at Sidon, Tyre, and Amrith, by the peculiarity that the descent into

them is neither by a shaft nor by a staircase; the aperture is formed in

the vertical side of the mountain, and is sometimes surmounted by a

pediment and a few decorative mouldings (fig. 203).

[Illustration: Fig. 202.--Section of a tomb at Saïda (after Renan).]

[Illustration: Fig. 203.--Entrance of a tomb at Gebal (after Renan).]

Of all the sarcophagi found in the Phœnician necropoles, perhaps not

one can be attributed to an earlier date than the reign of Cyrus. The

simplest are

[Illustration: Fig. 204.--The sarcophagus of Eshmunazar. (Louvre.)]

large monolithic troughs, provided with a convex or triangular lid. Some

of them are decorated with garlands, foliage, and chaplets; the corners

of the lid are sometimes provided with acroteria. The only ones which

have a real artistic interest are the sarcophagi in the form of human

figures, or rather of mummy-cases, the head of the dead person, and

sometimes the arms also, being carved in relief on the lid. These

sepulchral urns were coloured in imitation of the wooden sarcophagi of

the Egyptians, which they copy in their form; while the carved work of

the faces shows us that Assyrian influence was dominant in Phœnicia

long after the disappearance of Nineveh. The sarcophagi of Tabnit and

Eshmunazar, which only date from the year B.C. 350, disclose to us a

remarkable peculiarity in the means adopted by the Phœnicians,

merchants and navigators before all things, in order to furnish the

tombs of their dead with stone coffins. These peculiar monuments, of

black amphibolite, issue from the Egyptian quarries of Hammamat near

Cosseir, and they originally contained Egyptian mummies. Phœnician

sailors stole them or bought them for money; the ashes which they

contained were thrown to the four winds, the hieroglyphic inscriptions

and the Egyptian scenes, carved or painted upon the plaster which

covered the stone, were entirely or partly removed and replaced by the

epitaphs of Tabnit and Eshmunazar. A considerable number of Phœnician

sarcophagi are thus borrowed coffins, and by no means the work of

indigenous artists.

[Illustration: Fig. 205.--Sarcophagus in human form. (Louvre.)]

Sarcophagi in the form of the human figure have been discovered in

nearly all the countries in which the Phœnicians established their

factories, in Cyprus, Sicily, and Malta, and they everywhere present the

same characteristics: only the head of the dead man is in relief. At

Saïda, a sarcophagus was found in which the arms are carved beside the

body; the sleeve of the garment ends above the elbow, and the left hand

holds an alabastron. In the museum at Palermo a sarcophagus is preserved

which came from Solus, the lid of which has the form of a true reclining

statue like a mediæval tomb: it is a woman clothed in a long peplos over

a short tunic, the sleeves of which end at the shoulder; the left hand

also holds a vase for perfume.[91] Besides stone sarcophagi, leaden and

terra-cotta troughs have been found in the necropoles of the Syrian

coast, and also coffins of cedar-wood, decorated with metal ornaments,

generally bronze lions’ heads.

The sepulchral chambers of Phœnicia contain mortuary furniture not

without interest. It consists of _alabastra_ of glass, terra-cotta and

alabaster, standing against the wall; and of idols in terra-cotta,

representing Baal-Hammon sitting between two rams, the god Bes, of

Egyptian origin, the god Pygmæus, Astarte sitting or standing with a

dove in her hand, and, lastly, terra-cotta chariots holding one or two

figures, with two or four horses harnessed to them. Besides these

objects of Phœnician manufacture, amulets and statuettes, imported

from Egypt, are found. The body of the deceased was enveloped in bands;

the mouth and eyes were often covered with gold leaf, and rich men often

placed a complete mask, formed of gold leaf, in which all the features

of the face are marked: it is thus seen to what an extent Egyptian

habits were implanted in Phœnicia. Lamps, amphoræ, amulets and

ornaments are also found in the tombs of the Syrian coast. Women were

buried with their necklaces, their rings, their bracelets, their

ear-rings, their metal mirror, their pyxes for cosmetics and perfumes,

and their toilet articles. Rings, provided with engraved stones which

served as seals, are also found; nowhere, except in Cyprus, have weapons

been discovered in the tombs of this nation of merchants.

In the Cypriote necropolis at Dali (Idalion) there are often at the side

of the corpses pieces of pottery with geometrical decorations, bronze

weapons, gold ornaments, metal dishes with figures engraved on the

inner side, statuettes of Astarte, of warriors, of chariots and of

riders similar to those on the Phœnician coast.

Among the tombs at Amathus which are Phœnician and date from the

fourth century, there are some constructed of fine regular masonry, with

a door framed in a fillet, and a flat roof, or one with a double slope

like those of our houses. These tombs sometimes contain several

chambers, along the walls of which the sarcophagi were set in a row,

sometimes in the human form, sometimes with a triangular lid.

[Illustration: Fig. 206.--Tomb at Amathus (after Cesnola, _Cyprus_).]

The Phoenician tombs found in Malta, in Sicily and in Sardinia, present

the same arrangement as those on the coasts of Syria and Cyprus: the

descent into the cave is by a sunken shaft or by a flight of steps, and

the chambers resemble those that we have described. At Caralis and at

Tharras pyramidal cippi have been found _in situ_, above ground, which

marked the position of the burial-places, as we have already seen in

Phœnicia: in these tombs the furniture is imported from Egypt,

Etruria and Asia.

[Illustration: Fig. 207.--Sepulchral chamber at Amathus (after Cesnola,

_Cyprus_).]

The necropolis of Mehdia, on the eastern coast of Tunis, contains

tombs, the descent into which is by shafts as at Aradus. The tombs of

Thina (Thenæ) near Sfax, those of Carthage on the hill near the town

called Jebel Kawi, have all been violated in antiquity or by the Arabs.

Constructed on an uniform plan, they consist of a rectangular chamber,

the descent into which is by a flight of steps. All round this room, the

orifices of the coffin-niches are seen like the mouths of ovens. The

staircase may have as many as ten steps; the chamber is 6½ ft. high,

from 19½ ft. to 21 ft. long, and 9½ ft. broad. The walls are coated with

a white stucco which sometimes was adorned with figures in relief; the

fragmentary subjects which I was able to detect seemed to me to be Greek

and perhaps Roman in style.

[Illustration: Fig. 208.--Plan of a tomb at Carthage (Boulé, _Fouilles à

Carthage_).]

To sum up, the Phœnician tomb represented only two types: the erect

tomb above ground, and the subterranean tomb. The first was monolithic,

or built like a house; the second was either on a level with its

entrance in the side of the rock, or else it was reached from above by

means of a shaft or a staircase. Both contained a greater or smaller

number of chambers according to the number of corpses to be buried in

it. These bodies were, save in rare exceptions, placed in sarcophagi

sometimes deposited in cavities contrived in the wall of the chamber,

sometimes in ditches hewn out in the floor, sometimes simply deposited

along the walls. The mortuary furniture varied according to the wealth

of the families; it included, together with amulets and figures of

deities, all the toilet articles and ornaments used by the deceased

during his earthly existence.

§ IV. PHŒNICIAN SCULPTURE.

Phœnicia, it must not be forgotten, was by turns subjected to the

yoke of the Egyptians and Assyrians, who introduced into it, with their

garrisons, their art, their customs, their industries and all that

characterised the peculiar genius of their civilisation. The conquerors

were the masters of the Phœnician artists, and the few objects which

came from the hands of the latter were inspired by Egypt or Assyria; it

is only from the time of Alexander that a third element, Greek art,

begins to reveal its action in Syria.

The field of study offered by Phœnician sculpture is remarkably

limited: it consists of the bas-reliefs of certain sarcophagi, of votive

stelæ and of meagre fragments of stone statues. The sarcophagi in human

form, of which we have already spoken, though not of an earlier date

than the Hellenic epoch, show us very clearly the Egyptian and Assyrian

influences at work in Syria. If the form of the troughs is Egyptian, if

the finest of them have actually been imported from Egypt, the

sculptures with which they are decorated are altogether Assyrian. The

symmetrically undulating curls of the beard are like those of the

Ninevite colossi; only it is to be observed that the artist can handle

his chisel like a Greek. From the time of the Seleucids, the physiognomy

of these heads which stand out in high relief on the lid of the

sepulchral trough, grows more and more Hellenic, and is modified in

accordance with Greek models; so that if a chronological classification

of all these monuments is undertaken, the most ancient would be those in

which Egyptian and Assyrian influence is most marked; the most recent

are those in which the Greek style finally prevailed.

[Illustration: Fig. 209.--Phœnician slab at Amrith (after Renan).]

In the rare fragments of buildings anterior to the Macedonian epoch,

observed in Phœnicia, the elements of decorative sculpture are

borrowed from Egypt and Assyria: nowhere has an original motive of

indigenous inspiration been found. The gate of a structure described by

M. Renan at Umm el-Awamid has a lintel on which two small figures of

Egyptian appearance are sculptured in adoration before the winged disk

supported by uræi.[92] The Phœnicians imported this solar globe, even

more ancient in Egypt than in Assyria, into every coast. It is found in

Cyprus, Malta, Sardinia and Carthage, where it is carved on the votive

stelæ of Tanit and Baal-Hammon. The sphinx is also one of the principal

elements of Phœnician sculptures: not only its form, but even its

posture, is copied from the sphinxes of the Egyptian temples; it

reclines on a pedestal, and has upon its head the pshent and the uræus;

but it has more than the Pharaonic sphinx--namely, wings borrowed from

the Assyrian and Persian genii. Other fragments of architecture show us

the motives of their decoration,--rosettes, palmettes, guilloches and

denticulated designs of Assyria.

Astarte, on the stela of the king of Gebal, Jehaw-melek, has the

costume, attitude, and attributes of the Egyptian Isis, while the king,

standing before her, resembles the Ninevite monarchs in adoration before

their favourite deities, or Darius and Xerxes on the bas-reliefs of

Persepolis. A stela at Amrith represents a deity standing on a lion, an

Assyrian subject already reproduced in Hittite bas-reliefs; a still

greater similarity is seen in the lion’s cub held by the figure as by

the hero Izdubar, and the energetic modelling of his limbs bears witness

that the artist was educated at the school of Nineveh. And yet the god’s

head-dress, and the winged disk placed above his head, are Egyptian in

form.[93]

The study of sculpture in the round leads to the same conclusions. The

Phœnician _patœci_, images of the god _Pumai_ (a word from which

_Pygmy_ and _Pygmalion_ are derived), were only copies of the Egyptian

gods Bes or the embryo Ptah: this type of ugliness united to strength

was carved in wood at the bows of the ships, in order to terrify the

enemy. While statues found in Phœnicia are clothed with the Egyptian

shenti, lions forming the doorposts at Umm el-Awamid are only half

sculptured in the round: the head, fore-quarters and front paws are the

only parts carved. Nothing could more directly recall the lions of the

Assyrian palaces.

If the Chaldæans, as early as the time of Gudea, were accustomed to

erect in their temples statues of kings, of pontiffs, or even of private

individuals, whose image thus remained always present before the eyes of

the deity, the Phœnicians took care not to renounce this habit. M.

Renan relates that in an underground chamber near the maabed of Amrith a

considerable number of fragments of white limestone statues was

discovered; they were also found at Cyprus (fig. 210). These statues are

iconic in character; they are portraits of the “masters of the

sacrifices,” as the Phœnician texts call the devotees who had

themselves represented in the very act of accomplishing their vows, in

order that the deity might not forget them. The archaic statues lately

found on the Acropolis at Athens seem also to have, if not the same

iconic character, at any rate the same symbolic meaning.

[Illustration: Fig. 210.--Cypriote statue (New York Museum).]

Carthage, which was a city of warriors as well as of merchants, had

despoiled all the towns that she had conquered of their artistic wealth,

in order to adorn her temples and palaces. This systematic depredation

was so great a scandal in antiquity that when Scipio took possession of

Rome’s haughty rival, he invited the inhabitants of the Sicilian towns

to come and point out their artistic property, and resume their

ownership of it; all that was not reclaimed was carried away to Rome,

and a nation of statues was seen passing along in procession behind the

triumphal car. Besides these Græco-Roman works, the fruit of pillage,

which adorned the public places of Carthage, there were those which were

the work of the Greek artists whom Carthage was pleased to summon to her

bosom; there were also those of Carthaginian craftsmen educated at the

school of the Greeks: these last alone interest us here, and the scanty

specimens which exist of them confirm us in the opinion that the

Carthaginians were not more artistic than the Phœnicians.

[Illustration: Fig. 211.--Votive stela from Carthage. (_Corpus inscript.

Semitic_.)]

These monuments consist almost exclusively of votive stelæ anterior to

the taking of Carthage by the Romans in B.C. 146. These boundary stones,

from 11¾ in. to 19½ in. long by about 5¾ in. broad, were intended to be

fixed in the ground, and therefore the lower part is still in the rough;

the upper part, trimmed on its four sides, is particularly well smoothed

on one of its larger faces; on this side alone is found a votive

inscription addressed to the goddess Tanit, the Punic Astarte, and to

Baal-Hammon. Above the inscription various symbols are represented in

engraved lines, rarely in relief. The stela terminates in an imitation

of a gabled roof, often provided with two acroteria. The decoration of

these Punic stelæ is, however, still Greek, as is proved by the design

of the acroteria, ovals, triglyphs, volutes, pediments, and even Ionic

columns which figure in it. The symbols, carved in the most barbarous

fashion by workmen who could not claim the title of artists, are

borrowed from the Punic religion and from the fauna and flora of Africa.

The commonest is the open hand, raised towards the sky and generally set

at the point of the gable; the Arab still paints it in black on the

white lime with which he plasters his house: it averts the evil eye. We

find also the Egyptian uræus; the solar disk with the crescent, a symbol

of Tanit; the ram, the symbol of Baal-Hammon; the caduceus, the horse,

the elephant, the bull, the rabbit, fish, the palm, the rudder, the

anchor, the hatchet, the lotus-flower, vases of various shapes, ships

and fruit. We also meet with the Divine Mother holding her child in her

arms; a young child standing or crouching with an apple in its hand; or

a funeral banquet, as on Greek stelæ.

[Illustration: Fig. 212.--Stela from Lilybæum. (_Corpus inscript.

Semit._)]

The great female deity of the Carthaginian Pantheon, Tanit, is found not

only under the form of a human figure, but very often under that of a

symbol difficult to describe. It is a sort of triangular mannikin (fig.

212), the traditional and degenerate representation of a sacred stone;

this triangle is furnished with protuberances in its upper part, and

resembles to some extent a man clothed in a long robe, who straddles his

legs and raises his outstretched arms to heaven: this sacred cone with

arms corresponds well enough to the description by Tacitus of the

Paphian Aphrodite. The supreme Trinity, consisting of Baal-Hammon, Tanit

and Eshmun, is also frequently symbolised by three cippi of unequal

height, placed side by side, and joined on a common base. This symbol is

also represented on the stelæ at Hadrumetum and Lilybæum; the cippi are

broader at the base than at the summit, and the middle one is surmounted

by the solar disk and the reversed crescent. Sometimes a fire-altar

served by a pontiff burns at the feet of this symbolical figure (fig.

212).

[Illustration: Fig. 213.--Stela of Hadrumetum. (_Gazette arch._, 1884,

pl. vii.)]

One of the most interesting Punic stelæ that can be cited was found at

Hadrumetum (fig. 213). An image of two columns is seen upon it,

supporting a complicated entablature. The base of the columns is very

elegant, and resembles a large vase from which acanthus leaves emerge;

from the middle of this tuft of leaves a fluted stem rises, the upper

part of which is fashioned like a woman’s bust. This woman is seen in

full face, and holds her hands clasped upon her breast, which is also

adorned with the round disk and the crescent; she has a similar disk

upon her head. In the entablature a row of lotus-flowers, a winged disk

supported by two uræi, and a row of uræi seen in full face and with

heads erect are distinguished; everything in this monument is oriental,

or, rather, Egyptian. Even in Sardinia and the Balearic Islands the

votive stelæ of Tanit and Baal-Hammon enable us to follow the track of

the preponderating influence of Egyptian art in Carthaginian symbolism.

§ V. CYPRIOTE SCULPTURE.

If the very vestiges of Cypriote architecture have disappeared, it is

not so with the works of the sculptor. The quarter of a century which

has just passed has seen disinterred as if by enchantment from the

bowels of the great eastern island, and then transported into the chief

museums of Constantinople, Paris, London, Berlin, and especially New

York, hundreds of stone statues and thousands of terra-cotta figurines

of strange appearance, with picturesque head-dresses and with

foolishly-smiling visages, which form a group apart in the history of

art, since they are neither purely Asiatic nor purely Greek. Save in

rare exceptions, the monuments of Cypriote sculpture were not imported

from abroad; they are the work of that mixed race of Greeks and

Asiatics, which, by means of the Phœnician ships, was in constant

relation with Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor.

The productions of Cypriote sculpture which seem to be the most ancient

remind us of the figures in the Assyrian bas-reliefs; the costume is

the same: a conical cap, a curled beard, a long tunic, and a short cloak

passed over the shoulder. However, there are essential differences: the

muscles are far from being expressed with the same vigour; no figure

wears that long beard like a regular screw, which is so characteristic

of Ninevite sculpture. We feel that the Cypriote artist works at a

distance from a model which he only sees with the eye of memory, or else

that he imitates at second-hand, and is compelled to interpret a

Phœnician work which is itself only an interpretation of an Assyrian

prototype. The most ancient statues discovered in the temple of Golgoi

may date back from the epoch at which the Assyrian conqueror Sargon

erected at Citium (Larnaca) the triumphant stela on which he relates

that his vessels have vanquished Cyprus. They are of all sizes. There is

a colossal head 2 ft. 9½ in. high (fig. 214). It wears a conical helmet;

the eyes are prominent, the nose is straight and regular, the mouth

small but full-lipped, the cheek-bones projecting; the beard is composed

of long parallel tresses slightly curled at the end. This fine head,

more than half oriental, may be considered as the type of its kind.

[Illustration: Fig. 214.--Colossal head from Athieno. (New York

Museum.)]

After the overthrow of the Sargonid dynasty, Cyprus was given up to

Egyptian influence, which reigned there during the period which extends

from the fall of Nineveh, at the end of the seventh century B.C., to the

Achæmenid dynasty. But here again the imitation is only partial, and not

as servile as in Phœnicia. We find Egyptian fashion modified in

Cyprus by the taste of a foreign race. The figures are half-nude instead

of being entirely draped; they have no garment except the shenti, tied

round the waist and adorned with uræi; the bust is bare; the arms are

bare, but adorned with bracelets and held close to the body; the

headdress is the Egyptian _pshent_ scarcely modified; the hair, cut

straight and falling in compact masses behind the beardless head,

reminds us of the _Klaft_.[94]

During the same period, but especially under the Persian dominion, we

witness the interpenetration of the two influences--that of Egypt and

that of Assyria--in Cypriote art: it is the marriage of the two styles,

the union of the two streams. In the statues at Athieno, for instance,

the head is Assyrian in the features of the face, the curled beard and

the headdress formed of a peaked cap, but all the rest is Egyptian: the

nude torso, the necklace, the shenti round the waist quaintly loaded

with ornaments, the symbolical meaning of which the artist no longer

understands. A striking example of this hybrid style is the famous

colossus of Amathus, which is 13 ft. 11½ in. high and 6½ ft. broad

across the shoulders. He is a Hercules who offers a mixture of the

athletic proportions of the Assyrian Izdubar, with the type of ugliness

symbolized in the god Bes. He has short horns, a low forehead, large

ears; his hair and beard are treated in the Assyrian manner; he has a

lion’s skin round his waist; in his two powerful hands, pressed against

his breast, he holds the hind paws of a lioness. Is he not the giant

Izdubar, whom Assyrian artists so often took pleasure in representing?

On the other hand, his tattooed arms, his hairy skin, his lion’s skin

fastened round his body, his bestial and Silenus-like face, his legs

like the paws of a wild beast, are all copied from those figures of the

god Bes, which the excavations in the Nile valley bring to light by

hundreds. At the same time the artist handles his chisel as a Greek

might. The limbs are plump and rounded: no more of those exaggerated

muscles which characterise Assyrian art; nothing Eastern in the

insignificant features of the face. We have already, in certain points,

the Hellenic Heracles, with whom the Cypriote god is soon to be

confounded.

[Illustration: Fig. 215.--The colossus of Amathus. (_Gazette arch._,

1879, pl. xxi.)]

In fact, the third element which comes into Cypriote sculpture is the

Greek element, with all its

[Illustration: Fig. 216.--The priest with the dove. (New York Museum.)]

methods, as the colonies on the coast of Asia Minor understood them as

early as the sixth century. In the year B.C. 500 Cyprus made an alliance

with the cities of Ionia; and Cimon’s expedition in B.C. 450 determined

the definite preponderance of Hellenic civilisation in that island. The

statues in which Greek inspiration is recognised have something original

which distinguished them at first sight (fig. 210). The physiognomy

recalls that forced smile which has been called the _Æginetan smile_;

the heads are freed from those conical head-dresses so dear to oriental

art, which Greek art repudiated in order to replace them by a diadem or

a high crown; the hair is no longer in ringlets and scarcely forms a row

of flat curls to frame the forehead; the play of the drapery is quite

different from that which comes from Nineveh, and reveals a good taste

which is quite charming. In short, the Cypriote monuments, which

correspond to this description, only form a branch of Greek archaic art,

and we must no longer treat of them in a book devoted to the East. Let

us only cite, as an example, the famous statue of the priest with the

dove, which seems to date from the Græco-Persian period. It is a

colossal statue 8 ft. high, representing a man holding in his hands a

cup and a pigeon. His head-dress consists of a hemispherical cap which

terminates in the head of an animal; three tresses of hair, a

characteristic sign of Greek archaism, fall symmetrically from the back

of his head on the front of each shoulder. The rows of curls in the

beard which covers his mouth and chin are visibly imitated from the

Assyrian fashion of dressing the hair. The fringes and draperies of the

garment still remind us, indeed, as well as the square form of the

shoulders and breast, of the statues of Tello; but how much more ample

and harmoniously arranged they are! We have here Greek taste still

imprisoned in the hieratic formula bequeathed to it by the East.

[Illustration: Fig. 217.--Bas-relief of Heracles and Eurytion.

(_Colonna-Ceccaldi, Monum. antiques de Cypre_, pl. v.)]

To the same Græcizing art belong all those iconic statues from the

temples of Golgoi and Amathus, which, instead of the peaked cap or of

the pshent, wear on their heads garlands of foliage or of narcissus,

more or less high and more or less rich, but infinite in their variety.

Like the statues found in Phœnicia to which we alluded above, they

are portraits of priests, priestesses, or other personages who offer to

the god for perpetuity the object which they hold in their hand: a

flower, a fruit, a branch, a patera, a pyx, an alabastron, a bull’s head

or a pigeon.

Few bas-reliefs have been noticed in Cyprus. However, a colossal statue

of Heracles in the Græcizing style, found at Golgoi, had a pedestal

decorated with a most remarkable bas-relief, reminding us of those in

the Ninevite palaces. The ground is painted red to make the figures

stand out; the relief is low and flat, the anatomical details of the

figures are carefully studied and exaggerated in the Assyrian manner.

The scene represents Heracles driving away the herds of Geryon, a

subject which seems to be of Tyrian origin. Heracles, nude, with the

lion’s skin on his back, was probably holding his bow, which has

disappeared as well as his head; like the giant Izdubar, he is of

colossal stature; before him is the dog Orthros, with three heads,

already pierced by an arrow shot at him by Heracles; Eurytion flees with

his herds; his beard and hair are treated in the Assyrian manner. He

carries a whole tree, with which he was no doubt lashing his oxen; this

tree is treated like those that figure on the walls of Nineveh.

[Illustration: Fig. 218.--Sarcophagus from Amathus. (New York Museum.)]

Certain Cypriote sarcophagi are also decorated with Greek subjects,

treated in the oriental manner: the birth of Chrysaor, who issues from

the neck of Medusa, for instance, is seen; banqueting scenes and bull or

boar hunts are found. A picture represented on the principal side of a

sarcophagus from Amathus (fig. 218) is copied in servile fashion from

the sculptures of Assyria and Egypt; there are rows of pearls,

lotus-flowers and daisies; a climbing plant is even to be remarked here

like the sacred tree on the Ninevite bas-reliefs. One of the figures

holds the Asiatic umbrella, and the tassels of the horses are Assyrian.

However, the figures of the cortège are Greek in style, attitude and

costume. On the smaller sides are two oriental subjects: at one end four

figures of Astarte in full face, of the type reproduced in profusion in

Chaldæa and Phœnicia; at the other four figures of the god Pygmæus,

who is made up, as we have seen, of Bes and Izdubar together.

In two words, Cypriote sculpture, fruitful as it is, lacks variety, like

Egyptian sculpture and Assyrian sculpture, its two mistresses. It lives

only by borrowing, and has invented nothing. What characterises the

stone statues which it produced is immobility and hieratic stiffness,

together with finish in the details and decoration. They have no

features which proceed from a realistic study of nature. It has been

remarked that these statues, intended to be set in rows along the inner

walls of the temples, are scarcely at all modelled behind, and are

flattened as if they had been carved out of slabs of insufficient

thickness; moreover, though broad in the chest, they are narrow in the

hips and feet; the legs are pressed closely together, so that they have

to some degree the appearance of reversed cones. Cypriote art has no

originality except in the Hellenic element, which it assimilates; the

Cypriote artist is a Greek who has served his apprenticeship among the

Orientals.

§ VI. PHŒNICIAN AND CYPRIOTE CERAMICS.

The triple influence that we have remarked in Phœnician and Cypriote

sculpture is observed no less clearly in pottery. In the seventh century

Assyria carried on the artistic education of Phœnicia; then it was

Egypt till the end of the sixth; finally Greece enters into the lists in

her turn, bringing her peculiar genius which, especially in Cyprus,

joins hands with its two elder brothers. The Phœnicians, then, learnt

first of all from the Assyrians and Egyptians how to model clay, and to

fashion of it figures and vases of every form.

[Illustration: Fig. 219.--Phœnician chariot in terra-cotta.

(Louvre.)]

In the list of terra-cottas from Phœnicia which depend upon Ninevite

art, and which were found at Amrith (Marathus), chariots holding four

warriors and drawn by two or four horses hold the first rank. The

figures, generally bearded, and wearing the conical cap, present in

their features the purest Semitic type, like certain Babylonian

terra-cottas; the harness of the horses shows the minute detail of the

Ninevite equipages. Besides these chariots, figurines have been obtained

from the Phœnician necropoles, which represent Astarte, nude,

standing upright, carrying her hand to her breast, or else sitting and

clothed in a long robe down to her feet without folds; she often wears

a high calathos of Asiatic origin, which has been observed on the head

of captives in the Assyrian bas-reliefs.

[Illustration: Fig. 220.--Pygmy in terra-cotta. (Louvre.)]

We know that ceramics was never highly developed in Assyria and Chaldæa;

accordingly, as soon as Egyptian influence could show itself in the

political sphere in Phœnicia, the pseudo-Egyptian style was not slow

to replace the pseudo-Assyrian style in ceramics. The figurines of the

new school, fashioned like the preceding ones in orange-red clay,

represent women standing or sitting, sometimes suckling a child, holding

a fan, a pigeon, or the lunar disk. The Phœnicians even learned from

the Egyptians to coat their statuettes with green or blue enamel,

analogous to that which is called Egyptian faïence, so that it is

sometimes difficult to say whether the enamelled statuettes found in the

tombs of Phœnicia are imported from Egypt or are works of native

industry. In their course of servile imitation Phœnician craftsmen

have reproduced even the hieroglyphic characters, which they distorted

because they did not understand the sense of them.

[Illustration: Fig. 221.--Pygmy in terra-cotta. (Louvre.)]

The type most frequently copied by the Phœnicians is the grotesque

god Bes or the embryo god Ptah, whom they turned into the god Pygmæus,

called Patæcus by Herodotus. This large-headed and bandy-legged dwarf,

of repulsive obesity, the type of deformity and ugliness, is met with

everywhere in Phœnician pottery.

[Illustration: Fig. 222.--Terra-cotta head from sarcophagus. (Louvre.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 223.--Astarte. Phœnician terra-cotta. (Louvre.)]

The pseudo-Hellenic or Græcizing style has furnished numerous

terra-cotta monuments in Phœnicia, as is attested by the large head

found in the necropolis of Amrith, which is nothing less than part of

the lid of a sarcophagus in human form. The head is vulgar, and has

neither an Egyptian nor an Assyrian appearance; it was inspired by Greek

art, but to some extent followed oriental tradition. Among the

Phœnician statuettes which may be referred to Greek archaic art there

are figurines of Aphrodite standing upright, clothed in a long tunic,

the folds of which the goddess grasps in one hand, while she holds a

pigeon in the other. Tresses of hair fall over the breast on each side

of the head. On other occasions the costume of these women is composed

of a long robe and a mantle fastened by a brooch on the shoulder; they

hold their arms close to the sides of the body.

[Illustration: Fig. 224.--Terra-cotta from Cyprus. (Louvre.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 225.--Cypriote terra-cotta. (Louvre.)]

The clay of Cyprus lends itself better than that of Phœnicia to

moulding and to baking, therefore in very early times it could be

utilised for this purpose; and a considerable number of its productions

take us back to a very primitive stage of art. The most ancient of the

Cypriote figurines follow oriental and Asiatic traditions. They

represent Astarte, the goddess of fecundity; they are modelled with the

thumb, with lines traced with a point, and bands of black or red for all

their ornament. “The head is almost formless,” says M. Perrot;[95] “a

curved, beak-like nose, a pair of large round eyes, and monstrous ears

may be distinguished, each of the latter pierced with two holes at the

place of attachment of the heavy elaborate earrings worn by Phœnician

and Babylonian women. The arms are bent round horizontally, so that the

hands lie either on the chest or the stomach.... The extreme width of

the hips seems to give a promise of maternity. The scratches on the clay

may be meant to represent a loin-cloth. The legs are held tightly

closed; they taper rapidly downwards, and end in feet scarcely large

enough to give stability.” To the same period belong those vases in the

form of animals or human heads, those strange statuettes of

foot-soldiers, of riders covered with speckled armour, and of

war-chariots, which one might suppose to be modelled by children.

Cypriote figurines are so numerous, however, that they can be arranged

in a scale so as to mark without gaps the gradual stages in the progress

of the art.

[Illustration: Fig. 226.--Cypriote terra-cotta. (Louvre.)]

In Cyprus the grotesque god Pygmæus, whom we noticed in Phœnicia, is

often met with, and he offers the same characteristics here as on the

coast. We have always the mixture of the pseudo-Egyptian and

pseudo-Assyrian styles combined in different degrees with the archaic

Greek style. We will cite, following M. Heuzey, some statuettes of women

with their hair dressed in Egyptian fashion, and marked by the gesture

of the divine mother, holding her hand to her breast, and by the gesture

of the goddess of generation (fig. 227); this last, which reminds us of

the Aphrodite of Cnidos, is not found in purely oriental art. Here we

catch in the very act the fusion of Asiatic traditions with Hellenic

ideas. Such was the skill of Cypriote artists in pottery that they

manufactured terra-cotta statues of life-size; in this case they have

all the characteristics that we noticed in statuary.

[Illustration: Fig. 227.--Cypriote terra-cotta. (Louvre.)]

Phœnician vessels carried far away into the whole basin of the

Mediterranean the products of Phœnician, Rhodian, and Cypriote

pottery. At Corinth, for instance, a small aryballus in the form of a

helmeted head, of pseudo-Egyptian style and of Phœnician

workmanship, was found. The helmet covers the whole head, except the

eyes, nose, and mouth. There is an Egyptian cartouche containing the

name of the king Uahabra (Apries), B.C. 599--569.

[Illustration: Fig. 228.--Mask from Carthage. (Louvre.)]

On the site of Carthage, a large mask in terra-cotta coloured

reddish-brown was disinterred, which recalls at once the mask of Amrith

and the lids of the Egyptian sarcophagi in human form (fig. 228). The

hair is dressed in Egyptian fashion, the ears pierced to receive rings,

and the cheeks marked with a groove at the natural limit of the beard.

The modelling alone is rather Assyrian, and shows signs of Asiatic

softness. In the excavations near the harbours I obtained one of the

most remarkable examples of Punic pottery that can be cited (fig. 229).

The cheerful smile of this head of Astarte gives it a strong family

likeness to the head of Tanit on Carthaginian coins, and even to the

archaic heads of Athena on the most ancient tetradrachms of Athens.

[Illustration: Fig. 229.--Terra-cotta mask from Carthage. (_Cabinet des

Médailles._)]

The terra-cottas found at Tharras and at Sulci in Sardinia, present the

same types and the same hybrid character as those of all Phœnician

countries. Even the Chaldæan goddess has been observed among them,

nude, in full face, holding her hands to her breast, and sometimes

disguised in an Egyptian head-dress; figures of Pygmies, and of Astarte

sitting on a throne, holding a pigeon or a lunar disk, have also been

found.

Thus, from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, wherever the

Phœnicians established their factories, they carried with them their

hybrid art, in which the fusion of the elements is not sufficiently

marked to prevent those that are borrowed from being recognised. The

dissection and analysis of each of the products of Phœnician art,

both in the terra-cottas and in sculpture, enable us to restore to

Assyria, Egypt, and Greece what belongs to each of them; this work done,

nothing is left which is the property of the Phœnicians except the

execution.

§ VII. PHŒNICIAN GLASS.

According to Pliny’s testimony the invention of glass has long been

attributed to the Phœnicians. The following is a translation of his

account: “In that part of Syria which is called Phœnicia, and which

lies next to Judæa, a marsh named Cendevia exists at the foot of Mount

Carmel. It is regarded as the source of the river Belus (Nahr-Halu),

which, after a course of five miles, falls into the Mediterranean not

far from the colony of Ptolemais. The waters of this river flow slowly;

they are deep, muddy and unhealthy, but religious rites have made them

sacred. The Belus only deposits sand at its mouth; and this sand,

formerly unfit for any use, becomes white and pure as soon as the waves

of the sea have rolled and washed it. The bank measures at the most

five hundred paces, and yet for many centuries this small space has

sufficed for the manufacture of glass. It is related that

nitre-merchants, alighting on this shore, were about to prepare their

meal, when they perceived that there were no stones to support the pots.

They ran in all directions without finding any, and then in despair they

took the blocks of nitre with which the vessels were laden and made an

impromptu furnace. But scarcely was the fire lighted, when the salt

melting mixed with the sand, and streams of a transparent liquid,

unknown till then, were seen to flow. Such was the origin of glass.”[96]

It is easy enough to recognise the kernel of historical truth contained

in the fable echoed by Pliny. The Phœnician merchants having lighted

their fire by chance in the cavity of a rock which concentrated the

heat, obtained a commencement of vitrification of nitric salt: in this

no doubt the invention of the Phœnicians consisted. They had

discovered white transparent glass, while before them the Egyptians and

the Assyrians only knew an opaque glass produced by the combustion of

certain plants.

Opaque glass, or rather glass paste, seems to be of Egyptian origin. The

vitreous substance serves as a varnish to terra-cotta from the time of

the first dynasty, and it is found thus employed on the posts of the

sepulchral door of the step-pyramid at Sakkara. In later times it is

applied as a glaze to scarabæi, sepulchral figurines, and paintings.

Soon it was perceived that this material had consistency enough to be

used by itself: “From that time,” says M. Frœhner, “the manufacture

of what we call glass-ware, that is to say, of small ornaments, beads,

armlets, and figurines of opaque glass, isochrome, or of several

colours, was invented; it did not stop here, and commerce spread its

products everywhere.”[97] The invention of glass-blowing soon followed:

the oldest coloured glass vase known bears the name of Thothmes III.

(Eighteenth Dynasty). White glass appears in Egypt much later; bottles

of transparent glass, preserved at the British Museum, are of the

Twenty-sixth Dynasty.

[Illustration: Fig. 230.--Transparent glass vase bearing name of Sargon.

(British Museum.)]

In Chaldæa and Assyria, the progress must have been the same as in

Egypt; the vitreous substance was employed at first as varnish on

bricks, statuettes and vases; then opaque glass and finally transparent

glass were arrived at gradually, perhaps under the influence of Egypt.

Assyrian objects of vitreous paste, such as rings, necklace-beads, small

vases, are not rare in our museums; but transparent white glass seems to

have been imported from Phœnicia, and never used to more than a

limited extent in Mesopotamia. The celebrated transparent glass vase of

Sargon (B.C. 722-705) at the British Museum is well known: in spite of

its cuneiform inscription, it is Phœnician in style and matter, so

that we are obliged to suppose that it was executed in the workshops of

Sidon at the time when Sargon was master of the country. “This vase,”

says M. Frœhner, “is the prototype of the unguent-flasks of which we

have so many specimens in alabaster (_alabastra_) of Egyptian and

Phœnician manufacture. Very heavy in form, and consequently of a very

archaic style, it resembles a purse; its walls are thick, and two square

appendages form the handles. The technical process followed in its

manufacture is no less primitive, for it was not blown; the workman took

a piece of cooled glass; then with a lathe he rounded the body and

hollowed out the interior, exactly as if he were working in alabaster.

To put it in its true place, we must remember that the Phœnicians

were the first to produce white glass of this purity of tone.”

But before chance taught them to utilise the fine sand on the banks of

the Belus and to manufacture from it that fine transparent glass so much

vaunted by ancient authors, the Phœnicians had borrowed from their

neighbours the Egyptians and Assyrians the art of employing vitrifiable

matter as enamel. At Rhodes, Salzmann discovered enamelled vases of

Phœnician origin; the geographer Scylax informs us, on the other

hand, that Phœnician merchants exported objects of vitreous paste,

that is to say, amulets and necklace beads, even beyond the pillars of

Hercules. The necropoles of Cyprus have furnished some glasses with

thick walls, slightly transparent, which were certainly manufactured in

the workshops of Tyre or Sidon. M. G. Rey brought from Phœnicia to

the Louvre an idol of vitreous paste in the form of a cone placed

between two quadrupeds; but the most interesting Phœnician monument

in vitreous paste that we can cite is the necklace from Tharras in

Sardinia. It is formed of forty beads, two cylinders, four bulls’

heads, and a large grotesque mask of Pygmæus (Louvre).

[Illustration: Fig. 231.--Phœnician glass. (Louvre.)]

From the foregoing facts, it results that though the Phœnicians had

for many ages a monopoly of the glass-manufacture, they cannot be

considered as its inventors. They only made admirable use of the

material placed by nature in their hands. The wonderful properties of

the sand of the Belus are vaunted not only by Pliny but by Josephus and

Tacitus. The glass manufactured by the Phœnicians was purer and

clearer than that of Egypt, and consequently more sought after; not only

alabastra and amphoriskoi, worthy of mediæval Venetian artists, issued

from their workshops, but also false gems of coloured vitreous paste,

imitating precious stones so as to be mistaken for them; hence the

prosperity and reputation of the manufactures of Tyre and Sidon. Lucian

says of the complexion of a beautiful young girl that it is more

diaphanous than the glass of Sidon.[98]

This last city was the centre of the Phœnician glass manufacture from

the remotest antiquity to the Roman period; but remains of ancient

furnaces, glass fragments of various colours, and scoriæ, have been

found at Tyre, which attest the existence there also of important

glass-works.

A fine glass flask, moulded and decorated with fruit, found at

Jerusalem, has been attributed to the age of the independence of Judæa;

but it may well be not earlier than the Græco-Roman period, like the

ornaments of vitreous paste found in the tombs of the kings by Saulcy.

These objects, as well as flakes of greenish glass, found in Palestine,

probably came from the workshops of Hebron or Aleppo, which are in

activity to the present day, and produce before our eyes vases which

imitate the ancient specimens to perfection.

[Illustration: Fig. 232.--Glass vase from Jerusalem. (Louvre.)]

The glass-workers of Tyre and Sidon signed their works at the

Græco-Roman period, like their colleagues the potters. Those of Sidon

added the name of the workshop to their own; the Greek or Latin stamp

placed in relief on the thumb-rest or handles had the double advantage

of giving the name of the manufacturer and of presenting a rough

surface, which made it easier to hold the vase. The best known of the

Sidonian glass-workers, Artas, lived in the first century of our era;

the productions of his workshops are found with his mark in all the

countries bordering upon the Mediterranean.

§ VIII. BRONZES AND ORNAMENTS.

One of the most original sides of Phœnician art consists of the

manufacture of bronze, silver or gold dishes, on which various subjects

in Assyro-Egyptian style are

[Illustration: Fig. 233.--Patera from Palestrina. (Kircher Museum,

Rome.)]

chiselled, engraved, or even hammered in _repoussé_. The skill of the

Tyrian and Sidonian artists in this branch of art was celebrated from

the highest antiquity. Solomon appeals to them for the furniture of

Jehovah’s Temple; in Homer, Achilles offers as a prize for the races, in

the games organised for the funeral of Patroclus, “a crater of chiselled

silver, holding six measures, and without rival on earth for beauty:

skilful Sidonian craftsmen made it;” elsewhere the poet speaks of a

silver crater, the work of Hephaistos, which a king of Sidon gives to

Menelaus. The Phœnician dishes found at Nimroud (fig. 92), in Cyprus,

and at some points of the Mediterranean coasts, are specimens of those

goldsmiths’ works which astonished Homer’s Greeks. They are pateræ

without feet, shallow and hemispherical, such as those seen in the hands

of the Assyrians in the bas-reliefs of Nineveh. The figures which

decorate them are on the inner surface, and arranged in concentric

zones. Engraved or hammered in _repoussé_, these subjects seem sometimes

to represent, not trivial figures nor images of deities, but, on the

contrary, genre pictures, and scenes like those in the Egyptian

paintings. Thus the subject which decorates the silver-gilt patera (fig.

233) discovered in 1876 at Palestrina, the ancient Præneste, in Latium,

has been ingeniously explained by M. Clermont-Ganneau.[99] In the

concentric zone bordered by a long serpent a small drama is developed in

relief in a series of successive phases; it might be called “A Hunting

Day, or Piety Rewarded. An oriental play in two acts and nine tableaux.”

We see: (1) the hero leaving his house in his war-chariot; (2) he

alights to shoot a deer; (3) capture of the deer; (4) halt in a wood

after the hunt; the horses are unharnessed; (5) preparations for the

meal, in which the deer is to be eaten; (6) an ape attacks the hero,

who, fortunately, is protected by a winged deity; (7) the ape is pursued

and thrown down by the horses; (8) the hunter kills the savage beast;

(9) triumphal entry into the house. The interpretation would be complete

if a mythical name could be given to the hero of the drama.

[Illustration: Fig. 234.--Dish from Dali. (Louvre.)]

Hunting scenes of the same kind, but not so easy to explain, decorate a

silver dish from Cære in Etruria, of the same manufacture as the pateræ

of Phœnicia, or Cyprus. On one of the silver dishes from Dali

(Idalion) possessed by the Louvre, there is a lion hunt; on the patera

from Amathus there is the siege of a fortress.

[Illustration: Fig. 235--Handle of a bronze crater. (New York Museum.)]

The treasury of Curium furnished Cesnola with a large number of these

pateræ in silver or electrum, on which appeared engraved subjects of the

same inspiration and the same style: figures with four wings, struggling

with a lion; Astarte with her hand upon her breast, beside hideous

patæci, Isis-Hathor, Egyptian sphinxes and sparrow-hawks; hunts,

battles, religious sacrifices. Everywhere on these monuments, which, as

the Homeric poems show us, were so greatly sought for by the Greeks of

the heroic age, and imported by Sidonian merchants, we find copies of

the usual designs on the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, an unconscious

mixture of hybrid scenes, which have nothing original except this quaint

amalgam itself, even more striking here than in the other manifestations

of Phœnician and Cypriote art. If we had a larger number of these

curious dishes, we should find, no doubt, that the motives are little

varied, often repeated, even in subjects as interesting as the Hunting

Day, and that the effort of imagination here made by the Phœnician

artist has been little inventive. Fortunately for the reputation of

Phœnician and Cypriote goldsmiths, other monuments show that their

metallurgy was not limited to these interesting pateræ. Thus, for

instance, Cesnola brought from his excavations in Cyprus a fragment of a

large bronze crater, the handles of which are decorated in the most

original fashion. We here find lions standing on their hind legs holding

œnochoæ, and clothed in fishes’ scales, like the god Anu in

Assyro-Chaldæan symbolism.

[Illustration: Fig. 236.--Phœnician gold ornament.]

In Cypriote furniture and ornaments we observe the same characteristics

of a hybrid art. There are little silver vases chiselled in the Assyrian

style with rare elegance, handles of sceptres, and other precious

utensils like those of Nineveh. Certain ornaments, intended for women’s

head-dresses, are of exquisite workmanship; so are the ear-rings, the

necklaces of gold, gems and glass; with figures of lions, rams, deer,

masks with curled beards in the Assyrian fashion, heads of Isis-Hathor

and lotus-flowers. Some of these necklaces and bracelets end in lions’

or serpents’ heads, and form models which Greek artists needed only to

copy, for they are masterpieces in their kind. We have seen that the

Ninevite excavations brought to light ivory tablets carved by

Phœnician artists, and imported into Mesopotamia by commerce: plaques

of the same style have been obtained from Phœnicia itself: they were

ornaments of precious caskets. These products of Phœnician industry

were imported into all the coasts of the Mediterranean; and, at

Palestrina, in Latium, an ivory tablet was found, on which a vessel

manned by rowers is engraved, similar to those in the Egyptian

paintings. Ostrich-eggs, found in Etruria, arranged to serve as vases,

are adorned with engraved figures, the Phœnician character of which

could scarcely be disputed: there are zones of warriors on foot, on

horseback, and in their war-chariots; files of animals, fights of lions

with bulls in semi-Egyptian style; the frame of these scenes is borrowed

from Assyria; the whole is relieved by iridescent colours.[100]

[Illustration: Fig. 237.--Phœnician ear-rings.]

If we had in Phœnicia bas-reliefs like those of Assyria, and

paintings like those of Egypt, we should be able to give some account of

those brilliant stuffs of dyed purple, described by classical antiquity

with so much enthusiasm. It was to the Tyrian god, Melkarth, that

tradition assigned the invention of this dye, obtained, as it is well

known, from the juice of a marine shell, the _murex_, which is found

especially on the coast of Phœnicia. We can only affirm, according to

literary testimony, that the workshops of Tyre and Sidon produced stuffs

in abundance, the colour of which, as the ancients remarked, instead of

being altered and deteriorated by a bright light, was only rendered more

vivid and brilliant by it.

§ IX. ENGRAVED GEMS.

[Illustration: Fig. 238.--Cylinder in the De Clerq collection (after

Menant).]

The glyptic art, through the multiplicity of its productions, is one of

the principal elements of Phœnician archæology, and teaches us more

than the miserable fragments which remain of pottery or sculpture. Here,

more clearly than in the other branches of art, we find imitation of

Egypt and Assyria taken for granted, as a witness of the poverty of

invention of the Phœnician intellect. Two cylinders exist in the De

Clercq collection which bear a cuneiform inscription by the side of

Egyptian figures. That which we give as an example (fig. 238), after M.

Menant,[101] is the seal of “Annipi, son of Addume the Sidonian.” Thus

the owner of the cylinder is a Phœnician; he has inscribed his name

in Assyrian beside the god Set,[102] Reseph, the warrior god, and Horus

with the hawk’s head. The style of the inscription, like that of the

figures, betrays, however, the unskilful hand of the Sidonian imitator.

[Illustration: Fig. 239.--Cylinder at the British Museum (after

Menant).]

We possess, on the other hand, cylinders on which the figures are purely

Assyrian, while the inscription is in Phœnician or Aramaic

characters. This one at the British Museum is the “seal of Akadban, son

of Gebrod the eunuch, worshipper of Hadad” (fig. 239). The style of the

figures and the details of the costume are so clearly Assyrian that this

monument discloses to us the plagiaristic method to which the idle

imagination of the Phœnicians had recourse. These merchants found it

simpler and speedier to appropriate Assyrian or Persian cylinders,

satisfied with having their names engraved upon them. They did not blush

to wear during their life the ornaments of other nations, until their

ashes should rest in sarcophagi stolen from the Egyptians.

However, in Cyprus, they tried to engrave cylinders for themselves. The

recent excavations have disinterred a large quantity of them, and, by

the side of cylinders brought from the continent by commerce, some have

been found which were certainly manufactured in the island. But what

astonishes us in these monuments is their extreme barbarism; the design

is most summary, the figures are scarcely sketched, and the chisel has

only made rough scratches on the jasper, the hæmatite, or the

chalcedony. And even the figures of men or animals, the trees and the

geometrical ornaments with which the Cypriote cylinders are covered, are

copied by unskilful workmen from the productions of the Assyro-Persian

or Egyptian glyptic art.

After all, Phœnician cylinders are rare enough. Practical before

everything, the merchants of Tyre and Carthage preferred flat seals of

multiple form to cylinders, the use of which was difficult; they

manufactured scarabæi, scarabœoids, ellipsoids, cones, octagonal

conoids, these last especially in the Aramæo-Persian period, and lastly

bezels for rings. Among the numerous gems which have come down to us,

and which must be attributed either to the Phœnicians themselves or

to the Aramæan populations of Syria, some have still preserved their

mounting: a ring in the form of a horse-shoe enabled the owner to turn

the stone on its axis and to hang it from a necklace. The inscription of

one or two lines, when it exists, gives the name of the owner, his

father’s name, and sometimes his quality. The subjects, naturally more

limited than those of the cylinders, are always of Egyptian, Persian, or

Assyro-Chaldæan inspiration. There are, for instance, the winged and

radiated disk, deer, lions, bulls, sphinxes, gryphons, the divine bust

in a winged disk, a pontiff sacrificing at an altar, or in adoration

before the pyreum. The Louvre possesses a scarabæoid of red agate

acquired in Mesopotamia by M. de Sarzec; a god is seen upon it, holding

a serpent in each hand, like the Egyptian Horus; he has four wings, and

bears on his head the solar disk supported by two horns. The name,

Baalnathan, indicates that its owner was probably an Ammonite or a

Moabite. It may be admitted, with M. de Vogüé,[103] that among the

Phœnician, Aramæan and Jewish intagli, those in which Egyptian

influence appears exclusive are the most ancient, that is to say,

anterior to the Assyrian rule in Syria.

[Illustration: Fig. 240.--Scarabæoid seal.]

[Illustration: Fig. 241.--Scarabæoid seal (after Menant).]

From the seventh century B.C. the action of Assyria appears in the

Aramæo-Phœnician glyptic art, sometimes allied to the Egyptian

influence, sometimes exclusive as on a scarabæus in the museum at

Vienna, bearing the name of Akhotmelek, wife of Josuah, on which a deity

is seen sitting on a throne and receiving a libation from a standing

pontiff (fig. 240). A fine scarabæus in green jasper at the British

Museum (fig. 241), with the name, in Phœnician characters, of _Hodo,

the scribe_, shows a principal scene inspired by an Assyrian cylinder,

while on the field the Egyptian _crux ansata_ figures, and the

scarabæoidal form of the gem is certainly of Pharaonic origin.

In this hybrid coupling of Egyptian to Assyrian art the least trained

observer can discern what belongs to each of the two constituent

elements. The position of the outstretched wings, one raised, the other

lowered, before and not behind the figures, the uræi, the pshent, the

shenti, the hawk-headed gods, the lotus-flower, the sphinx, and the

_crux ansata_, properly belong to Egypt. The long-fringed robe of the

priests, the curled hair and beard, the cylindrical tiara, the

fire-altar, the sacred tree, and the lions are, besides other features,

the property of Assyria and Chaldæa. The writing alone is Aramaic or

Phœnician. At the Achæmenid epoch, seals are found in Phœnicia,

the workmanship of which shows signs of Persian influence; sometimes

even the legend, although Aramæan, gives us a Persian name.

From the fourth century B.C., lastly, the glyptic art, following the

same laws as the other branches of art, is rapidly invaded by the Greek

genius. Engraved stones with Cypriote or Phœnician legends show

subjects incontestably interpreted by Greek artists, even when the

incidents are oriental; at last we find Greek subjects, so that the

oriental influence is only shown by the legend, which still remains

Phœnician. We are then arrived at the age of Alexander, and the

ancient civilisations of the East have ceased to live.