Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/483

] beside the rich chariot from which the monarch has descended. Such was the group of Tyrian and Assyrian personages, and such the scene which, in B.C. 859, was to be seen on the shores of the Mediterranean, near the city of Tyre. How doubly interesting this picture is in giving, as it does, an illustration of the meeting of East and West, and portraying an event of great importance in the history of civilisation."

The subjection of the Phœnician mother cities to the Assyrians is, as Mr. Stuart Poole remarks, of the highest value in fixing the date of ancient works of art in the Mediterranean. Up to that time articles of Egyptian design were among the principal commodities in the Phœnician ships; afterwards they were replaced by articles made from Assyrian models.

The Phœnicians did not possess any art of their own, but borrowed styles from other peoples—Egyptian, As- syrian, Persian, Lykian, or Greek. So much was this the case that the thirteen sarcophagi in the Louvre, which contained Sidonian nobles, are borrowed either from Egypt or Assyria. The king of Sidon, Eshmonezar, is buried in a sarcophagus made of stone from the Egyptian quarries of Syene in the Upper Nile, and he appears on the lid in an Egyptian dress, although the inscription proves that he was born, reigned, and died