Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/115

 GENERAL REMARKS UPON THE STUDY or PHCENICIAN ART. 95 are surprised that a single vestige of the past remains in it. We can hardly understand how it is that a few points on the coast, such as Oum-cl-Aiuamid and Amrit,s. preserve a few fragments that have come down from a very remote antiquity." Like the philologist and the epigraphist, the historian of art would condemn himself to know very little indeed of the work accomplished by this industrious people if he confined himself to what he could learn within the narrow limits of Phoenicia proper, a country of which we may say in the words of the poet that "its very ruins have perished." The lives of the Phoenicians were passed anywhere but at home. Many of them were born in the colonies, and many no doubt lived and died without visiting their mother city. If we wish to become well acquainted with the people, and to trace out the various directions in which their ac- tive intelligence made itself felt, we must imitate them in these particulars ; we must take passage on their ships, and disembark on all the shores they so long frequented. We must stay for a time in their company, wherever they rested longest, and where consequently there is the best chance of finding evidence of their action and presence. Acting on this plan we shall, in the first place, follow them to Cyprus. Cyprus was not Phoenicia. At a very early date Greek colonists landed on the island, and, establishing themselves side by side with the Semites, soon contrived to divide the whole country with them. But the chief maritime city, Kition, preserved its almost exclusively Syrian character down at least to the prrtition of Alexander's empire ; it was situated on the eastern coast of the island, and formed a pendant to Tyre and Sidon. In other parts also, as at Paphos on the southern coast, and in the interior at Idalion and Golgos, Phoenician ideas had taken such deep root that all the progress of the Greeks did not efface their traces. We have already noticed the large number of Phoenician inscrip- tions found in Cyprus, and, as might be expected, the number of Phoenician objects made either in those Syrian towns with which the island was in such constant communication or in the colony itself, is also very great. At Kition, and in other towns, manu- factories existed which were in fact no more than branch houses of 1 RENAN, Mission de Phenicie, pp. 816-819. See also pp. 154 and 155 in the same book, where M. Renan gives details of the destruction by the modern vandal of the antiquities of Byblos.