Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/144

 124 HISTORY OF ART IN PIHKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. character. This ve may gather from an expression used by the author of the curious work i 'pon the Syrian Goddess. It is possible that they were, in fact, symbols of the creative power as represented by the male organ of generation. The fork at their summit may have something to do with the double tongue of a flame blown about by the wind, which may account for their name of Kkam- ))ia)iii)i, which often occurs in the Hebrew books of the Old Testament, and has been referred to the root khani, which means " to be warm, burning". * Whatever the truth may be as to the origin of these things, it is unlikely that any great stress was laid on the exact imitation of forms which had nothing architectural about them. In time the primitive sense of these piers was lost to sight, and their shapes modified by the ornaments placed at the top of them. The earliest Phoenician columns of any size of which the memory has come down to our times were not supports but, like the Egyptian obelisks, at once symbols and decorative elements. At first we may feel some surprise that the Phoenicians, who were the pupils of Egypt rather than Chaldrea, and had in abundance the stone denied to the latter country, should have taken the Mesopotamian architects as their models in this matter of the column, rather than those of Memphis and Thebes. The true explanation of this singularity is to be found perhaps in the general poverty of Phoenician architecture. If Phoenicia did not build hypostyle halls like those of Egypt, it was because she never dreamt of undertaking any such gigantic works as those on which the Pharaohs employed armies of their own subjects and every prisoner they could take in war. Phoenicia was unable to indulge in such luxuries. Her largest cities were villages beside Memphis and Thebes and Sais ; her population even at the time of her greatest prosperity was not more, perhaps, than a million souls, including slaves ; it was hardly more than enough to carry on her industries, and to man her vessels. To have attempted anything that could be even remotely compared to the 1 The name of Hammon, the solar god, the god of lire, seems to come from the same root To my mind some doubt is cast upon this explanation, however, by the fact that in all the best specimens of the coinage in question, which I examined in the Cabinet des Mcdailles, the round knobs at the ends of the two forks are never absent. But whether a flame is quiet or blown by the wind it has nothing that can be compared to these globes, which were, in all probability, o/' bronze gilt.