Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/150

 130 HISTORY >i ART IN PIIO-.NH IA AND ITS Dr.i'i-.NnKNc IKS. down to us is that studied by MM. Kenan and Thobois at Oum- cl-Ai<.aniid (Fig. 68). The two little people at the angles of the architrave should be noticed. Their head-dress resembles the Egyptian f>schcnt. The figure on the right holds a star-shaped flower, supported on a tall stem ; it is more difficult to make out what his companion on the left has in his hand. In Phoenicia the winged globe is generally flanked by those two long wings which always accompany it in Egypt, but here the importance of the motive is sometimes diminished. In one of the fragments found at Ouni-cl-Awaniid the wings are suggested merely by a few feathers appearing from under the disk (Fig. 69). In another variety of the type, from the same place, the ornament is complicated by the introduction of a crescent and subordinate disk (Fig. 70). By this the meaning of the group is rendered Fit;. 60. Winged glol>e. From Renan. IMC.. 70.- Winged globe with crescent. From Renan. even more obvious than it is in the Egyptian form ; the least educated eye is able to see that it forms a symbol and relic of that star worship to which the Assyrians made, continual allusion when they placed the sun, moon, and stars on their steles and cylinders. 1 The peculiarly Phoenician element in this group is the combina- tion of a disk and a crescent. Does the disk stand for the sun or a star ? or, does the combination refer to the two states of the moon, new and at the full ? It is difficult to say ; but whatever the real explanation may be this particular form of the winged globe is to be met with in a great many of those votive steles erected at Carthage in honour of Tanit, of which we have already given more than one example (Fig. 71). It is peculiar to Phoenicia ; we find it on all kinds of objects issued from the workshops of Tyre and Carthage ; it becomes, in fact, a kind of trade mark by which 1 History of Art in ChaLltra and Assyria, Vol. I. pp. 70-75.