Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/153

 DECORATION. those which lined the avenues of the Pharaonic temples ; l it has the uraeus on its brow, and the double crown, or pschent. Judging from these features it must have been copied from those Egyptian monsters whose heads were portraits of the kings by whose orders they were raised. 2 But although the pose and head-dress speak of Egypt, the wings of this sphinx, both by their shape and presence, recall the winged monsters of Assyria. Winged sphinxes were very rare in the Nile valley, 3 but whenever the great composite animal of Egypt was imitated in Assyria it was endowed with wings, 4 and in every example to which we can point they were rather short and turned upwards at the end. This motive occurs on a large number of objects which we have every reason to ascribe to FIG. 74. Egyptian winged sphinx. From Prisse. Mesopotamia, on a stone plaque carved with a very fantastic monster 5 on a fine cylinder, 6 upon a cone inscribed with Aramaean characters. 7 In all these the wings are more or less decidedly curled back on themselves. The Phoenician artists seem to 1 History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. I. Fig. 205. 2 See Kenan's observations upon this slab and upon another of the same class (Fig. 76) ; Mission, pp. 23-25. The lithographic reproductions given in his plate iv. are so wanting in clearness that we have been compelled to have these objects re-drawn from the originals, which are now, happily, in the Louvre. 3 WILKINSON, The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. P- 3i- 4 Art in Chaldcea and Assyria, Vol. I. Fig. 83 ; Vol. II. Figs. 58 and 59. 5 Ibid. Vol. II. Fig. 87. 6 Ibid. Fig. 141. 7 Ibid. Fig. 157.