Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/204

 HISTORY <>F ART IN PIM.NH i. AND DKPKXDENCIKS. clever, rather than inventive, artists ot Phoenicia. It was cer- tainly suggested by the shape of the wooden mummy-cases with which her merchants were so familiar in the land of the Pharaohs. We are sure of this, not only because the coffin is made to follow the general lines of the body, or because there is anything impro- bable in two races having independently determined to figure the dead man couched on the lid of his tomb ; but because the Egyptian convention which represents the head and neck of the dead man on the lid of his sarcophagus while all the rest of him is left in a state of abstraction is followed. The peculiar physiognomy given by a custom like this to a mummy-case is to be found in these Phoenician sarcophagi and nowhere else out Fu;. 124. Sarcophagus of Sidoii. Louvre. of Egypt. Equally significant is the fact that as the wooden coffins of Egypt were decorated with brilliant colours so were these stone receptacles. All those who have had the chance of seeing any of them before they were disturbed, or soon after- wards, are unanimous in declaring that the traces of colour were still very marked. On the hair dark blue and red have been distinguished ; the latter colour spreading even over part of the face. The body of a sarcophagus of this kind which was found in 1/25, near Palermo, was ornamented round its sides with pictures in panels (Fig. 125) ; the colouring substances stained the hands of those who touched it. 1 When they were new these 1 RENAN, Mission, p. 416. DE LOXGPERIER, Mus'ce Napoleon ///, description of plate xvii. In the Phoenician cemetery at Cagliari, in Sardinia, where the dead