Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/205

 SARCOPHAGI AND SEPULCHRAL FURNITURE. 185 sarcophagi with their brilliant colours must have looked very like the Egyptian mummy-cases ; perhaps, as in Egypt, the lips and hair were gilded. The' resemblance between the two kinds of coffins is completed by the salience at the lower extremity of the lid, corresponding to the feet (Fig. 126). That mummy-cases should have been finished off in this way was natural enough. They were light and movable, and in certain cases were set upright against a wall, 1 and the enlarged foot was given to add to their stability. But in the heavy stone envelopes of Phoenicia there was no such necessity ; they were intended to lie on their backs as they have been found in all those tombs at JMugharet-Abloun for instance in which they had preserved their proper places. This appendix is, therefore, quite useless in the Phoenician coffins ; FIG. 125. Coffin of painted stone from an old drawing. From D'Orville. 3 it is the literal reproduction of a detail which had a raison d'etre in the model, but has none in the copy. Whether, then, we look at the general idea, at the accidental forms, or at the external decoration of these sarcophagi, we are were buried in wooden coffins, it has been ascertained that when those coffins were first discovered their surfaces showed clear signs ot having once been painted. On one -of them bands of red, blue, white, and green were clearly discernible (Fu. ELENA, Scari nella necropoli occidentale di Cagliari, Cagliari, 1868, 4to, p. 19). 1 In the Egyptian tombs the mummies have always been found lying down, but in the funerary ceremonies they were, during the celebration of certain rites, set up on end. This we know from a large number of pictures and reliefs (WILKINSON, Ancient Egyptians, second edition, vol. iii. cap. xvi. figs. 624-626, plates xvii. and Ixviii., &c.). The Greeks and Romans were mistaken in supposing that the mummies were set up in the tomb in a vertical position (HERODOTUS, ii. 86 ; DIODORUS, i. xcii. ; SILIUS ITALICUS, xiii. v. 474-476). 2 Journal des Fouilles of GAILLARDOT, in RENAN, Mission, pp. 434 and 435, 3 Sici/la, vol. i. plate B, p. 43. VOL. I. B B