Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/208

 iSS HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. the period of Assyrian supremacy. 1 In our opinion none of these anthropoid sarcophagi are older than the sixth century B.C. ; most of them belong to the period between the reign of Cyrus and the battle of Arbela, an epoch of singular prosperity for Phoenicia ; finally, a few among them are posterior to the Macedonian con- quest. We have encountered none that suggest the Roman period, and we are, moreover, confirmed in our belief that the fashion of these sarcophagi did not persist beyond the limits we have assigned to them by the well-ascertained fact that, so far at least as the necropolis of Sidon is concerned, every sarcophagus of the kind which has been recovered, whether intact or in a FIG. 129. Sarcophagus from Sidon. Louvre. thousand pieces, has been found in the tombs with rectangular ^ wells and no staircases, that is to say, in sepulchres which, without dating from the earliest ages, are yet of a very respectable antiquity. 2 "Our sarcophagi," says M. Renan, "cover, in my opinion, a very wide extent of time, and give us examples of Phoenician art from about 800 or 900 to about 200 B.C." (Mission, p. 421). We agree with M. Renan only when he allows that the great majority of these monuments belong to the period in which, in our belief, they were all manufactured. M. Heuzey is"" quite of our opinion ; in fact, he even goes farther; he thinks the oldest of these sculptures does not date from a period anterior to the fifth century (Catalogue des Figurines en Terre cuite du Musee du Louvre, p. 85). 2 RENAN, Mission, p. 422.