Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/209

 SARCOPHAGI AND SEPULCHRAL FURNITURE. 189 As the general forms of these coffins were borrowed from Egypt and the minor characteristics of their style from Greece, so their material too was brought from abroad. They were objects of luxury to be acquired only by the rich, and when the latter gave a commission to the sculptor for a sarcophagus on which their own features were to be carried down to posterity, they naturally wished that it should be executed in some material which should allow the artist to make use of his talent to the best advantage. o The limestone of the country did not lend itself kindly to the chisel, and the custom arose of going abroad in search of a rock of finer and firmer grain. 1 Nearly all the anthropoid sarcophagi hitherto discovered are made of a marble which is not to be found in Syria ; it was brought, in all probability, from those Grecian islands with which the Phoenicians had such a close and long- standing connection. One of the few exceptions to which we need allude is a sarcophagus with a head sculptured upon it, the material of which is brown lava from Safita. It was found by M. Renan in the necropolis of Arvad, and sent home to the Louvre. 2 A few, too, were made of terra-cotta, for those no doubt to whom economy was a consideration. Of one of these the Louvre possesses the upper parts (Fig. 130). It comes from Amrit, in Northern Phoenicia. 3 But whatever their material, all these anthropoid sarcophagi were made in Phoenicia. The coffin of Esmounazar is, indeed, Egyptian in workmanship, and many sarcophagi have been found in the necropolis of Memphis which may be called its brothers ; 4 but it is otherwise with the rest of these sculptured chests. In the Boulak Museum there are, no doubt, some twenty marble coffins, dating -from the Greek or Persian epochs, which might be com- pared to our Phoenician sarcophagi ; but the resemblance is more apparent than real. The sarcophagi of Phoenicia are large and deep troughs ; those of Egypt are simply mummy-boxes cut in stone instead of being built up of wood or cartonnage. They were meant to be placed in an outer case of stone, granite, or basalt, similar to that of Esmounazar (Fig. i3i). 5 1 RENAN, Mission, p. 426. 2 Ibid. pp. 45, 46, and plate vi. 3 This discovery is described by M. RENAN in a paper entitled : " Un Masque en terre cuite recemment acquis par la Musce du Louvre " (Rente arcMologique^ 2nd series, vol. xxxvi. pp. 73, 74, and plate xvi. 4 RENAN, Mission, p. 413. "' Ibid. p. 414, note 4.