Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/227

 SARCOPHAGI AND SEPULCHRAL FURNITURE. 207 (Fig. 20), sometimes standing (Fig. 142), who presses a dove against her breast; before being consecrated to the Greek Aphrodite the dove was the special property of some oriental deities and especially of the Syrian Astarte. 1 We have more difficulty in 1 The dove, said the Greeks, had been consecrated to Aphrodite ever since the beginning of time, on account of its warm and amorous temperament (APOL- LODORUS, quoted by the scholiast of Apollonius Rhodius, Argonaut, iii. 593) ; but of all the Greek goddesses Aphrodite was the one to keep the most strongly marked traces of her Oriental origin. Greece made the fair goddess her own entirely by the beauty which her artists began to give her at the end of the fifth century ; her worship and her attributes preserved to the last much of their Oriental character. To this the Greeks themselves w r ere quite alive, as we may see from a myth which, in spite of its neglect by poetry and art, has nevertheless a very real importance for the historian ; I mean the story given by HYGIXUS (Fabultz, 197). An egg, they say, fell from the sky into the River Euphrates ; fishes carried it to the bank, a dove sat upon it and hatched Aphrodite ! By this tradition a connection was established between the goddess born on the banks of the Euphrates, who was the prototype of Aphrodite, and the dove. We cannot point to any texts or monuments which prove that the dove was consecrated to one of those goddesses of fertility who were adored under various names by the eastern Shemites, but so far as it concerns the Syrian goddesses, who were no more than the daughters of those of Chaldasa and Assyria, the fact is proved. It was demonstrated long ago that the Semiramis, whose career is given by DIODORUS (II. iv. 20), was not a human personage, but a divinity whose legend had been transferred, after a fashion that was common enough in such cases, to a mortal heroine (FR. LEXORMAXT, La Legende de Shniramis, a paper presented to the Academic de Belgique, January 8, 1872). Several authors declare that Semiramis was worshipped as a goddess both in the valley of the Euphrates and in Syria, and particularly at Ascalon and Hierapolis (ATHENAGORAS, Legatio pro Christianis, 26; LUCIAN, De dea Syria, 14 and 33 ; DIODORUS, II. xx. 2) ; the tie by which she is attached in legend to Derceto, the great goddess of Ascalcn, shows that Semiramis was no more than one form of the type adored under different names by all the Shemitic tribes of the interior and of the coast ; and we know that the dove was especially consecrated to that Derceto-Semiramis of Ascalon and Northern Syria. According to Diodorus, Semiramis was nursed by doves, and at her death was changed into a dove ; the very word Semiramis, according to Ctesias, meant dove in the language of the country. In the temple of Hierapolis they showed Lucian a statue which passed for that of Semiramis ; a golden dove was perched upon its head. Finally, upon the coins struck at Ascalon in the time of the Roman emperors, we find a goddess, Derceto or Semiramis, who has a dove sometimes beside her, sometimes on her open hand (ECKHEL, Doctrina Nummorum Veterum, vol. iii. p. 445). The attribution of the dove to the Astarte of Syria and Paphos is, if possible, still better attested. The poets make frequent allusion to it (TIBULLUS, I. viii. 17 ; MARTIAL, VIII. xxviii. 13). ATHENVEUS (x. 51) speaks of the doves of Eryx, and the tradition he gives us implies a narrow connection between them and the Astarte who was worshipped in Sicily. Finally, both in Phoenicia and in Cyprus we find the dove placed in the hands of all those female figures in which archaso- logists agree in recognising either the images of the goddess herself or those of her priestesses.