Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/312

 2oo HISTORY OK ART IN 1'im NICIA AND i rs DKI-KNMM.NCII.S. faithful. Like lire, water purifies ; it takes away blemishes. The vessels which held the water required for the ritual ablutions was placed near the temple doors, like the beuiticr in a Romish church. Close to one entrance to the buildings which he describes as the temple of Golgos, General Cesnola found one of these vessels still in place. It was surrounded by a wreath of ivy, and its diameter was seven feet one inch. But the most curious object of the kind is the vessel known as the Amathus vase. This is a great basin of porous limestone, a depressed spheroid in shape, with a small Kir.. 21 1. --The Amathus vase. Louvre. Height 6 feet 2 inches. Greatest diameter 9 feet 2 inches. base and a very low neck about a circular mouth (Fig. 211). Four ornamental handles rise at regular intervals near the upper edge of the vessel. All four of these handles are shaped like moulded arches ; they each rise from two palmettes and inclose the figure of a bull turned to the spectator's right. The heads of these bulls have been intentionally mutilated. This monument, which has been in the Louvre ever since 1866, is not the only one of the kind. 1 Another was found close beside it ; this second 1 M. Vocui took possession of the Amathus vase in the name of France in 1862. In the same year a ship of war was despatched at the instance of the Directeur des