Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/92

 72 HISTORY <K ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. summing up in his own person all other manifestations of the creative force, just as the universe incloses the seven planetary heavens. ' The whole of this group of gods is characterized by one distinctive feature. They were all dwarf, or child, gods, two things which both from the mythological and iconographical points of view came to much the same thing. Herodotus remarks upon their strange disproportions (Figs. 21 and 22); they Fir.. 24. Resef. From Wilkinson. reminded him of one of the forms given by the Egyptians to their Ptah, or, as he called him, to their Hephaestus. 2 The Phoenicians passed so much of their time away from home that they could not fail to adopt many notions from foreign religions. We do not allude to their fundamental beliefs ; those seem to have been brought with them from their original home on the Persian Gulf; between Bel and Baal, between Istar and 1 BERGER, La Ph'enirie, p. 24. 2 HERODOTUS, iii. 37. Ptah has long been recognised as identical with the 'E<ai'o-Tos of Herodotus.