Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/149

 VARIATIONS OF STYLE AND COSTUMK. 127 Pharaonic statues the only ornament used in such a place is the raised head and neck of the uraeus ; the Cypriot crowds on to it all the Egyptian motives he could glean either from small things brought into the country from the Nile valley, or from Phoenician imitations. Thus, in one example, we find a head of Hathor under the serpent (Fig. 84). This motive entered into the decoration of man}' small objects which were carried in the course of trade, all over the Mediterranean basin. 1 It came into current use in Cyprus ; we find it upon sepulchral steles, where it forms a centre for a triple row of volutes (Fig. 85). In those statues which betray a desire to imitate Egypt the very type of visage is changed. The high noses of the Assyrian group of figures have disappeared (Fig. 74). The nose is Fin. 80. Head of a limestone statue found at Athieno. New York Museum. straight ; the eyes, without having the artificial prolongation given by a line of colour to Egyptian eyes, are nevertheless extravagantly long (Fig. 79), causing us sometimes even to doubt as to the sex of the person represented. The mouth, which is horizontal in works of the earlier period (Fig. 77), begins to turn up at the corner (Figs. 80 and 81), giving birth to the peculiar smile which characterises archaic Greek sculpture, a detail of expression which is no less strange to real Egyptian art than to the pure style of Assyria. It is by such anomalies as these that we know that the imitation of the Oriental style by Cypriot artists does not date from a very high antiquity ; from that time when the West was 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II. Fig. 336.