Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/150

 128 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. still steeped in barbarism, and the only civilization was in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates. 1 As late even as the eighth century Egypt, Chaldsea and Assyria were so far in advance of the rest of the -world that if Cypriot sculpture had been then in existence it could never have escaped their tyranny ; it could hardly have avoided a respectful and even servile copying of the models they set before it. Now, so far as we can judge .FiG. 81. Head of a limestone statue. Height 8 inches. Piot Collection. from still existing monuments, things did not take that course at all. In nearly all the Cypriot statues "the action of a third 1 M. HEUZEY has understood this better and explained it more clearly than any one else. We have sometimes made use of the very expressions he employs in setting forth the ideas to which a long study of the Cypriot monuments has brought him.