Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/155

 VARIATIONS OF STYLE AND COSTUME. '33 betrays the characteristic features of archaic Greek art ; the chin is strong and bony ; the mouth is close to the nose and is drawn up by the forced smile alluded to above; the eyes, too, are drawn up at the corners in a very exaggerated way, a detail which has been wrongly thought oriental, " And it would be as well that this error should be dissipated once for all. If this obliquity of the eyeballs is to be taken as a race characteristic, its origin must be sought for among the yellow races, such as the Chinese, and not among the Egyptians, the Chaldseans, and the Assyrians, who are shown, as a rule, with horizontal eyeballs in the ancient representations of their national FIG. 86. Painted terra-cotta head. Height 4 inches. Piot Collection. type. I do not mean to say that a slight raising of the external angle of the eye is not to be frequently noticed in Asiatics, and even in members of our European races. But it does not appear in the art of Egypt, Chaldaea, or Assyria until at a comparatively recent date, and is then mostly confined to attempts at figuring the human profile. In the archaism of Greece alone do ve find it adapted in a constant way and for any considerable period. 1 It is 1 " This obliquity is common enough in Assyrian bas-reliefs of the seventh century ; but there it seems to be no more than a conventional way of expressing the vanish- ing perspective of the eyes, as seen in full face, for it is not to be traced in heads in