Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/160

 138 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. group in which beard and head-coverings remind us of Assyria, but its maker was evidently inspired by the local type with which he came into daily contact. The situation of the island must have led to more than one cross between Semites and Aryans, a mixture of races which must have been favoured, one would think, by the spirit and ritual of the worship carried on at Paphos, at Idalion, and at Golgos, and by the licence of manners which such a worship would provoke and sanction. Around these frequented shrines and the ports into which so many ships of so many different nationalities found their way, a population of mixed blood must have sprung up FIG. 91. Head in painted terra-cotta. Height 6| inches. British Museum. a population which spoke both Greek and Phoenician, and must also have understood the Aramaean dialects of nothern Syria and Cilicia. May we not conclude that the physical type we find reproduced in Cypriot sculpture belongs to this hybrid race and that certain characteristics had been fixed by long heredity ? There can be no doubt of the distinctions which divide it from the Assyrian, Egyptian, or Grecian type. Of course its peculiarities are partly due to the habits of the Cypriot sculptors, to the various influences by which they were affected, and to the different con- ventions they successively adopted. Each school of art has its