Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/171

 FIGURES OF DIVINITIES. 149 give a promise of maternity. The scratches on the clay may be meant to represent a loin-cloth. The legs are held tightly closed ; they taper rapidly .downwards and end in feet scarcely large enough to give stability. The workmanship is but little more advanced in another figure of the same kind in which the arms are better attached to the body (Fig. 99). The hands are placed near the umbilicus ; this is much too high and made too important altogether, perhaps, in allusion to birth and the traces left by the commencement of independent life in the child. Lower down, the loin-cloth is indicated by a few rough lines. The hips are not so wide as in the first example, while the legs are less rudely modelled. There FIG. 98. Statuette from Alambra. Terra-cotta. Actual size. Feuardent Collection. is no base, and the feet are so small that the figure could not have stood by itself. The grotesqueness of the object as a whole is increased by a detail in which, however, a certain technical pro- gress is betrayed the potter has put large rings in the ears, and they are still in place. We commence another series with those columnar figures in which the same goddess is represented as a nursing mother (Fig. 100). Here the cylindrical part is massive and slightly swelled at the foot, so as to afford a secure base. The decoration is no longer done with a point but with the brush. 1 With her right hand the mother supports a vase on her head while with 1 HEUZEV, Catalogue, pp. 147-148.