Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/180

 158 HISTORY OF ART IN PIICENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. the early statuettes carried from Chaldaea into Phoenicia and Cyprus, the gesture of the hands calls attention to those parts of the female person in which the child is first developed, and afterwards nourished. This is a naively direct and brutal allusion to the mysteries of generation. The idea by which the Grecian artist was moved was quite distinct : in spite of superficial analogies, the gesture of his goddess was different, and had a totally different meaning : in the Oriental model the hands draw attention to what in the Greek statue, they conceal ; the action of the latter is an instinctive movement of shame, the outcome of the most delicate instincts of woman, when refined and cultivated by civilization. There is yet another and a very strange variant upon the type of the Oriental goddess, a variant for which an ancient text had already prepared us. "In Cyprus," says Macrobius, " there is an image of Venus in which she is represented with a beard, dressed like a woman, but with the stature of a man, and holding a sceptre in her hand." l This figure, he adds, was meant to unite the attributes of the two sexes, so that it might be considered at once male and female : " quod eadem et mas existimatur et femina" Some archaeologists have wished to recognize this androgynous deity in the fine statue known as the Priest with the dove (Fig. 73), but the latter seems rather to be one of those votive images so numerous in the temple where it was found, at least if we may judge from the restoration carried out immediately after the exca- vations at Athieno. Cesnola is rather inclined to see the bearded Venus of Macrobius in a votive figure, two examples of which he found in the cemetery of Amathus. 2 Traces of colour were still quite visible on both statuettes ; red on the lips, black on the beard, eyebrows, and pupils. According to the photographs sent to me and the particulars accompanying them, the sex was clearly marked in both cases with the help of the paint-brush. These marks have been faithfully reproduced by our draughtsman (Fig. 107). We have not seen the original, however, and doubts are suggested by the absence of any sign of the feminine gender in the contour of the breast, and by the presence of a long tight tunic, which throws some doubt upon the genuineness of the painted pudenda. Before we can allow that sculpture made use of the theme mentioned by Macrobius, some figure must be found in which the 1 MACROBIUS, Saturnales, Hi. 8. 2 CESNOLA, Cyprus, p. 132.