Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/199

 FIGURES OF DIVINITIES. curly beard. But as if to avoid a complete rupture with ancient traditions, he is sometimes endowed with a youthful beard, which gives his countenance a look of greater virility (I^igs. 113 and "5). After Aphrodite the god to whom the greatest number of statues was raised in the kingdoms of Kition and Idalion, was, then, the deity who became finally confounded with the Greek Herakles. 1 As to whether the Phoenicians called him Melkart, or Esmoun, or as we find it on many epigraphic texts from Kition, Melkart-Esmoun, we cannot say for certain. 2 None of the dedicatory inscriptions addressed to those deities have come down to us with any such figured representation as might have enabled us to identify the gods to whom they were addressed. FIG. 115. Fragment of a limestone statue of Hercules. Height 25 inches. Louvre. There is another god whose images should, if we judge from the inscriptions, be found on the temple sites of the same district ; I mean that Reshef-hes or Reshef-Mikal in whom the Cypriot Greeks recognized the Amyclean Apollo. In Greek and Phoenician in- scriptions we find mention of several statues and other offerings made to him by the island princes. 3 Some have wished to 1 We have already pointed out the place he held upon the coins struck by the kings of Kition, as well as upon those of the Phoenician princes. 2 Corpus Insc. Semit. Pars. I. Nos. 16, 23, and 24. 3 Corpus Insc. Semit. Pars. I. Nos. 10, 89, 9, 9'. 93, 94- According LENORMANT (writing under the pseudonym of E. de Chanot) the temple of Ath.cn. on the site of which so many figures and inscriptions wore found, was VOL. II. A A