Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/201

 MEN. I79 It was important that we should show by a carefully chosen series of examples that the divine images adored in the oldest temples of the island began by having a very pronounced Asiatic character ; this is not the place, however, to point out other sacred types which are equally to be found in the island, but only in works essentially Hellenic in style and spirit. At present we have to confine ourselves to those divinities, the offspring of Egypt and Chaldaea, whose worship always preserved traces of its origin. As for the gods and goddesses carried by the ^olian colonists and other Hellens to that distant island in the east, there to lead, if we may be allowed the phrase, a thoroughly Greek existence, we shall encounter them at a later stage of our journey. For the present, then, we shall say nothing of the two female figures on a single throne in which Demeter and Persephone have been recognized ; l neither shall we follow the type of Aphrodite in the transformations it underwent at the hands of a school of modellers of Salamis "and Kition, who ended by producing works not unworthy, in their graceful severity, to be compared to the noblest and purest achievements of Greece. 2 We shall devote a chapter in our history of Grecian art to a description of those charming terra-cottas. t>.Men. After gods, men. All over Cyprus figures have been discovered with nothing, either in pose or attitude, to suggest a god. They represent the ancient inhabitants of the island ; represent them as they lived, in their daily occupations and in their working and gala clothes. Some of these figures come from tombs, from the society of the dead ; others were found on or near the sites of temples, where it was their duty to prolong the prayers and record the gratitude of the faithful. 3 This difference of origin is important but it will hardly furnish elements for a classification. In our museums the two categories are not kept separate, and it is now impossible to discover whether this or that monument was found in a graveyard or within the precincts of a shrine. As a rule figures placed in tombs were small, while excavations made on temple sites have yielded 1 HEUZEY, Catalogue, p. 184. l Ibid. pp. 173 198. 8 See Vol. I. pp. 264-268.