Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/222

 198 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. contours are firm, the movements true and well understood. In the terra-cotta horses and donkeys yielded by the tombs, the profiles as a whole are fairly well grasped, but the modelling is very rude and elementary. In no instance does the artist appear to have taken an interest in the animal for its own sake, for the beauty of its form and movements ; he has been content to make him recognizable ; he has used him only as a necessary adjunct to the scenes he had to figure. A dog found in a tomb at Athieno records perhaps the love of hunting shown during life by the inhabitant of the grave. 1 Cows suckling their calves afford an emblem of that nursing goddess in whose temples such groups were dedicated. 2 A dolphin and a serpent chiselled in high relief would perhaps be explicable in similar fashion if we could only contrive to read the damaged inscription borne by the same slab. 3 A ram carried on a man's shoulders proclaimed him a sacrificing Fig. 133. Group of doves. Limestone. New York Museum. priest (Fig. 126). The countless stone doves were offerings to Aphrodite ; they are figured sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs, face to face (Fig. 133). All these images are equally mediocre and wanting in life and expression. But if animal shapes were to the Cypriot sculptor no more than heraldic images and the words of a conventional language, we can readily understand how he found pleasure in the employment of those composite forms which allow more complex ideas to be suggested. Fanciful beings are, in fact, very common in his work. Some of the best known seem to have been invented by him, such as the Chimsera, whose birthplace, according to the Greek poets, was in Asia Minor (Vol. I. Fig. 215). Other forms were imported from the East, by way of Phoenicia. Of such, for example, is the winged sphinx of which Cypriot decorators made such frequent use (Vol. I. Figs. 151, 152). It was from Egypt, where it served to represent the soul of the dead, that the type of a bird with a 1 CESNOLA, Cyprus, pp. 113-114. 2 Ibid. p. 158. 3 Ibid. p. 144.