Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/24

 2 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOZNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. done after a careful study of its remains, which are in even worse condition than those of Phcenician architecture. Phoenicia had no marble. She had nothing but a calcareous tufa, rather less close and fine in the grain than that of Cyprus. As a rule it was full of small holes and shells ; sculptors did their best to find blocks in which these defects did not occur and sometimes they succeeded in hitting upon one which lent itself fairly well to the chisel ; but they seem to have been thoroughly alive to the shortcomings of their native stone and to have tried to import a better material. Now and then they made use of the volcanic rocks to be met with in the district about Saffita, to the north of Phoenicia. The Louvre possesses some fragments of an anthropoid sarcophagus in brown lava. 1 The Sarepta torso is cut from a greyish pink lava, which must have come from the same region (Vol. I. Fig. 26). Finally, they seem to have brought from Egypt blocks of those fine hard stones which are so abundant in the Nile valley ; to this conclusion we are led partly by the lion in black granite in the Louvre, which seems to have been sculp- tured on the soil of Phoenicia (Vol. I. Fig. 34). As for marble, it was not till the sixth century that the Phoenicians began to import it from Greece ; after they had once begun they made frequent use of it. 2 In view of her close relations with Egypt and Chaldsea, we must suppose that Phoenicia understood how to make and utilize bronze from the very beginning of her career. Certain bronzes which date from the very birth of metallurgy are Phcenician in their origin, as we have every reason to believe. A figure found near Tortosa by M. Peretie and now in the Louvre, is one of these (Fig. i). 3 It represents a beardless warrior standing in an attitude of defence, his head surmounted by a very tall funnel-shaped helmet with two rings behind it to which, as well as to a pair of holes in the ears, an ornament has been fixed. He is clothed in a short tunic gathered into a broad belt about the waist. The eyeballs are now empty. The lance and buckler which he held respectively in his right hand and on his left arm have disappeared. To his feet, which are bare, still hang the sullage pieces ; their presence may be taken as evidence of the extreme 1 RENAN, Mission, pp. 45-46, and plate vi. 2 See, Vol. I. 3. 3 DE LONGPERIER, Musee Napoleon III. ; letterpress to plate xxi.