Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/243

 RELIEFS ON SARCOPHAGI. 219 On the second short side we find a chariot with two horses, in which the bearded individual of the feast is driven by his coach- man (Fig. 145). And this relief gives us a key to the sense of the whole, which is exactly the same as that of the pictures on the example from Amathus. The artist has figured the posthumous voyage by which the dead man was to arrive at the last resting- place of his soul. In the Amathus chest he showed us only the journey itself, here he supplements and completes it by repre- senting the defunct established in his final abode ; he answers our FIG, 145. Sarcophagus from Athieno. Second short side. question as to what the dead man will do when he reaches that distant bourne by showing him in possession of all the joys he prized in life, the excitement of the chase, the solace of those feasts at which all the senses were regaled at once. By the place it gives to the chariot, this sarcophagus carries on the funerary ideas and beliefs of Phoenicia, but the whole colour and physiognomy of the work is Greek. Force and ornament have an elegance and sobriety which we missed in the monuments