Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/273

 GEMS. 249 the narrow field, but otherwise the arrangement agrees with what the historian of Phoenicia tells us, and we may be allowed to believe that El is the deity here figured. The seal bears the name Ouzzd. 1 We meet with him again in a broken scarab found in Italy, but obviously of eastern origin (Fig. 183). The intaglio is very strong and refined in execution and must date from a considerably later period than most of those examples of Phoenician gem-cutting that have come down to us. The helmet is Greek and the rest of the subject is frankly Asiatic. One pair of wings is fastened to the shoulders of the god while the other forms the often-met-with group of the winged disk. In this case the disk is surrounded by rays" which leave no doubt as to its identity with the sun. The god, then, is the master of the sky ; the great deity who crosses the whole visible universe in the course of a few hours. He is helmeted like a hero to suggest his irresistible power. We have already had occasion to point out another type both upon the oldest glyptic monuments (Vol. I. Fig. 141 ; Vol. II. FIG. 183. Broken scarab.'-' Figs. 19, 20), and upon those coins which repeated and perpetuated the images of the ancient Syrian gods in every town founded by the Phoenicians, and that down to the last days of antiquity (Fig. u). The type in question is the feather-crowned dwarf who, under a variety of names and attributes, embodied the idea of benevolent, generous and almost irresistible force exerted in the service of poor humanity. Whether this deity was one of the Cabeiri or whether he should he called Bes or Pouma, matters little ; we have already given so many reproductions of his form that we need not draw upon gems for more. These might, indeed, afford us further elements of comparison, but such materials are already vast and they increase every day, and we must here be content with having shown, by a series of carefully-chosen examples, how Phoenicia adopted the art of gem-cutting and what use she made of it. 1 DE VOGUE, Melanges, 6*, p. 109. 2 In the Danicourt Collection. VOL. II.