Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/276

 252 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. period when Greek influence was powerful in Phoenicia. It would be easy to quote a number of intaglios on which Phoenician or Aramaean inscriptions are combined with an image clearly Greek ; l but such things belong to Hellenic art ; their character is not changed by the mere addition of a few Semitic letters. On the other hand, we have here reproduced certain monuments whose execution betrays the influence of Hellas because their types had been invented by nations who had long preceded her on the world's stage. It was our duty to follow such themes, the first-born of plastic art, down to the end of their career, down even to the moment when they survived by the mere habit of living^ and were repeated to satiety by peoples who had long forgotten their sense. Nearly all the intaglios we have mentioned appear to have come originally from western Asia or, at least, from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The provenance of the great majority is known and the presumptions drawn from it are confirmed by col- lateral evidence. As for those whose origin has been forgotten they may be classed with almost complete certainty by their own internal characteristics. Our aim has been to arrive at a fair know- ledge of what the lapidaries of Tyre, whom Ezekiel shows us covering the king's person with their gems, produced ; and no way to success seemed better than to visit the actual sites of their most famous workshops and to follow, as it were, the traces left upon the ground by the industry in question. An inquiry thus conducted could hardly fail, especially as the conclusions to which it led could be supplemented by a whole- series of monuments from another point in the ancient world. A calculator likes to test his calcula- tions, and the student of Phoenician glyptics may have the same satisfaction by visiting those Sardinian graveyards to which we have already conducted our readers ; he will there find the counter- parts of the objects he picked up in Syria and Cyprus. 2 1 DE VOGUE, Melanges d 1 archeologie orientale, p. 119. 2 It was not till long after these pages were written it was not, in fact, until their printing was complete, that vol. Iv. of the Annales de rinstitut de correspondance archeologique, with Prof. EBERS'S important paper, Antichitb sarde e loro provenienza (pp. 76-135, plate ii. of the Monumenti and Tavole d'aggiunta, C-Ha), came into our hands. We should much have liked to profit by the remarks of the learned Egyptologist and to borrow from his plates, but it was too late. We were enabled, however, to gather that on the whole our ideas and those of Professor Ebers agreed. In his catalogue he distinguishes between, firstly, objects of Egyptian manufacture