Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/28

 6 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. hieroglyphs are often nonsense, introduced merely for the sake of ornament. In fact, like so many other creations of Phoenicia, they bear numerous signs of that eclecticism which took its profit where it found it, of that perpetual combination and adaptation which stood to the Phoenicians in the place of high art, and brought them wealth rather than glory. In Fig. 3 we reproduce a statuette of glazed earthenware, which may be surely ascribed to Phoenicia. It is a small group, hardly more than four inches high, covered with a blue enamel. It is rather flat, but the modelling is careful both front and back. It was found in Cyprus. It represents the god Bes seated on the shoulders of a woman, who holds him by his two feet. The Fig. 3. Group in glazed earthenware. Louvre. Height 4fV inches. woman stands upon a small lotus-flower capital. Bes has the same features as in Egypt, 1 but the female beneath him does not belong to the Egyptian pantheon. By her short wide proportions and frank nudity, she belongs rather to the strange class of female divinities which we encountered in Babylonia and Susiana. 2 In this case we are led to ascribe the work to Phoenicia, less on account of any shortcomings in its execution than because of this mixture of two foreign types. Statuettes in this glazed earthenware are not, however, very numerous in our Phoenician collections. Phoenicia seems rather 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II. Figs. 280, 281, 294. 2 Art in Chaldaa and Assyria, Vol. I. Fig. 16.