Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/291

 PHOENICIAN CERAMICS. 267 The fact is that we can only look upon a vase as Phoenician when a Phoenician signature appears upon it. Now among the thirty Phoenician inscriptions collected by Cesnola in Cyprus and en- graved on four plates at the end of the volume, there are seven copied from earthenware vases found at Kition, Paphos, Idalion and Amathos. They are not simple graffiti, scratched on the surface with a point by some one other than the potter by whom the vases were made. 1 They are painted in the same black as the decorative designs, and painted before firing. Unfortunately most of these vases are simple pithoi, great jars of smooth clay in which wine and oil were kept. Only one belongs to another class, to that of decorated pottery ; it was found at Dali (Fig. 203). The decoration is the same in principle as upon the vase from Jerusalem t but the shape is more graceful and the attachment of the handles not without elegance. FIG. 203. Vase with Phoenician inscription. Height 13$ inches. From Cesnola. - We need only mention an earthenware vase from Palermo, 3 with an inscription showing that it belonged to a certain Azrubaal ; it is without ornament. Nothing of interest has been found in the Carthaginian excavations ; " yellowish potsherds with the traces of brown paint, curiously recalling the archaic vases found at Corinth, at Athens, in the island of Thera and at many other points in Greece and Etruria," 4 are vaguely talked about. As for Sardinia, we cannot learn that it has ever yielded a vase bearing either a 1 Two small vases have graffiti on the feet. The authenticity of these graffiti is considered by the editors of the Corpus to be much less certain than that painted inscriptions. 2 Cyprus, p. 68. 3 Corpus Inscrip. Semit. No. 133 and plate xxviii. 4 BEUL, Fouilles d Carthage, p. 56.