Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/292

 268 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. Phoenician inscription or even an isolated letter, but some of the pottery found at Tharros is not unlike things made in Cyprus either in form or decoration. 1 The gourd form, so common in Cyprus, and that of a skin bottle, are both met with. 2 In the latter case the surface is decorated with lotus flowers. And it is difficult to avoid recognizing Phoenician taste in two disks of white terra-cotta as to the size of which we are unfortunately told nothing ; in the absence of such knowledge we cannot even guess their use. One of the two is decorated with four crescents each inclosing a half disk and flanked by lily-shaped buds (Fig. 204) ; 3 in the centre a rosette like an open flower. On the other disk we find those palmettes which we have already encountered more than once in Phoenicia (Fig. 205).* FIG. 204. Terra-cotta disk. From Crespi.* From the little we know of her ceramics it would seem then that the potters of Phoenicia employed only that form of decoration 1 E. PAIS, la Sardegna prima del dominio romano, p. 90. The main types of this industry are brought together in CRESPI'S plate E (Catalogo). 2 CRESPI (Catalogo), plate E, figs. 5 and 8. 3 Elsewhere the crescent embraces a whole disk. M. CLERMONT-GANNEAU pro- poses an ingenious explanation for the group thus formed. May it not represent, he asks, the phenomenon known in France as la lumiere cendree, in England as the old moon in the arms of the new ? In that case it would be a symbol, not of the sun's birth from the moon, but of the latter's renewal by her own power. 4 " It would seem that fabriques of common pottery existed from the earliest times at Tharros, Olbia, Sulcis, and other places in the island. We may come to this conclusion, in the first place from the enormous quantity of fragments found in the Sardinian graveyards ; secondly, from the quality of the earth of which these things are made. Similar deposits still exist in the neighbourhood of the towns in question." (Letter from M. VIVANET, dated February 19, 1881). 5 Catalogo, plate E, figs, i and 2.