Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/31

 FIGURES OF DEITIES. afforded. At the same time he followed those oriental artists,' whose pupil he was, in making use, for his smaller figures, of bronze and other metals, of painted and enamelled faience, of ivory, and no doubt, of wood. All these materials behave kindly enough under the tool, and take any noble and expressive form the artist has mind to conceive ; nothing more is required by real plastic genius, when it desires to give proof of its nature, vigour, and originality, when it feels impelled to render life in its various aspects with a simple and loyal sincerity. Were the Phoenicians governed by any such feelings ? We can only answer that question after passing such monuments in review as from their place of discovery or internal evidence seem to be surely Phoe- nician. The number of such things is small enough ; so that we shall not hesitate to reproduce nearly every statue or relief in stone which has come from the East into those public and private museums of Europe which are open to us. As for the terra-cotta statuettes, of them we must make a careful selection ; we shall try to include every thing of special interest, and even to reproduce each type in all its principal varieties. 2. Figures of Deities. First of all we must put aside a certain number of monuments which appear to be of foreign origin, though found on the soil of Phoenicia. Some of these are sculptures imported from Egypt, like the sarcophagus of Esmounazar and a fragment of green basalt in which both inscription and material are Egyptian. It bears upon it a reference to some " temple of the goddess Bubastis, goddess of life in the two regions." l We may guess that artists were even brought from the Nile valley to work in Syria. This we may gather from a relief found at Byblos (Fig. 6). It is sculptured on a huge block of Phoenician limestone, but its subject, its style, and its hieroglyphs betray the hand of a Memphite or rather, perhaps, of a Saite artist. Only a part of the group now remains, but the rest may be easily divined. A Pharaoh, recognizable as such from the asp on his forehead, receives the embrace of a goddess crowned with that solar 1 REN AN, Mission, p. 56. VOL. II. C