Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/34

 12 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. impression. 1 It is broken in two pieces. The lower part of one piece is covered by mountains represented after the same conven- tion as in the Ninevite reliefs. Over these mountains marches a lion, and upon the lion stands an individual who can be nothing less than a god, seeing what trouble the sculptor has been at to symbolize his elevation above the rest of humanity. Now it is in the great reliefs at Bavian and Malthai, and on many Chaldaean and Assyrian cylinders, that we first encounter deities upon animals such as the dog, the winged bull, the horse and the lion.' 2 Our readers will remember that it was in Assyria that we met those divinities who seem to play with animals, and especially with those very animals which are generally selected as the symbols of irresistible force. On a funerary slab of bronze we saw a goddess holding a pair of serpents by their necks ; 3 upon a cylinder known to us only by the impression it has left on a clay tablet, we find two winged genii holding out the suspended bodies of a pair of eagles by their legs. 4 Upon the stele of Amrit it is a lion's whelp that the god holds up by the hind feet, a motive identical with that which occurs so often in the great reliefs of the Assyrian palaces (Fig. 8). 5 Finally we can produce from the Assyrian reliefs a model for the weapon brandished in the right hand of this god of Amrit ; the Khorsabad genius in our Fig. 8 wields just such an arm. On the other hand, there are details in this same relief which point unmistakably to Egypt. The gesture of the god is iden- tical with that of Pharaoh when he has a conquered enemy at his feet. 6 His asp-crowned helmet is more like the pschent than the Assyrian tiara, while his short robe recalls the dress of an Egyptian rather than the flowing robe of a Mesopotamian prince ; it is, in fact, neither more nor less than the schenti? Finally, the winged globe at the top of the stele is quite Egyptian in form ; it recalls, indeed, the most ancient type of that symbol. 8 Side by side with these motives borrowed from foreign countries 1 We owe our ability to reproduce this curious figure to the kindness of M. Clermont-Ganneau. He saw it in M. Peretie's collection in 1881, and took the photograph from which M. Saint-Elme Gander made our drawing. 2 Art in Chaldaa and Assyria, Vol. II. Figs. 120, 123-5. 3 Ibid. Vol. I. Fig. 162. 4 Ibid. Vol. II. Fig. 133. 6 Ibid. Vol. II. Fig. 351. 6 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. I. Figs. 13 and 85. ' Ibid. Vol. II. pp. 233-5. 8 Ibid. Vol. II. p. 152.