Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/383

 METALLURGY. 345 the principal dish ; the artist, however, only shows us the religious preliminaries. " 5. The hunter, seated on a portable throne and sheltered by an umbrella, invokes the blessing of the gods on the feast, and they, represented by the disks of the sun and moon, hang over the smoking meats. " 6. The feast ended, the hunter remounts his chariot to return home ; but at this moment he is attacked by a huge ape, which has been lying in wait for him while he ate. The hunter seems lost, but by a miracle the deity saves the faithful wor- shipper who has just shown himself so ready to fulfil his religious duties ; she sweeps down and carries off hunter, driver, chariot and horses through the air. " 7. The ape's first attack thus defeated, the chariot is replaced on the ground and started in pursuit of the now flying beast, which is caught and overthrown. " 8. The hunter alights and gives the ape the coup-de-grace. A bird of prey hovers over the group and awaits its share of the spoil. " 9, This exploit finished, our hero remounts his chariot and returns to the castle he left in the morning." l In order to bring the whole significance of the scene more vividly before the reader M. Clermont-Ganneau has cast it into the form of a playbill, dividing it into two acts and nine scenes and giving an orthodox dramatis persona and description of the scenery. To thus penetrate the meaning of the artist required no slight acumen in the modern critic, but no such difficulty existed for contemporaries. Being quite familiar with such things, they could see at a glance what the decoration meant. They had no more hesitation in reading such a pictured story than a modern child has in understanding a set of plates to Tom Thumb or Puss in Boots. It is more difficult to give a plausible explanation to the scenes in the centre medallion. That they have a definite meaning we believe with M. Clermont-Ganneau, but in the absence of any hint as to the sense of the tale here unfolded by the artist we are compelled to leave that meaning obscure. M. Clermont- 1 CLERMONT-GANNEAU. rimagerie phcnicienne, pp. xi., xii. Into this analysis, taken from M. Clermont-Ganneau's introduction, we have introduced certain details that are only to be found in his first chapter. VOL. IT. V V