Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/39

 FIGURES OF DEITIES. 17 passed by the time the Phoenician towns began to strike money. Neither do we find the same goddess, sitting or standing, with a dove held against her chest (Vol. I. Figs. 20 and 142), nor the deity with wide hips, nor the one with a child in her arms (Vol. I. Figs. 143 and 144), in whom we have recognized a goddess presiding over pregnancy and maternity. Time has been so unkind to Phoenician works in stone that many a type which must have once been popular is now extant only in terra-cotta statuettes, or on coins and engraved gems. We find an instance of this in a strange figure which had a great effect upon Herodotus. In telling us how Cambyses entered the temple of Ptah at Memphis and mocked at the sacred image there adored, he says : " The image of Hephaistos is very like FIG. 14. Fragment of terra-cotta statuette. From Tharros. Height 55 inches. Cagliari Museum. the Phoenician pataikoi, the figures stuck up by the Phoenicians on the prows of their galleys ; for those who have not seen them I will say what they are : they represent pygmies." l These figures were of carved and painted wood, like a modern figure-head ; we can hardly hope, therefore, to recover any, but what Herodotus says about them allows us to recognize these 1 HERODOTUS, iii. 37. It has been suggested that this word ZlaraiKos, for which no sufficient etymology can be found in the Semitic dialects, is nothing but a Greek transliteration of Ptah ; we do not know how the name of the Egyptian god was pronounced, and other examples of the. substitution of het for kappa may be quoted. On this question see M. BERGER'S Pygmee, Pygmalion, note sur !e nom propre Baal Melee, p. 355 (Mcmoires de la Societe de Linguistique, vol. iv. pp. 347-3S 6 )- VOL. II. V