Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/395

 METALLURGY. 357 In all this Egyptian models dominate, but there are one or two figures, especially the robed god and the two heroes who struggle with the griffin, of which the prototype does not come from Egypt. In Fig. 275 we reproduce part of the inner zone of the silver cup of which we gave a fragment of the outer band in Fig. 273. Here the Egyptian character of the scene is more marked. The principal motive seems to be copied from an Egyptian stele. In our opinion it represents the survivors of a family bringing drink to their dead. The two women on the left are identical with those we find in Egyptian tombs, where they personify the domains of the defunct and bring him gifts. 1 In this same position the orfevre appears sometimes to have introduced feasts given by the living. On the outer zone of a bronze cup already mentioned we find the representation of a FIG. 275. Part of the decoration of a silver cup. From Griffi. scene like that on the Amathus sarcophagus (Fig. 144). A crater stands upon a tripod and servants hover about it ; some seated figures are drinking ; others sit upon couches ; one embraces a woman ; another has raised a woman in his arms. 2 Cypriot artists must have had a great liking for such scenes. There is, among the objects found in the island, a whole series of erotic, not to say obscene, pictures. Some of these we have seen in private collections, and the New York Museum might easily form a secret cabinet with those it possesses. Of course we cannot reproduce any of them here, but it was important to mention behind the group. In this same compartment there is a small drilled hole which must have been made to receive a string for suspension. 1 Compare them with those in Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II. Fig. 230. 2 AL. DI CESNOLA, Salatninia, pp. 53-55 and fig. 53.