Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/405

 METALLURGY. 367 place than on the bowl of Esmunjair (Vol. I. Fig. 36), and this is what Maspero says about them : " These signs do not form any connected text. Symbols and even words are strung together without any thought as to their signification ; to weep, king of FIG. 281. Handle of a vase. In the New York Museum. the two Egypts, and so on. Here and there the engraver has foisted in the letter formed by two upright plumes, just for the sake of symmetry. The symbols in the cartouches are quite untranslateable. . . . The hieroglyphs are good in style, but the FIGS. 282, 283, 284. Silver ewers. From Cesnola. engraver has disfigured a group or symbol here and there. The decoration as a whole, and the shapes of the letters, recall the style of the twenty-sixth dynasty." 1 1 Corpus Ins:riptionum Semiticarum, pars. i. p. 216. In his notes to M. Renan's article in the Gazette Archeologique of 1876 (p. 15), MASPERO makes a remark which is not without importance, namely, that the engraver of this cup has made use of none of those symbols which appear only in inscriptions later than the twenty-sixth dynasty, an indication of no slight antiquity.