Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/409

 METALLURGY. 371 Dali, for instance, the design is rude and awkward (Fig. 206) ; rightly or wrongly it gives the impression of a very ancient, almost primitive work. On the other hand, in two cups from the same place and now in the Louvre (Figs. 270 and 272), in the two cups from Praeneste (Vol. I. Fig. 36, and above, Fig. 267), in those from Amathus (Fig. 271) and Curium (Fig. 276) and in the mounts of the bronze crater from Cyprus (Fig. 279), the art of the Phoenician chaser and engraver arrived at its apogee. In the cups and craters found at Caere the execution, which is very careful in its way, is yet cold and heavy ; the artist has followed his Egyptian models with a hand to which freedom is yet a stranger (Figs. 273 and 275). These differences are easily explained. The industry in question lasted many centuries and flourished at many points in the Phoenician world ; in Phoenicia proper ; in Kition and, no doubt, in other Cypriot towns ; at Carthage. There is every ground for believing that certain cups found on the banks of the Tigris are of Phoenician workmanship. Among the cups found in Cyprus there are some on which motives appear that remind us of certain monuments of Cypriot sculpture ; it is likely that they were made in the island itself by Phoenician artisans. The inscription on the cup of Palestrina shows certain peculiarities which lead us to believe that it was engraved in Africa, at Carthage, rather than in Syria. 1 The other cup from Praeneste (Fig. 267), betrays its origin by a still more significant feature ; one of the personages of the little drama figured upon it is a great anthropomorphic and troglodyte ape, in which naturalists recognize an inhabitant of the African continent with whom the Carthaginians must have become acquainted in the course of those explorations they pushed as far as the Gaboon. Who does not remember the passage in the Periplus of Hanno, in which the traveller speaks of " women covered with hair and called by interpreters gorillas" ? 2 Three of them were killed by the sailors and their skins taken to Carthage, where they were deposited in a temple, to remain there until the capture of the city by the Romans. 3 The males, says the author of the Periphis> defended themselves so well by throwing 1 RENAN, Patere d' argent Phenicienne dcconrcrte a Palestrina (Gazette Archlologiyue 1877, p. 1 8). - Periplus, 18. 3 PLINY, Nat. Hist. vi. 36.