Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/439

 FURNITURE AND OBJECTS OF THE TOILET. 399 cables and rosettes occur as well as several on which the artist has carved human figures. On one (Fig. 343), we see a nude female figure, and on another (344) a head with a peculiar arrangement of hair, both carried out with great care. The modelling of the head speaks of a Greek rather than of a Semitic artist, and we only mention this ivory here because it seems to have been made at the expense of an earlier Phoenician carving. On the back of the prism appear the hind-quarters of a decidedly Asiatic lion. On other tablets of a similar kind we find animals carried out with the loose, summary execution which, in such things, marks the Phoenician artisan (Fig. 346). In the same case as these fragments FIG. 339. Fragment of an ivory case. From Renan. FIG. 340. Fragments of an ivory box or coffer. there are the remains of an ivory box in the form of a ship. The lid is in the shape of a swan with its neck turned back towards its tail. This motive is quite Egyptian. In the Egyptian galleries of the British Museum I found two ivory boxes on which exactly the same motive is repeated ; unfortunately they are broken. We may guess that when they were complete they represented a swan feeding its young. By the side of one of these boxes two small fishes in ivory of exactly the same tone are placed. Most likely they belonged to the same whole. In this industry the taste for motives of Egyptian origin lasted down to a very late period. The Lawrence-Ce.,nola collection, in London, possesses a small ivory coffer dating, it would seem, only