Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/58

 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. A small bronze in the Pereti6 collection seems to represent another form of homage to the divinity (Fig. 2). A seated personage with a robe falling to his feet allows his fingers to stray over the strings of a lyre ; his head is uncovered and his long hair falls in ample masses upon his shoulders. In this statuette we may recognize some priest whose business it was to chant hymns before the altar ; several replicas have been furnished by Cyprus. On a torso belonging to M. de Clercq the costume is arranged in a way that reminds us of the statue from Sarepta (Fig. 26). But the heads found at Amrit might themselves be arranged into a series of very great interest, especially from a chronological point of view. We should not hesitate to class as the oldest those which seem to have been inspired by Assyria ; in them we find the same helmets, the same crimped hair and beards, as in many a figure from Mesopotamia. By insensible transitions we arrive at frag- ments in which the influence of archaic Greek art may be clearly traced, and finally we come to a head which recalls the marbles from ^Egina ; by the small curls on its forehead, by its fine profile and straight nose, it suggests an Apollo by Onatas or some master of his time. Between the two extremes of the series some curious variations may be noticed. Here the eyes are turned up at their outer corners, elsewhere they are horizontal or round in shape after the Cypriot type. Some, too, wear the pointed cap so common in Cyprus. When all these fragments are arranged in a museum so that they may be studied at leisure and reproduced, the historian of art will be in a position to form a more precise idea of the progress of Phoenician sculpture. Now that we have reviewed all the remains of Phoenician icono- graphy we naturally ask ourselves whether any of these figures really are meant for portraits of individuals. In our opinion there can be no hesitation in answering No. All the heads belonging to one period resemble each other. The differences between them are only those of sex, age and costume. In one series the Egyptian or Assyrian type prevails, in another that of Greece ; but nowhere do we find the slightest attempt to seize and mark the particular features which distinguish individuals and allow them to be surely recognized. by their friends. The Phoenician artist was content to figure an old man, a woman, or a young man, in a general way ; the means upon which he counted for the