Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/90

 68 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. Lastly, on some of these monuments we find an emblem encountered in Sardinia (Vol. I. Fig. 174), and on the stele of Lilybseum (16. Fig. 232), namely, three cippi of unequal height on a single base, the middle one being the highest. In this we have in all probability a symbolical representation of one of those triads into which Phoenicia divided the chief members of her Pantheon. In one instance the pedestal on which the group stands is crowned by the Egyptian cornice, an arrangement already noticed in a stele from Sardinia (Ib. Fig. 233) The steles of Adrumetum carry us back to a period beyond that in which the Carthaginian sculptors did nothing but imitate forms FIG. 64. Terra-cotta mask. Height 9| inches. Louvre. invented by the Greeks, but a still more distant age is recalled by an object now in the Louvre, which was found in the reservoirs of El-Malka, to the west of Byrsa (Fig. 64^ " This mask of painted terra-cotta bears witness to the influence so long exercised by Egypt over Phoenicia. The general type of the head is the same as that on the lids of the mummy cases ; there is the same wig with its plaited ends falling to the shoulders. The modelling, however, lacks something of the Egyptian firmness and betrays a little of the Asiatic naturalism. This curious object is certainly descended from the masks placed on the dead in the Nile valley, examples of which have also been found in the ancient tombs of