Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/97

 SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY OF PHOENICIAN SCULPTURE. 75 over the temples, a change which was due to local taste, although its point of departure is to be found in some of the Egyptian statuettes. An excellent example of the class is to be seen in the figure, unfortunately broken, of a woman striking a tambourine (Fig 67). The long horizontal eyes, and the thin, slightly aquiline nose, take up most of the face, leaving but little room for a remarkably small mouth and delicate chin. But this series was not the only representative of Egyptian art in Phoenicia. There is the beautiful little figure from Sardinia reproduced a few pages back (Fig. 49), as well as two important groups on which we have already had occasion to dwell ; the first gives a Phoenician rendering of the queer and grimacing little FIG. 67. Terra-cotta statuette. Height 5| inches. Louvre. god Bes (Figs. 21, 141, 294) ; the second does the same for the embryonic Ptah (Figs. 22, 27 178). " Side by side with the flagrant imitations of the Assyrian and Egyptian styles which we have just been noticing, there appears in the cemeteries of northern Phoenicia a third class of statuettes made of the same clay but in a style derived neither from Egypt nor Assyria, if we put aside a few traditional details of attitude and costume. These objects have, in fact, so much in common with the primitive archaism of Greece that the two are difficult to separate. " The distinctive features of the series are a straight and salient nose, a mouth very high up the face, and a large square chin.