Fig. 187.—Tomb in the valley of Hinnom (after Saulcy).
CHAPTER VIII.
PHŒNICIAN AND CYPRIOTE ART.
The Phœnicians, established on the coast of northern Syria, were not simply the agents of commerce; they also carried the art of the great Asiatic civilisations to all the coasts upon which they set up their factories, and among all the races with whom they formed relations of business. Their manufactured products have no more marked originality than those of the Jews and Canaanites: a mixture of Egyptian and Assyrian art is observed in them. These two powerful foreign factors, if they had been brought into action by an ingenious and enquiring people, would no doubt have begotten a new art which would have summed them up and absorbed them, by combining them with the peculiar inventions of the national genius: this was the case in Greece, for example. But the Phœnicians, exclusively occupied with business, were content to seek sometimes from Assyria and sometimes from Egypt the elements of a bastard industry, in which the exotic forms are so little disguised and so imperfectly fused that it is as easy as possible to detect them.
If ancient authors and epigraphic texts attest the importance of the Phœnician factories in Greece, Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, and Africa, none of the great nations of antiquity has left fewer material traces than this of its industrial and artistic life. In Syria, Cyprus, Malta, and Carthage we have great trouble in finding vestiges of the structures raised by the Phœnician architects, or statues or ornaments which can be attributed to the craftsmen of this nation: the historian of art is obliged to glean in any direction that he can the poor waifs and strays which he considers, in spite of himself, as extremely precious, but which he would often disdain if they came from Assyria or Egypt. Cyprus, partly inhabited by a Hellenic population and thrown by nature like a bridge between Asia and Greece, scarcely forms an exception to this rule, although it offers by itself alone a larger material for oriental archæology than all the other Phœnician countries put together.
§ I. Temples.
Before the introduction of Egyptian and Assyrian influence into Syria, the Semitic and Canaanitish races of this country held the high places (bâmoth) in veneration. On the highest summit of the mountains, in spots which recalled ancient memories, on peaks that had been struck by lightning, stone altars were raised and victims were immolated upon them; the surrounding forest became a sacred grove. In the same way our Celtic ancestors erected their dolmens.
Soon, under Egyptian influence, the Phœnicians began to construct temples. The maabed (temple) of Amrith[90] is still an Egyptian temple on a small scale; as in the latter, there is a cella or tabernacle of stone, within which the divine image was contained. It is composed of slabs erected on three sides. One side remained open, and was only closed by a curtain. The monolithic slab of the roof is adorned on its four edges with a light border with mouldings, and projects like eaves above the door; in the interior it is cut in a semicircular form, so that it presents the appearance of a shallow vault. The rock which forms the base has been isolated from the mountain by sapping, and thus the chapel, including this natural pedestal, reaches 22 feet in height. At the edge of the surrounding court were certain structures, doubtless a colonnade bordering the sacred enclosure; but this has disappeared.