Fig. 217.—Bas-relief of Heracles and Eurytion. (Colonna-Ceccaldi, Monum. antiques de Cypre, pl. v.)
To the same Græcizing art belong all those iconic statues from the temples of Golgoi and Amathus, which, instead of the peaked cap or of the pshent, wear on their heads garlands of foliage or of narcissus, more or less high and more or less rich, but infinite in their variety. Like the statues found in Phœnicia to which we alluded above, they are portraits of priests, priestesses, or other personages who offer to the god for perpetuity the object which they hold in their hand: a flower, a fruit, a branch, a patera, a pyx, an alabastron, a bull’s head or a pigeon.
Few bas-reliefs have been noticed in Cyprus. However, a colossal statue of Heracles in the Græcizing style, found at Golgoi, had a pedestal decorated with a most remarkable bas-relief, reminding us of those in the Ninevite palaces. The ground is painted red to make the figures stand out; the relief is low and flat, the anatomical details of the figures are carefully studied and exaggerated in the Assyrian manner. The scene represents Heracles driving away the herds of Geryon, a subject which seems to be of Tyrian origin. Heracles, nude, with the lion’s skin on his back, was probably holding his bow, which has disappeared as well as his head; like the giant Izdubar, he is of colossal stature; before him is the dog Orthros, with three heads, already pierced by an arrow shot at him by Heracles; Eurytion flees with his herds; his beard and hair are treated in the Assyrian manner. He carries a whole tree, with which he was no doubt lashing his oxen; this tree is treated like those that figure on the walls of Nineveh.
Fig. 218.—Sarcophagus from Amathus. (New York Museum.)
Certain Cypriote sarcophagi are also decorated with Greek subjects, treated in the oriental manner: the birth of Chrysaor, who issues from the neck of Medusa, for instance, is seen; banqueting scenes and bull or boar hunts are found. A picture represented on the principal side of a sarcophagus from Amathus ([fig. 218]) is copied in servile fashion from the sculptures of Assyria and Egypt; there are rows of pearls, lotus-flowers and daisies; a climbing plant is even to be remarked here like the sacred tree on the Ninevite bas-reliefs. One of the figures holds the Asiatic umbrella, and the tassels of the horses are Assyrian. However, the figures of the cortège are Greek in style, attitude and costume. On the smaller sides are two oriental subjects: at one end four figures of Astarte in full face, of the type reproduced in profusion in Chaldæa and Phœnicia; at the other four figures of the god Pygmæus, who is made up, as we have seen, of Bes and Izdubar together.
In two words, Cypriote sculpture, fruitful as it is, lacks variety, like Egyptian sculpture and Assyrian sculpture, its two mistresses. It lives only by borrowing, and has invented nothing. What characterises the stone statues which it produced is immobility and hieratic stiffness, together with finish in the details and decoration. They have no features which proceed from a realistic study of nature. It has been remarked that these statues, intended to be set in rows along the inner walls of the temples, are scarcely at all modelled behind, and are flattened as if they had been carved out of slabs of insufficient thickness; moreover, though broad in the chest, they are narrow in the hips and feet; the legs are pressed closely together, so that they have to some degree the appearance of reversed cones. Cypriote art has no originality except in the Hellenic element, which it assimilates; the Cypriote artist is a Greek who has served his apprenticeship among the Orientals.