Fig. 220.—Pygmy in terra-cotta. (Louvre.)
We know that ceramics was never highly developed in Assyria and Chaldæa; accordingly, as soon as Egyptian influence could show itself in the political sphere in Phœnicia, the pseudo-Egyptian style was not slow to replace the pseudo-Assyrian style in ceramics. The figurines of the new school, fashioned like the preceding ones in orange-red clay, represent women standing or sitting, sometimes suckling a child, holding a fan, a pigeon, or the lunar disk. The Phœnicians even learned from the Egyptians to coat their statuettes with green or blue enamel, analogous to that which is called Egyptian faïence, so that it is sometimes difficult to say whether the enamelled statuettes found in the tombs of Phœnicia are imported from Egypt or are works of native industry. In their course of servile imitation Phœnician craftsmen have reproduced even the hieroglyphic characters, which they distorted because they did not understand the sense of them.
Fig. 221.—Pygmy in terra-cotta. (Louvre.)
The type most frequently copied by the Phœnicians is the grotesque god Bes or the embryo god Ptah, whom they turned into the god Pygmæus, called Patæcus by Herodotus. This large-headed and bandy-legged dwarf, of repulsive obesity, the type of deformity and ugliness, is met with everywhere in Phœnician pottery.
