Phœnician sculpture is almost exclusively represented by metal-work, and, as this was mostly beaten, it is natural that it should assume that peculiar style of conventionalization which, even in works of stone, reminds us of empaistic prototypes,—that is to say, of the characteristic forms and modes of conception originally decided by the properties of beaten metal. This style is shown by the Phœnician leaved ornaments upon architectural details, and is especially striking in the representations of animal forms. Upon a frieze at Saida (Fig. 97), for example, is a remarkable illustration of the Phœnician sphyrelaton, which enables us to understand the form of the bulls upon the brazen laver in the Temple of Jerusalem. The half-lions upon the monument of Amrith, also, although carelessly carved and much weathered, are still more interesting in this regard. (Figs. 95 and 98.) Besides their peculiarities as imitations of empaistic work, especially recognizable in the primitive legs, they show some reminiscences of Egyptian granite forms and of a Mesopotamian conception of animal nature, marked also upon the bull’s-head by the strap-like formation of the sinews. Less direct insight can be gained from other Phœnician sculptures because of their more advanced state of destruction. The rock-cut reliefs of Gineh and of Mashnaka, however, well deserve to be mentioned. The first shows upon one side an animal, apparently a bear, leaping upon a man, while at the right, in a sunken rectangular frame, is an enthroned figure, and in another a man in front view, with two dogs, which are scarcely recognizable. Enough is still preserved to show that the work is not of Egyptian origin, but may more justly be compared to Assyrian sculptures, though without the stiff character of courtly ceremonial peculiar to the works of Nineveh. The two rock-cut reliefs of a mountain-pass near Mashnaka (Fig. 99) are more important to the history of the architecture than to that of the sculpture of Western Asia, because of the remarkable forms of the capitals represented upon them; they will be considered in connection with Solomon’s Temple. The smaller, movable sculptures found in Phœnicia, which were possibly not the work of the country, are of less interest; they usually exhibit decided Egyptian influence. Numerous marble sarcophagi found in Saida are characterized by the confusion of style peculiar to Phœnicia. The covers are imitated from the swathed human forms represented upon the lids of Egyptian mummy-coffins; the heads betray in some measure the influence of Greece, and render it probable that they were executed in the time of the Seleucidæ.
As might be expected from the position of the country, lying between Egypt and Chaldæa, and from the national commerce and manufactures, which attracted the products of both countries, the artistic style of Phœnicia was a mixture of Egyptian and Mesopotamian elements. This was, of course, also the case with that of the Jews, who, in their architecture and sculpture, were as dependent upon the Phœnicians as were the primitive Romans upon the Etruscans. The influence of Egypt was felt in Palestine in a greater degree than in Phœnicia, because the Israelites had grown to a people upon the banks of the Nile, and without doubt transplanted many artistic conceptions, as well as methods and details, to the Promised Land. This is noticeable in the tabernacle and in the temple, the latter, as is well known, receiving its general disposition from its relation to that former encampment. The tabernacle (Fig. 100) is in fundamental character a repetition in movable tents of the triple Egyptian temple system of court, hall, and cella. At the time of the emigration of the Jews from their long sojourn in Goshen, they could have been familiar only with Egyptian forms; we cannot mistake if we suppose them, before their intercourse with the Phœnicians, to have supplied all their artistic needs from Egyptian precedents.
The simple enclosure of the tabernacle formed a court, with a front of fifty cubits, and twice as long as it was broad. There were twenty-one columns, like tent-poles, upon the sides, and eleven upon the front; those of the corners being counted twice. These supports were five cubits high, ornamented with silver capitals, and standing in sockets of bronze; they must have been entirely similar to the shafts represented upon Egyptian wall-paintings. They appear not to have been joined by cross-bars. White immovable hangings were fastened between them, beneath their capitals, with the exception of the four central intercolumniations of the eastern front, where hung movable curtains of blue, purple, and scarlet linen. The tabernacle itself, b, did not stand in the centre of this enclosure, but nearer the western end, probably so that a square of fifty cubits was left before its entrance, in which space there stood the altar, c, of earth and wooden sheathing for burnt-offerings, five cubits square and three cubits high, and the laver of brass, d. There thus remained upon the three other sides a space of twenty cubits between the tabernacle and the enclosure. This disposition is not expressly affirmed, but may naturally be assumed from the indications presented by the dimensions of the tabernacle, which was thirty cubits long and ten broad. Except in the front, e, where were five columns, it was formed of forty-eight boards overlaid with sheet-gold. These boards, like the poles of the enclosure, were not rammed into the earth, but stood upon double sockets of silver; they were fastened together by tenons and by bars, which were pushed through projecting golden rings. The arrangement of the five columns of the front, also overlaid with gold, is not certain. It is hardly possible that they were placed in antis; for, although the shafts were but thin poles, the six intercolumniations thus formed would have had a width of only one and a half cubits each—too narrow for passage. The two outermost columns may, from this consideration, be assumed to have stood before the ends of the boarded wall, in prostyle arrangement, or close upon this, as indicated in the plan at e; a method of avoiding the narrowing of the space by the two exterior intercolumniations which was adopted in much later times upon the so-called tombs of Absalom and Zachariah, to be considered below, where the forms may have been in some measure decided by reminiscences of these primitive constructions. If the ten cubits of the tabernacle front were divided into four parts instead of six, passage would have been easy.
There is no information concerning the appearance of these shafts. Their sockets of bronze may have been similar to the high bases of Moorish columns, and to those which support the canopy-poles of our churches. If the shafts were neither connected by cross-braces nor rammed into the earth, they must have been provided with a footing even broader than that of either of the instances mentioned, and have resembled the wide-spreading plinths of Egyptian lotos columns. That the columns were disproportionately slim is evident from the consideration that five shafts of normal Egyptian, or Greek Doric, proportions, ten cubits high, would have entirely occupied the narrow front of the tabernacle, and have left no space for the intercolumniations. Mere tent-poles would have been sufficient, as the building was provided with no fixed roof, but was covered, like the tents of Bedouins, with colored linen, cloths of goat-hair, and the skins of rams and seals. As this covering received its chief support from the side walls, a light epistyle of wood was sufficient to unite the summits of the front columns. It cannot be said that there was any entablature, in the proper sense of the word.