Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/151

DECORATION. 131 we can recognize as Phoenician all such objects as bear it, whether they come from Etruria or Sardinia, from Africa or Syria. 1 Take for instance a little marble column in the Louvre (Fig. 72) ; even if we did not know that it was brought from Tyre in 1852 byde Saulcy, we should not hesitate to declare its Phoenician origin. Its summit is crowned by an ornament made up of four petalled flowers, divided in the centre by a bud like that of the lotus. All this is Egyptian, but beneath the winged globe which appears rather lower down the shaft we encounter the disk and FIG. 71. Sidereal symbols from a Carthaginian stele. French National Library. FIG. 7-- Marble column. l.oure. Height 26 inches. crescent, and all doubt as to the provenance of the monument is al once removed. We may say, in fact, that it is signed, A conventional form whose Egyptian origin is no less certain is that of the sphinx. The Phoenician decorators seem to have made frequent use of it ; in almost every case they gave it wings. The Phoenician sphinxes, like those of Egypt, were often sculptured in the round and placed at the entrance to buildings. An instance of this is to be seen at Oum-el-Awamid, among the ruins of what 1 These groups of globe and crescent are found in the cemeteries of Sardinia in great numbers. See Bollettino Archeologico Sardo, vol. ii. p. 56 ; and vol. iii. pp. 105-107.