Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/315

THE TEMPLE IN CYPRUS. 293 very palmette. In this instance the imitation is so faithful that upon the stone (between the palmette proper and the volute) we may distinguish the rounded head of the rivet which, in the bronze, was used to attach the handle to the body of the vessel. 1 The appearance of the bull in the hollow of the handle is natural enough. Both in Egypt and Assyria he was a favourite object for the beauty of his form and for the ideas he symbolized. At Jerusalem the brazen sea was supported on the backs of twelve bulls. It is in its proportions and in the motives of its decoration that the oriental character of the Amathus vase resides, for it does not date apparently from any very remote antiquity. By their execution, the bulls in the handles offer a marked analogy with the animal engraved on the fine Cypriot coins attributed by the Due de Luynes to Salamis, and to about the year 500 B.C. ;' 2 we reproduce one here so that our readers may judge of the resemblance for themselves (Fig, 214). FIG. 214. Coin of Cyprus. Among the contents of those Cypriot temples whose treasures excited the admiration of Roman travellers, thrones were certainly included ; chairs of stone or of bronze incrusted with eold and o silver. One of the former was found by Cesnola on the site of the temple of Golgos ; 3 he gives no drawing of it, but he figures two steps of the same material which were found close to the chair. Both are ornamented on their anterior faces with bas-reliefs 1 DE LONGPERIER had already called attention to this ; we have made considerable use of his paper on the Amathus vase and have borrowed his drawing {Musee Napoleon ///.), pi. xxxiii. 2 DE LUYNES, Numismatique et Inscriptions Cypriotes, 1852, p. 19, and plate iii. I-I2. 3 CESNOLA, Cyprus, p. 159. The remains of a bronze throne were found by Cesnola in one of those chambers in which the treasure of the temple of Curium was stored (Cyprus, p. 355). Lions' heads and paws and bulls' heads formed part of its ornament ; their arrangement may be easily divined from the analogy of Assyrian pieces of furniture of the same kind (Art in Clialdwa and Assyria, Figs. 193, 199, 200, 203).