Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/187

FIGURES OF DIVINITIES. 165 20), and at first sight we are almost tempted to see an image of him in the Colossus discovered at Amathus in 1873 and now in the Imperial Museum of Constantinople (Fig. no). 1 Anything stranger or more hideous could scarcely be imagined. The huge ears are covered with hair inside ; the head is crowned with two short horns with a hole behind them, in which, perhaps, a plume like that on the heads of Bes was fixed. The hair all radiates from the edge of this hole ; it is short in front and plastered down upon the brow ; it is long at the back and divided into three heavy tresses which fall upon the neck and shoulders. The square-cut beard is curled in a fashion similar to that of the Assyrian Colossi. The arms are decorated with chevrons, proba- bly tattoo-marks, a barbarous ornament to be found on several Egyptian figures of Bes. 2 The body is covered with small cuts, representing hairs ; a lion's skin is held about the loins by a buckle. In each hand the god holds the hind leg of a lioness whose fore-paws touch the ground. Her head was attached by tenons and is now missing. The mouth must have been pierced as a conduit, for a rectangular pipe led from the back of her head through the whole thickness of the group. In later times the Greeks made Silenus play the 'same useful part ; the water flowed from the skin which he carried on his shoulder or pressed between his arms ; and Silenus is one of those types to the making of which went more than one feature of the Asiatic Bes. 3 What name should we give to this colossus ? By his large face, round eyes and thick eyebrows, by the hairiness of his trunk and limbs, he seems related to Silenus and the fauns ; but Silenus was no destroyer of wild beasts, and moreover it has been truly remarked that so far Cyprus has not yielded a single monument connected, in any degree, with the Dionysiac cycle. 4 No statue either of stone or terra-cotta has been found representing either Bacchus himself or any one of the genii who formed his cortege. In Cyprus the Asiatic goddess had no rivalry to fear from the 1 SoRLiN-DoRiGNY, Statue eolossale decouverte a Atnathonte (Gazette areheologique, 1879, p. 230 and plate xxi.). REINACH, Catalogue du Musce imperial a" Antiquity, pp. 48-49. 2 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. II. Fig. 294. 3 The paper by M. Heuzey, quoted on the preceding page, is chiefly devoted to throwing light upon this analogy between Bes and Silenus. 4 HEUZEY, Catalogue, p. 178.