The earliest beginnings of the statuette proper show, as might be expected in primitive Greek art, a very limited range of ideas. As in marble, bronze, and wood, so also in clay, the type of the female deity reigns supreme. The primitive Hellenic type of goddess adopts two forms, both derived from an original in wood, the board-form or σανίς, and the column-form (κίων or ξόανον), each of which finds parallels in sculpture. The limbs are either completely wanting or of the most rudimentary description, the figure terminating below in a spreading base. Both these types are found in Rhodes, but on the mainland of Greece the columnar form is confined to the Mycenaean period. In the succeeding “Geometrical” age the board-like types rose into popularity at Athens and Tegea, and above all in Boeotia. Two varieties are found, a standing and a sitting type, and they are usually painted in the manner of the local vases (see p. 290). The later examples show a great advance in modelling, especially in the heads. The columnar form exhibits its development best in the terracottas of the Graeco-Phoenician period from Cyprus. The standing and sitting goddess (Plate VIII.) are the two principal types in archaic Greek art, and are remarkable for their wide distribution and universal popularity. The name of the goddess may vary with the locality, but the types remain almost identical, and the attributes show little variation. Another interesting archaic type is the so-called funeral mask or bust (Plate VIII.), of which the best examples have come from Rhodes. Being almost exclusively feminine, we must suppose that they ceased to represent the image of the dead person, as in Egypt and primitive Greece, and became images of the Chthonian goddess, Demeter or Persephone, represented under the form of a bust rising out of the earth.[424] Thus they played in the tombs the rôle of protection against evil influences, like the mask of Demeter Kidaria, worn by the priest at Pheneus in Arcadia on certain occasions.[425] Male masks are occasionally found, representing the Chthonian Dionysos. They are very rare after the fifth century. The purely divine and mythological types in the archaic period are very few in number. Of the Olympian deities few are represented, except in the conventional hieratic types, hardly to be differentiated one from another. But on certain sites are found representations of nature-goddesses, such as the Earth-mother with a child in her lap (Gaia Kourotrophos), or a nude goddess within a shrine, who may be a combination of Astarte and Aphrodite. These types are of Oriental origin, and are found in Cyprus, Rhodes, Naukratis, and Sardinia. They may represent offerings made after child-birth. Among the individualised deities we may point to figures of Hermes Kriophoros (from Rhodes and Sicily),[426] of Herakles,[427] or of the local nymph Kyrene, who appears holding the silphium-plant in a terracotta from Carthage.[428]