Phoenician statues are almost always more or less draped. Sometimes
nothing is worn besides the short tunic, or _shenti_, of the Egyptians,
which begins below the navel and terminates at the knee.[717] Sometimes
there is added to this a close-fitting shirt, like a modern “jersey,”
which has short sleeves and clings to the figure, so that it requires
careful observation to distinguish between a statue thus draped and
one which has the _shenti_ only.[718] But there are also a number of
examples where the entire figure is clothed from the head to the ankles,
and nothing is left bare but the face, the hands, and the feet. A cap,
something like a Phrygian bonnet, covers the head; a long-sleeved robe
reaches from the neck to the ankles, or sometimes rests upon the feet;
and above this is a mantle or scarf thrown over the left shoulder,
and hanging down nearly to the knees. Ultimately a drapery greatly
resembling that of the Greeks seems to have been introduced; a long
cloak, or _chlamys_, is worn, which falls into numerous folds, and
is disposed about the person according to the taste and fancy of the
wearer, but so as to leave the right arm free.[719] Statues of this
class are scarcely distinguishable from Greek statues of a moderately
good type.
Phoenician sculptors _in the round_ did not very often indulge in
the representation of animal forms. The lion, however, was sometimes
chiselled in stone, either partially, as in a block of stone found by
M. Renan at Um-el-Awamid, or completely, as in a statuette brought by
General Di Cesnola from Cyprus. The representations hitherto discovered
have not very much merit. We may gather from them that the sculptors
were unacquainted with the animal itself, had never seen the king of
beasts sleeping in the shade or stretching himself and yawning as
he awoke, or walking along with a haughty and majestic slowness, or
springing with one bound upon his prey, but had simply studied without
much attention or interest the types furnished them by Egyptian
or Assyrian artists, who were familiar with the beast himself. The
representations are consequently in every case feeble and conventional;
in some they verge on the ridiculous. What, for instance, can be weaker
than the figure above given from the great work of Perrot and Chipiez,
with its good-humoured face, its tongue hanging out of its mouth, its
tottering forelegs, and its general air of imbecility? The lioness’
head represented in the same work is better, but still leaves much to be
desired, falling, as it does, very far behind the best Assyrian models.
Nor were the sculptors much more successful in their mode of expressing
animals with whose forms they were perfectly well acquainted. The sheep
carried on the back of a shepherd, brought from Cyprus and now in the
museum of New York, is a very ill-shaped sheep, and the doves so often
represented are very poor doves.[720] They are just recognisable, and
that is the most that can be said for them.
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