If the very vestiges of Cypriote architecture have disappeared, it is not so with the works of the sculptor. The quarter of a century which has just passed has seen disinterred as if by enchantment from the bowels of the great eastern island, and then transported into the chief museums of Constantinople, Paris, London, Berlin, and especially New York, hundreds of stone statues and thousands of terra-cotta figurines of strange appearance, with picturesque head-dresses and with foolishly-smiling visages, which form a group apart in the history of art, since they are neither purely Asiatic nor purely Greek. Save in rare exceptions, the monuments of Cypriote sculpture were not imported from abroad; they are the work of that mixed race of Greeks and Asiatics, which, by means of the Phœnician ships, was in constant relation with Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor. The productions of Cypriote sculpture which seem to be the most ancient remind us of the figures in the Assyrian bas-reliefs; the costume is the same: a conical cap, a curled beard, a long tunic, and a short cloak passed over the shoulder. However, there are essential differences: the muscles are far from being expressed with the same vigour; no figure wears that long beard like a regular screw, which is so characteristic of Ninevite sculpture. We feel that the Cypriote artist works at a distance from a model which he only sees with the eye of memory, or else that he imitates at second-hand, and is compelled to interpret a Phœnician work which is itself only an interpretation of an Assyrian prototype. The most ancient statues discovered in the temple of Golgoi may date back from the epoch at which the Assyrian conqueror Sargon erected at Citium (Larnaca) the triumphant stela on which he relates that his vessels have vanquished Cyprus. They are of all sizes. There is a colossal head 2 ft. 9½ in. high (fig. 214). It wears a conical helmet; the eyes are prominent, the nose is straight and regular, the mouth small but full-lipped, the cheek-bones projecting; the beard is composed of long parallel tresses slightly curled at the end. This fine head, more than half oriental, may be considered as the type of its kind. [Illustration: Fig. 214.--Colossal head from Athieno. (New York Museum.)]