In two words, Cypriote sculpture, fruitful as it is, lacks variety, like Egyptian sculpture and Assyrian sculpture, its two mistresses. It lives only by borrowing, and has invented nothing. What characterises the stone statues which it produced is immobility and hieratic stiffness, together with finish in the details and decoration. They have no features which proceed from a realistic study of nature. It has been remarked that these statues, intended to be set in rows along the inner walls of the temples, are scarcely at all modelled behind, and are flattened as if they had been carved out of slabs of insufficient thickness; moreover, though broad in the chest, they are narrow in the hips and feet; the legs are pressed closely together, so that they have to some degree the appearance of reversed cones. Cypriote art has no originality except in the Hellenic element, which it assimilates; the Cypriote artist is a Greek who has served his apprenticeship among the Orientals. § VI. PHŒNICIAN AND CYPRIOTE CERAMICS. The triple influence that we have remarked in Phœnician and Cypriote sculpture is observed no less clearly in pottery. In the seventh century Assyria carried on the artistic education of Phœnicia; then it was Egypt till the end of the sixth; finally Greece enters into the lists in her turn, bringing her peculiar genius which, especially in Cyprus, joins hands with its two elder brothers. The Phœnicians, then, learnt first of all from the Assyrians and Egyptians how to model clay, and to fashion of it figures and vases of every form. [Illustration: Fig. 219.--Phœnician chariot in terra-cotta. (Louvre.)] In the list of terra-cottas from Phœnicia which depend upon Ninevite art, and which were found at Amrith (Marathus), chariots holding four warriors and drawn by two or four horses hold the first rank. The figures, generally bearded, and wearing the conical cap, present in their features the purest Semitic type, like certain Babylonian terra-cottas; the harness of the horses shows the minute detail of the Ninevite equipages. Besides these chariots, figurines have been obtained from the Phœnician necropoles, which represent Astarte, nude, standing upright, carrying her hand to her breast, or else sitting and clothed in a long robe down to her feet without folds; she often wears a high calathos of Asiatic origin, which has been observed on the head of captives in the Assyrian bas-reliefs. [Illustration: Fig. 220.--Pygmy in terra-cotta. (Louvre.)]