borrowed this custom from the Egyptians as early as the thirteenth century, if not even earlier. The remains which have come down to us of the sculpture, jars, and utensils of Phoenicia exhibit the double influence which the art and industry of the Phenicians underwent even at an early period. Agreeably to the close relations into which the Phenicians entered, on the one hand with Babel and Asshur, and on the other with Egypt, the effects of these two ancient civilisations meet each other on the coast of Syria. The arts of the kindred land of the Euphrates, the relations of which to Phoenicia were at the same time the older, naturally made themselves felt first. When Tuthmosis III. collected tribute in Syria at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Babylonian weight was already in use there; the jars which were brought to this king as the tribute of Syria are carefully worked, but as yet adorned with very simple and recurring patterns of lines. On the other hand, the ornaments found in the tombs of Mycenæ, gold-plates, frontlets, and armlets, exhibit ornaments like those figured on the monuments of Assyria; and the objects found in the rock-tombs on Hymettus, at Spata, point even more definitely to Babylonian patterns: winged fabulous animals and battles of beasts (a lion attacking a bull or an antelope[512]) are formed in the manner of the Eastern Semites, which brings the form of the muscles into prominence. We may assume that the influence of Egypt began with the times of the Tuthmosis and Amenophis, and their supremacy in Syria, and slowly gathered strength. The heavy style of Phenician buildings would not be made lighter or more free by the architecture of Egypt, which also arose out of building in rock. The temples of Phoenicia adopted Egyptian symbols for their ornaments; the monoliths of the roofs of those three cellæ at Marathus exhibit the winged sun's-disk, the emblem at the entrance of Egyptian temples; the chests for the dead and masks for the mummies of the Egyptians were imitated in the rock-tombs of Phoenicia. If the weaving of the Phenicians at first copied the ancient Babylonian patterns, they began under the stronger influence of Egypt to adorn their pottery and metal-work after Egyptian patterns. But they also combined the Babylonian and Egyptian elements in their art.[513] The oldest memorial of this combination is perhaps retained in that winged sphinx, which belongs to the time of the dominion of the shepherds in Egypt. In the graves on Hymettus pictures in relief of female winged sphinxes are found with clothed breasts and peculiar wings, in a treatment obviously already conventional. In Phoenicia itself are found reliefs of similar sphinxes, old men with a human face on either side of the tree of life, which meet us oftentimes in the monuments of Assyria. This combination, this use of Babylonian and Egyptian types and forms side by side, is seen most clearly on a large