bowl found at Curium near Amathus, in Cyprus, and wrought with great care and skill.[514] It follows that the art of the Phenicians was essentially imitative and intended to furnish objects for trade. Of round works of sculpture we have only dwarfish deities (I. 378), the typical form of which was naturally retained, and a few lions coarsely wrought in the style of the plastic art of Babylon and Assyria.[515] The relation in which the lion stood to the god Melkarth naturally made the delineation of the lion a favourite object of Phenician art. Phoenicia, though the home of alphabetical writing, has left us no more than two or three inscriptions, and Carthage has not left us a great number. Not that there was any lack of inscriptions in Phoenicia in ancient days. We have heard already of ancient inscriptions at Rhodes, Thebes, and Gades. Job wishes that "his words might be graven on rocks for ever with an iron chisel and lead."[516] The inscriptions of Phoenicia have perished because they were engraved like those inscriptions of Gades, on plates of brass. Beside the inscription on the coffin of Esmunazar, king of Sidon, already mentioned, of a date about 400 B.C., only two or three smaller inscriptions have been preserved, which do not go beyond the second century B.C. In this inscription Esmunazar speaks in person; he calls himself the son of Tabnit, king of the Sidonians, son of Esmunazar, king of the Sidonians. With his mother, Amastarte, the priestess of Astarte, he had erected temples to Baal, Astarte, and Esmun. He beseeches the favour of the gods for himself and his land; he prays that Dor and Japho may always remain under Sidon; he declares that he wishes to rest in the grave which he has built and in this coffin. No one is to open the tomb or plunder it, or remove or damage this stone coffin. If any man attempts it the gods will destroy him with his seed; he is not to be buried, and after death will find no rest among the shades.[517]