But we must pause here for a moment to define more accurately what we mean by Phoenician art. Strictly speaking, Phoenicia had no art of its own; its designs were borrowed from Egypt and Assyria, and its artists went to school on the banks of the Nile and the Euphrates. The Phoenician combined and improved upon his models; the impulse, the origination came from abroad; the modification and elaboration were his own. He entered into other men's labours, and made the most of his heritage. The sphinx of Egypt became Asiatic, and in its new form was transplanted to Nineveh on the one side and to Greece on the other. The rosettes and other patterns of the Babylonian cylinders were introduced into the handiwork of Phoenicia, and so passed on to the West, while the hero of the ancient Chaldean epic became first the Tyrian Melkarth, and then the Herakles of Hellas. It is possible, no doubt, that with all this borrowing there was still something that was original in Phoenician work; such at any rate seems to be the case with some of the forms given to the vases; but at present we have no means of determining how far this originality may have extended. In Assyria, indeed, Phoenician art exercised a great influence in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.; but it had itself previously drawn its first inspiration from the empire of the Tigris, and did but give back the perfect blossom to those from whom it had received the seed. The workmanship of the ivories and bronze bowls found at Nineveh by Mr. Layard is thoroughly Phoenician; but it cannot be separated from that of the purely Assyrian pavements and bas-reliefs with which the palaces were adorned. The Phoenician art, in fact, traces of which we find from Assyria to Italy, though based on both Egyptian and Assyrian models, owed far more to Assyria than it did to Egypt. In art, as in mythology and religion, Phoenicia was but a carrier and intermediary between East and West; and just as the Greek legends of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Herakles and his twelve labours, and of the other borrowed heroes of Oriental story came in the first instance from Assyria, so did that art and culture which Kadmus the Phoenician handed on to the Greek race.