* Glass manufacture was carried to such a degree of
     perfection among the Phoenicians, that many ancient authors
     attributed to them the invention of glass.

Their engravers, while still continuing to employ cones and cylinders of Babylonian form, borrowed the scarab type also, and made use of it on the bezils of rings, the pendants of necklaces, and on a kind of bracelet used partly for ornament and partly as a protective amulet.  The influence of the Egyptian model did not extend, however, amongst the masses, and we find, therefore, no evidence of it in the case of common objects, such as those of coarse sand or glazed earthenware.  Egyptian scarab forms were thus confined to the rich, and the material upon which they are found is generally some costly gem, such as cut and polished agate, onyx, haematite, and lapis-lazuli.  The goldsmiths did not slavishly copy the golden and silver bowls which were imported from the Delta; they took their inspiration from the principles displayed in the ornamentation of these objects, but they treated the subjects after their own manner, grouping them afresh and blending them with new designs.  The intrinsic value of the metal upon which these artistic conceptions had been impressed led to their destruction, and among the examples which have come down to us I know of no object which can be traced to the period of the Egyptian conquest.  It was Theban art for the most part which furnished the Phoenicians with their designs.  These included the lotus, the papyrus, the cow standing in a thicket and suckling her calf, the sacred bark, and the king threatening with his uplifted arm the crowd of conquered foes who lie prostrate before him.

[Illustration:  117.jpg EGYPTIAN TREATMENT OF THE COW ON A PHOENICIAN BOWL]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Grifi.

The king’s double often accompanied him on some of the original objects, impassive and armed with the banner bearing the name of Horus.  The Phoenician artist modified this figure, which in its original form did not satisfy his ideas of human nature, by transforming it into a protective genius, who looks with approval on the exploits of his protege, and gathers together the corpses of those he has slain.  Once these designs had become current among the goldsmiths, they continued to be supplied for a long period, without much modification, to the markets of the Eastern and Western worlds.  Indeed, it was natural that they should have taken a stereotyped form, when we consider that the Phoenicians who employed them held continuous commercial relations with the country whence they had come—­a country of which, too, they recognised the supremacy.  Egypt in the Ramesside period was, as we have seen, distinguished for the highest development of every branch of industry; it had also a population which imported and exported more raw material and more manufactured products than any other.