The finest Phoenician efforts in ceramic art resemble either the best Egyptian or the best Greek.  As the art advanced, the advantage of a rich glaze was appreciated, and specimens which seem to be Phoenician have all the delicacy and beauty of the best Egyptian faience.  A cup found at Idalium, plain on the outside, is covered internally with a green enamel, on which are patterns and designs in black.[857] In a medallion at the bottom of the cup is the representation of a marshy tract overgrown with the papyrus plant, whereof we see both the leaves and blossoms, while among them, rushing at full speed, is the form of a wild boar.  The rest of the ornamentation consists chiefly of concentric circles; but between two of the circles is left a tolerably broad ring, which has a pattern consisting of a series of broadish leaves pointing towards the cup’s centre.  Nothing can be more delicate, or in better taste, than the entire design.

The most splendid of all the Cyprian vases was found at Curium, and has been already represented in this volume.  It is an amphora of large dimensions, ornamented in part with geometrical designs, in part with compartments, in which are represented horses and birds.  The form, the designs, and the general physiognomy of the amphora are considered to be in close accordance with Athenian vases of the most antique school.  The resemblance is so great that some have supposed the vase to have been an importation from Attica into Cyprus;[858] but such conjectures are always hazardous; and the principal motives of the design are so frequent on the Cyprian vases, that the native origin of the vessel is at least possible, and the judgment of some of the best critics seems to incline in this direction.

Still, on the whole, the Cyprian ceramic art is somewhat disappointing.  What is original in it is either grotesque, as the vases in the shape of animals,[859] or those crowned by human heads,[860] or those again which have for spout a female figure pouring liquid out of a jug.[861] What is superior has the appearance of having been borrowed.  Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek art, each in turn, furnished shapes, designs, and patterns to the Phoenician potters, who readily adopted from any and every quarter the forms and decorations which hit their fancy.  Their fancy was, predominantly, for the bizarre and the extravagant.  Vases in the shape of helmets, in the shape of barrels, in the shape of human heads,[862] have little fitness, and in the Cyprian specimens have little beauty; the mixture of Assyrian with Egyptian forms is incongruous; the birds and beasts represented are drawn with studied quaintness, a quaintness recalling the art of China and Japan.  If there is elegance in some of the forms, it is seldom a very pronounced elegance; and, where the taste is best, the suspicion continually arises that a foreign model has been imitated.  Moreover, from first to last the art makes little progress.