favourite smelling bottle.  Various other vessels in silver, of a small size,[1257] as basins and bowls beautifully chased, tiny jugs, alabasti, ladles, &c., had also the appearance of belonging rather to the toilet table than to the plate-basket.  Some of the alabasti would contain kohl or stibium, some salves and ointments, others perhaps perfumed washes for the complexion.  Among the bronze objects found,[1258] some may have been merely ornaments, others stands for rings, bracelets, and the like.  One terra-cotta vase from Dali seems made for holding pigments,[1259] and raises the suspicion that Phoenician, or at any rate Cyprian, beauties were not above heightening their charms by the application of paint.

Women in Phoenicia seem to have enjoyed considerable freedom.  They are represented as banqueting in the company of men, sometimes sitting with them on the same couch, sometimes reclining with them at the same table.[1260] Occasionally they delight their male companion by playing upon the lyre or the double pipe,[1261] while in certain instances they are associated in bands of three, who perform on the lyre, the double pipe, and the tambourine.[1262] They take part in religious processions, and present offerings to the deities.[1263] The positions occupied in history by Jezebel and Dido fall in with these indications, and imply a greater approach to equality between the sexes in Phoenicia than in Oriental communities generally.

The men were, for Orientals, unusually hardy and active.  In only one instance is there any appearance of the use of the parasol by a Phoenician.[1264] Sandals are infrequently worn; neck, chest, arms, and legs are commonly naked.  The rough life of seamen hardened the greater number; others hunted the wild ox and the wild boar[1265] in the marshy plains of the coast tract, and in the umbrageous dells of Lebanon.  Even the lion may have been affronted in the great mountain, and if we are unable to describe the method of its chase in Phoenicia, the reason is that the Phoenician artists have, in their representations of lion hunts, adopted almost exclusively Assyrian models.[1266] The Phoenician gift of facile imitation was a questionable advantage, since it led the native artists continually to substitute for sketches at first hand of scenes with which they were familiar, conventional renderings of similar scenes as depicted by foreigners.

An ornament found in Cyprus, the intention of which is uncertain, finds its proper place in the present chapter, though we cannot attach it to any particular class of objects.  It consists of a massive knob of solid agate, with a cylinder of the same both above and below, through which a rod, or bar, must have been intended to pass.  Some archaeologists see in it the top of a sceptre;[1267] others, the head of a mace;[1268] but there is nothing really to prove its use.  We might imagine it the adornment of a throne or chair of state, or the end of a chariot pole, or a portion of the stem of a candelabrum.  Antiquity has furnished nothing similar with which to compare it; and we only say of it, that, whatever was its purpose, so large and so beautiful a mass of agate has scarcely been met with elsewhere.[1269] The cutting is such as to show very exquisitely the veining of the material.