From the conjectural, which may amuse, but can scarcely satisfy, the earnest student, it is fitting that we should now pass to the known and actual.  Phoenician metal-work of various descriptions has been found recently in Phoenicia Proper, in Cyprus, and in Sardinia; and, though much of it consists of works of utility or of mere personal adornment, which belong to another branch of the present enquiry, there is a considerable portion which is more or less artistic and which rightly finds its place in the present chapter.  The Phoenicians, though they did not, so far as we know, attempt with any frequency the production, in bronze or other metal, of the full-sized human form,[760] were fond of fabricating, especially in bronze, the smaller kinds of figures which are known as “figurines” or “statuettes.”  They also had a special talent for producing embossed metal-work of a highly artistic character in the shape of cups, bowls, and dishes or paterae, whereon scenes of various kinds were represented with a vigour and precision that are quite admirable.  Some account of these two classes of works must here be given.

The statuettes commence with work of the rudest kind.  The Phoenician sites in Sardinia have yielded in abundance grotesque figures of gods and men,[761] from three or four to six or eight inches high, which must be viewed as Phoenician productions, though perhaps they were not the best works which Phoenician artists could produce, but such as were best suited to the demands of the Sardinian market.  The savage Sards would not have appreciated beauty or grace; but to the savage mind there is something congenial in grotesqueness.  Hence gods with four arms and four eyes,[762] warriors with huge horns projecting from their helmets,[763] tall forms of extraordinary leanness,[764] figures with abnormally large heads and hands,[765] huge noses, projecting eyes, and various other deformities.  For the home consumption statuettes of a similar character were made; but they were neither so rude nor so devoid of artistic merit.  There is one in the Louvre, which was found at Tortosa, in Northern Phoenicia, approaching nearly to the Sardinian type, while others have less exaggeration, and seem intended seriously.  In Cyprus bronzes of a higher order have been discovered.[766] One is a figure of a youth, perhaps AEsculapius, embracing a serpent; another is a female form of much elegance, which may have been the handle of a vase or jug; it springs from a grotesque bracket, and terminates in a bar ornamented at either end with heads of animals.  The complete bronze figure found near Curium, which is supposed to represent Apollo and is figured by Di Cesnola,[767] is probably not the production of a Phoenician artists, but a sculpture imported from Greece.