THE EXCAVATIONS OP OARTHAGE. 607 



the Mle. The statuettes have the headdress, costumes, and posture 

 of mummies. The rings and scarabs bear Egyptian scenes, often 

 Egyptian legends. The amulets, which alternate with strands of pearls 

 in the numerous paste necklaces, reproduce subjects familiar in Egypt; 

 the oodja, the sacred eye of Osiris, the grotesque stocky figure of the god 

 Phtah, ankhs (crux ansata), small tables for libations. The uraeus on 

 either side of the solar disk is one of the favorite designs of necklace 

 pendants and earrings, and figures in the head gear of goddesses, in 

 which it forms a kind of high crown, recalling the turreted crown of 

 Ceres. 



Doubtless many of the amulets, intaglios, and bibelots, objects which 

 are easily carried from place to place, and are stopped in their wander- 

 ings only by the tomb, were actually made in Egypt. But we can not 

 explain as a foreign importation the terracotta pieces and the gold and 

 silver jewelry in which an unmistakable imitation of Egypt is accom- 

 panied by certain characteristics proving them of home make. 



These characteristics appear in certain figurines absolutely Egyptian 

 in the posture of the body and in the disposition and details of the 

 costume. For the graceful forms of the Egyptian women, so pure of 

 line as to seem scarcely human, more massive, less spiritual bodies 

 are substituted. The head is never Egyptian, the protruding eyes are 

 singularly expressive, the root of the nose thick, the lips sensual, the 

 chin prominent. The artist certainly had a Carthaginian model. 



Nowhere does this mixture of imitation and subjective, realistic 

 interpretation appear better than in the terracotta masks frequently 

 found in Carthaginian tombs, one of the art forms in which. the origi- 

 nality of the Carthaginians had freest play. Curiously enough, these 

 masks have holes in the top and sometimes in the sides for suspending 

 them; yet they were not hanging up in the tombs, but laid at the side 

 of the dead. Nor were they meant to cover the face — they were too 

 small. 



However that may be, the resemblance to Egyptian funeral masks 

 is striking. Some of the women's masks might be taken for masks of 

 mummies. The hair, rolled up in front over a bandeau, falls in two 

 fine but heavy tresses behind the ears, which are inordinately length- 

 ened by earrings, and spreads out on the chest. But the countenance, 

 the features, the form of the face, denote another inspiration — Greek 

 rather than Egyptian. The whole physiognomy has a refinement and 

 a softness of expression which make of the masks truly subjective 

 works of art. The men who bought these beautiful Corinthian vases 

 and shut them up with themselves in their tombs must have realized 

 the remoter influences at work on this art. It was the art of early 

 Greece, the half Oriental art of Homeric times. 



Moreover, the masks are not all made from the same model. A cer- 

 tain course of deterioration is perceptible, a steady diversion from the 

 Egyptian pattern. On some of them the tresses are replaced by small, 



