608 THE EXCAVATIONS OF CARTHAGE. 



close curls covering head and shoulders with their wavy mass. Under 

 this abundance of hair falling over the brow are two almond eyes with 

 protruding eyeballs, set deep under long, arched eyebrows. The cheek 

 bones are sunken, the firmly set lips, like the ears, are painted a vivid 

 red, and the neck and breast are dotted red and blue. From afar it 

 recalls the beautiful head of the Oerro de los Santos, recently put on 

 exhibition at the Louvre. 



The necropolis of Tharros in Sardinia had revealed the same mixture 

 of native and Egyptian art. The likeness between the relics of Tharros 

 and those of Carthage is so great that most of those from the necrop- 

 olis of Sardinia could as well be ascribed to a Carthaginian necropolis. 

 But what, in Tharros, might have appeared an exceptional phenome- 

 non peculiar to it the Carthaginian experience shows to have been the 

 rule. The mixture of the two is a fact dominating the whole of the 

 Phoenician civilization of that period in the western basin of the 

 Mediterranean. 



The great merchants, responding to the prevailing taste of the people 

 with whom they traded, made whatever had a good sale. At a time 

 when Egypt seemed the type of perfection in art and civilization, they 

 made imitation Egyptian as we make imitation Chinese or Japanese. 

 But they did not work for export only, and their home art was sub- 

 jected to the same influences. What has happened in our time with 

 regard to China and Japan in a feeble measure reproduces what 

 happened at Carthage. The introduction of Japanese figures, vases, 

 cunningly shaped articles, introduced us to an art which reacted on our 

 ceramics and our decorative painting. Egypt was not nearly so distant 

 from Carthage as we are from the Far East ; it had, besides, the prestige 

 conferred by age and the refinement of a powerful civilization. It 

 invaded Carthage on all sides and penetrated everywhere. Egyptian 

 divinities were introduced with the amulets sold at the gates of temples 

 and cemeteries, and, when the Carthaginian represented women or 

 goddesses with Egyptian costumes or headdresses, without doubt they 

 merely reproduced what they saw about them daily. 



It more and more appears that this somewhat servile imitation of 

 nature — rude, yet close, biting, and somewhat satiric — was the dis- 

 tinctive trait of Carthaginian art. The mask of a man, the only one of 

 its kind, is a striking example. The oval, bony face is encircled by 

 whiskers, leaving mouth and chin uncovered; the prominent nose, as 

 well as the ears, are pierced with a gold ring. The eyes have an oddly 

 mocking expression; they are painted white, the eyeballs and eyebrows 

 black. The short, crisply curled hair meets the brow in a straight line 

 from ear to ear, and wherever the skin shows it is highly colored in red- 

 Several of the engraved stones of exquisite workmanship, in which 

 Greek influence is perceptible, present the same type of man with crisp 

 curls, side whiskers, and smooth-shaven chin. Whiskers worn by Greek 

 warriors had appeared on some of the most ancient specimens of Greek 



