amalgamation of the religions of other
nations, and their gods of bronze, terra-cotta, and enamel were
irreverently sold in the market like any other produce.

ART MOTIVES AND METHODS: Building, carving, and painting were
practised among the coastwise nations, but upon no such extensive
scale as in either Egypt or Assyria. The mere fact that they were
people of the sea rather than of the land precluded extensive or
concentrated development. Politically Phoenicia was divided among
five cities, and her artistic strength was distributed in a similar
manner. Such art as was produced showed the religious and decorative
motives, and in its spiritless materialistic make-up, the commercial
motive. It was at the best a hybrid, mongrel art, borrowed from many
sources and distributed to many points of the compass. At one time it
had a strong Assyrian cast, at another an Egyptian cast, and after
Greece arose it accepted a retroactive influence from there.

It is impossible to characterize the Phoenician type, and even the
Cypriote type, though more pronounced, varies so with the different
influences that it has no very striking individuality. Technically
both the Phoenician and Cypriote were fair workmen in bronze and
stone, and doubtless taught many technical methods to the early
Greeks, besides making known to them those deities afterward adopted
under the names of Aphrodite, Adonis, and Heracles, and familiarizing
them with the art forms of Egypt and Assyria.

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--CYPRIOTE VASE DECORATION. (FROM PERROT AND
CHIPIEZ.)]

As for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls
of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the
small nations like Phoenicia, Judea, Cyprus, and the kingdoms of
Asia Minor, put together, to patch up a disjointed history. The first
lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished. All that
there is of painting comes to us in broken potteries and color traces
on statuary. The remains of sculpture and architecture are of course
better preserved. None of this intermediate art holds much rank by
virtue of its inherent worth. It is its influence upon the West--the
ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the Greeks--that gives it
importance in art history.

ART REMAINS: In painting chiefly the vases in the
Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Louvre, British and
Berlin Museums. These give a poor and incomplete idea of the