the Acropolis, or the Gate of Lions which belongs to the same age, it is plain that we have not yet reached the time when Assyro-Phœnician influence began to decline in Greece. The lions above the gate would alone be proof to the contrary.
But, in fact, Phœnician influence continued to be felt up to the end of the seventh century B.C. Passing by the so-called Corinthian vases, or the antiquities exhumed by General di Cesnola in Cyprus, where the Phœnician element was strong, we have numerous evidences of the fact from all parts of Greece. Two objects of bronze discovered at Olympia may be specially signalized. One of these is an oblong plate, narrower at one end than at the other, ornamented with repousé work, and divided into four compartments. In the first compartment are figures of the non-descript birds so often seen on the "Corinthian" pottery; in the next come two Assyrian gryphons standing, as usual, face to face; while the third represents the and the contest of Herakles with the kentaur, thoroughly Oriental in design. The kentaur has a human forefront, covered, how ever, with hair; his tail is abnormally long, and a three-branched tree rises behind him. The fourth and largest compartment contains the figure of the Asiatic goddess with the four wings at the back, and a lion, held by the hind leg, in either hand. The face of the goddess is in profile. The whole design is Assyro-Phœnician, and is exactly reproduced on some square gold plates, intended probably to adorn the breast, presented to the Louvre by the Duc de Luynes. The other object to which I referred is a bronze dish, ornamented on the inside with repoussé work which at first sight looks Egyptian, but is really that Phœnician modification of Egyptian art so common in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. An inscription in the Aramaic characters of the so-called Sidonian branch of the Phœnician alphabet is cut on the outside, and reads: "Belonging to Neger, son of Miga."[1] As the word used for "son" is the Aramaic bar and not the Phœnician ben, we may conclude that the owner of the dish had come from northern Syria. It is interesting to find a silver cup embossed with precisely the same kind of design, and also bearing an inscription in Phœnician letters, among the treasures discovered in a tomb at Palestrina, the ancient Præneste, more than a year ago. This inscription is even briefer than the other: "Eshmun-ya'ar son of 'Ashtâ,"[2] where, though ben is employed, the father's name has an Aramaic form. Helbig would refer these Italian specimens of Phœnician skill to the Carthaginian epoch, partly on the ground that an African species of ape seems sometimes represented on them;[3] in this case they might be as late as the fifth century before the Christian era.
During the earlier part of the second period of Phœnician influence, Phœnicia and the Phœnician colonies were not the only channel by which the elements of Assyrian culture found their way into the West. The monuments and religious beliefs of Asia Minor enable us to trace their progress from the banks of the Euphrates and the ranges of the Taurus, through Cappadocia and Phrygia, to the coasts and islands of the Ægean. The near affinity of Greek and Phrygian is recognized even by Plato;[4] the legends of Midas and Gordius formed part of Greek mythology, royal house of Mykenæ was made to come with all its wealth from the golden sands of the Paktolus; while on the other hand the cult of Mâ, of Attys, or of the Ephesian Artemis points back to an Assyrian origin. The sculptures found by Perrot[5] and Texier constitute a link between the prehistoric art of Greece and that of Asia Minor; the spiral ornaments that mark the antiquities of Mykenæ are repeated on the royal tombs of Asia Minor; and the ruins of Sardis, where once ruled a dynasty derived by Greek writers from Ninus or Nineveh, "the son of Bel," the grandson of the Assyrian Herakles,[6] may yet pour a flood of light on the earlier history of Greece. But it was rather in the first period, which I have termed Phrygian, than in the second, that the influence of Asia Minor was strongest. The figure of the goddess riding on a leopard, with mural crown and peaked shoes, on the rock-tablets of Pterium,[7] is borrowed rather from the cylinders of early Babylonia than from the sculptures of Assyria; and the Hissarlik collection connects itself more with the primitive antiquities of Santorin than with the later art of Mykenæ and Cyprus. We have already seen, however, the close relationship that exists between some of the objects excavated at Mykenæ and what we may call the pre-
