Page 189 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO: THE PERIPHERAL
REGIONS
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Figure 76. Ahiram’s sarcophagus from Byblos

figure 74. But on the sarcophagus there are no subsidiary subjects. The ruler, holding a
lotus and a cup, confronts a procession of men lifting their hands in worship or bringing
him food and drink. The other long side of the sarcophagus shows the end of that pro­
cession, but the short sides of the sarcophagus are decorated with wailing women, tear­
ing their hair and beating their bare breasts. There is little doubt, therefore, that we have
here a scene in which sustenance is brought to a dead ruler, a funerary feast according to
Egyptian conceptions112 which we had not hitherto thought to
have anything in common with Asiatic beliefs. It is, in fact,
more likely that the decoration of the sarcophagus proves no
HI ftT more than that common usages - the offering of food to the
dead, the wailing at the funeral - were in this case rendered in
Egyptian fashion. But later we shall find other evidence to
prove that Syrian funerary customs differed from those of Meso­
potamia and Palestine. The border above the scenes is decorated
A with alternating lotus buds and flowers, as in the cap of the girl

in plate 151A, a design likewise of Egyptian derivation. Un-
Egyptian are the four supports of the sarcophagus, shaped as
Hons, and a similar shape is given to the two projecting knobs
which allowed the Hd to be put into place (Figure 77). These
: Hons, crudely carved Hke the whole of the sarcophagus, seem to
l anticipate Syro-Hittite sculpture of the eighth century B.c., but
if < the resemblance is merely due to an unskflled rendering of a
common subject. The obvious features are stressed. We have
,1 another instance of this style in Alalakh at about the same
•>
ro* n period (Plate 151, c and d). They flanked the entrance of a
building which may have been a palace or a temple, presuma y
Figure 77- Cover of the latter. They are roughly blocked out; the squareness of the
Ahiram’s sarcophagus
160