Stamp Scarab Seal
Around the beginning of 1000 B.C., Phoenician seal engravers adopted the use of the scarab, an Egyptian symbol of regeneration. In typical Phoenician fashion, the seals were decorated with Egyptian motifs, sometimes with non-Egyptian animal subjects. Popular subjects included the birth of Horus and scenes of his mother Isis nursing him as an infant. Winged protective deities and genies were also favorite themes.The seals were carved with not only Egyptian themes but also Etruscan and western Greek imagery (I've noticed that the Phoenicians really like to borrow Greek and Egyptian styles for a lot of things).
On this scarab, two protective winged goddesses wearing sun-disk headdresses flank the Egyptian god Osiris. Above is a winged sun disk. A line borders the scene and the figures stand on a ground line decorated below with crosshatching.
Nubian with Oryx, Monkey, and Leopard Skins
Decorating your home with carved ivory plaques was a symbol of wealth throughout the Near East during early 1000 B.C. The ivories were carved in the major centers of Phoenicia—along the eastern Mediterranean coast. Assyrian conquests beginning in 900 B.C. brought richly decorated furniture as booty and tribute from the cities of Syria and Phoenicia, and craftsmen taken prisoner from these cities continued to carve ivories on the Assyrian coast.
Some Phoenician-style ivories are solid plaques, while others are carved on one or both sides in a delicate openwork technique. Many originally were covered by gold leaf and inlaid with semiprecious stones or colored glass. Such rich combinations of ivory, gold, and brightly colored stones made the thrones of the Assyrian kings famous for their exquisite beauty. Most ivories carved in the Phoenician style were probably produced during the late eighth and seventh centuries B.C.
Phoenician ivory carvers were (again) strongly influenced by the themes and style of Egyptian art owing to longstanding ties between the two cultures. Some Phoenician ivories illustrate purely Egyptian themes, but many use Egyptian motifs in entirely original compositions.
This Egyptian tribute bearer exhibits traits of the Phoenician style, characterized by the slender, elongated form of the bearer and his animal gifts, the precision of carving and intricacy of detail, as well as the distinct Egyptian flavor of both pose and features.
Phoenician Bridle-Harness Decoration
Elaborate horse trappings, including frontlets and blinkers such as this one, were sometimes crafted from ivory and are represented on Assyrian reliefs. This spade-shaped horse blinker is decorated in low relief with a seated sphinx wearing the Egyptian cobra, or uraeus, and sun disk on its head. Another winged uraeus and sun disk faces the sphinx to its left. Behind the sphinx is a cartouche attached to a lotus plant. The hieroglyphic inscription inside the cartouche is a Phoenician name, "Djunen."
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phoe/hd_phoe.htm#slideshow3
Egyptian Figures with Winged Disc
900-700 B.C., vast quantities of luxury goods, often embellished with carved ivory in local Phoenician styles, accumulated in Assyrian palaces, much of it as booty or tribute. This plaque, once part of a piece of furniture, is carved in high relief in a typical Phoenician style of using more Egyptian figures. Two pharaoh-like figures, standing on either side of a branching tree, wear a version of the double crown of Egypt with the uraeus emblem in front. They also wear a beard, necklace, and pleated short skirt belted at the waist with a central panel decorated with a pattern and uraeus on either side. An ankle-length apron with patterned border falls from behind the figures. Each man holds a ram-headed scepter in his right hand. Framed above the scene is a winged sun disk surmounted by a horizontal panel with ten uraei supporting sun disks.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phoe/hd_phoe.htm#slideshow4
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phoe/hd_phoe.htm#slideshow4
Stone Bireme Carving
Phoenicians were an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550 BC to 300 BC. The Phoenicians used the galley, a man-powered sailing vessel, and are credited with the invention of the bireme. They were famed in Classical Greece and Rome as 'traders in purple', referring to their monopoly on the precious purple dye of the Murex snail, used, among other things, for royal clothing, and for their spread of the alphabet (or abjad), from which almost all modern phonetic alphabets are derived. A bireme is an ancient oared warship with two decks of oars, invented by the Phoenicians. Long vessels built for military purposes had relatively high speed, meticulous construction, strength, and depending on the number of rows of oars, were called uniremes, biremes, triremes, quadriremes, etc. It was typically about 80 feet (24 m) long with a maximum beam width of around 10 feet (3 m).
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