que. Says the _Encyclopeadia
Britannica_ (from which the illustration is taken):

"The statues of the gods began either with stiff and ungainly
figures roughly cut out of the trunk of a tree, or with the
monstrous and symbolical representations of Oriental art.... In
early decorations of vases and vessels one may find Greek deities
represented with wings, carrying in their hands lions or
griffins, bearing on their heads lofty crowns. But as Greek art
progressed it grew out of this crude symbolism... What the
artists of Babylonia and Egypt express in the character of the
gods by added attribute or symbol, swiftness by wings, control of
storms by the thunderbolt, traits of character by animal
heads, the artists of Greece work more and more fully into the
scultptural type; modifying the human subject by the constant
addition of something which is above the ordinary levels of
humanity, until we reach the Zeus of Pheidias or the Dimeter of
Cnidus. When the decay of the high ethical art of Greece sets
in, the Gods become more and more warped to the merely human
level. They lose their dignity, but they never lose their charm."

In which, I think, much light is once more thrown on the inner
history of the race, and the curious and fatal position Greece
holds in it. For here we see Art emerging from its old Position
as a hand-maid to the Mysteries and recognized instrument of the
Gods or the Soul; from sacred becoming secular; from impersonal,
personal. There is, perhaps, little enough in pre-Pheidian Greek
sculpture that belongs to the history of Art at all (I do not
speak of old cycles and manvantaras, the ages of Troy and
Mycenae, but of historical times; I cast no glance now behind the
year 870 B. C.). For the real art that came next before the
Pheidian Greek, we have to look to Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Take Egypt first. There the sculptor thinks of himself far less
as artist than as priest and servant of the Mysteries: that is,
of the great Divine heart of Existence behind this manifested
world, and the official channel which connected It with the
latter. The Gods, for him, are frankly unhuman--superhuman--
unlike humanity. We call them 'forces of Nature'; and think
ourselves mighty wise for having camouflaged our ignorance with
this perfectly meaningless term. We have dealt so wisely with
our thinking organs, that do but give us a sop of words, and
things in themselves we shall never bother about:--like the