Winged disks, uraei, scarabs, sphinxes, have been adopted from Egypt; Assyria has furnished gradines, lotus blossoms, rosettes, the palm-tree ornament, the ribbon ornament, and the form of the lion; Greece has supplied pillars, pediments, festoons, and chimaeras.

Native talent has contributed little or nothing to the ornamentation of buildings, if we except the modification of the types which have been derived from foreign sources.
Finally, there is a want of combination and general plan in the Phoenician constructions where they fall into groups.

"This is sensibly felt," according to M.Renan, "at Amrith, at Kabr-Hiram, and at Um-el-Awamid.

In the remains still visible in these localities there are many fine ideas, many beautiful details; but they do not fall under any general dominant plan, as do the buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.
One seems to see a set of people who are fond of working in stone for its own sake, but who do not care to arrive at a mutual understanding in order to produce in common a single work, since they do not know that it is the conception of a grand whole which constitutes greatness in art.
Hence the incompleteness of the monuments; there is not a tomb to which the relations of the deceased have deemed it fitting to give the finishing touches; there is everywhere a certain egotism, like that which in later times prevented the Mussulman monuments from enduring.

A passing pleasure in art does not induce men to finish, since finishing requires a certain stiffness of will.