Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/130

 i io HISTORY OF ART IN PIKI.NK IA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. faces in their native rudeness. For a long time, in fact, this arrangement was looked upon as the distinctive peculiarity of Phoenician masonry, as the stamp by which it could be most easily and most surely recognized. The rampart of Tortosa, the castle at Gebal, and certain parts of the " Tower of the Algerines " at v : V FlG. 44. Wall of Tortosa. From Kenan. Sour, where the irregular courses are made to fit by the intro- duction of L-shaped stones (see Fig. 45) were looked upon as standard examples. 1 This notion must now, however, be aban- doned. M. Thobois, the architect who accompanied M. Renan examined all these structures very carefully, and the result of his FIG. 45. Masonry from the Tower of the Algerines. From Renan. observations caused the latter to reconsider his first ideas. It now seems to be clearly proved that the walls of Tortosa and those of the castle at Gebal both date from the middle ages. 2 The masons employed by the great military orders in the con- struction of these walls went to the quarry for no great proportion of the blocks they used ; they made the stones of the old buildings with which the Phoenician coast had been fringed for so many generations serve again in the new, and the narrow, smoothly 1 RENAN, Mission, plate xxv. 2 See M. KENAN'S observations on this subject (Mission, pp. 47-54 and 164-172). The question was one of great importance. Upon its resolution in one sense or the other depended, in no slight degree, our notions upon the habits and processes of the Phoenician architect.