Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/135

 FORMS. 1 1 5 the unwieldy size of their materials and by the equilibrium that results from extreme simplicity of plan. It would then be futile to expect anything in Syria that could be compared to the hypostyle halls of Egypt and Persia or to the Assyrian palaces. The chief remains, and those in very bad condition, are sepulchral pits, small buildings resembling not a little both in solidity and in appearance the rocks of which their bases form a part, fragments of walls, cones and pyramids raised upon tombs, and monolithic chapels. Our hopes of new discoveries are not very sanguine, and meanwhile we must do the best we can with those already made, and endeavour to define what appear to have been the characteristic forms of Phoenician architecture. Our aim is to give a true description of its spirit and general methods. If we succeed, the surprises which the future may, after all, have in reserve, will enable our successors to fill in our definitions and to enrich them with details now beyond our grasp, but our framework will remain in spite of all retouches. In all the really ancient fragments of Phoenician buildings that remain to us the shape of the stones is rarely, if ever, determined by the functions they have to fulfil. Each block did not become, as in Greece, a separate unit with an individuality of its own. If there be any one mode of construction that leads more surely to this individuality of the unit than another it is the vault, where each voussoir has its own special form and is only fitted for that particular spot in the curve for which it has been prepared. But the vault is generally the result of a desire to employ small materials, to cover a void with stones too small for use in any other fashion ; and we have seen that the Phoenicians had a strong- predilection for large stones, which they could obtain everywhere at the very foot of any work on which they might be engaged ; so that the habits and preferences of their builders did not predispose them to make use of the arch. They must have been acquainted with its principle, seeing how incessantly they travelled in Egypt and Mesopotamia ; but hardly a sign of it is to be found in any building which we have good reason to ascribe to them either upon the soil of Syria or in any of the colonies. The only monuments in which that system of covering a void has been used, so far as we know, are two or three sepulchres in the necropolis of Sidon, among them that of Esmounazar, and these are scarcely older