Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/174

 154 HISTORY OF ART IN FIICENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. the rest seems to indicate the place reserved for the head of the family. 1 The mode of entombment here described was the most usual, but a few dish-shaped coffins of calcareous alabaster and terra- cotta have been found. They are very low and simple ; they have hump-backed lids with a ridge along the middle, but with no ornament. These sarcophagi are not found in niches, but in plain chambers cut expressly for their reception. Round them on the floor a groove is cut to carry away any moisture, and thus to give the coffin a better chance of duration. The body, too, was sometimes protected against damp by being imbedded in a thick and strong envelope of plaster. 2 As soon as it was occupied the niche was closed up with a stone slab, and when all the niches were full the door of the tomb was fortified in the same fashion. Large stones were sealed down over the mouth of the well or on the first step of the staircase. 3 The outward appearance of tombs, especially of those of the rich, was in harmony with the elaboration of the interior ; it, too, bears its testimony to the respect that was felt for the dead. The best instances of this are afforded by those monuments which the people of the country call El awamid-el- Meghazil, ''spindle- shafts," or more briefly El-Meghazil, " spindles." Placed one beside the other on the apex of a mass of rocks, two of these monuments dominate all the surrounding country (Fig. 94). A short way off there is another almost equally well-preserved monument of the same class, and near that again the remains of a fourth. " One of these monuments," says M. Renan, is " a masterpiece of proportion, elegance, and majesty," 4 an opinion confirmed by the restoration given by M. Thobois (Fig. 95). The total height of the building is thirty-two feet. It stands upon a circular plinth, flanked by four lions, whose heads and fore-quarters alone stand out beyond its face. Above this plinth rises a cylinder crowned by a hemi- sphere. The whole except the plinth, which consists of four blocks being cut from a single huge stone. The double cylinder is decorated round the summit of each of its parts with a row of carved crenellations standing out about four inches from the general surface. We have already referred to the Assyrian origin of this motive. The dressing of the stone and the execution of these 1 RENAN, Mission, p. 76. " Ibid. p. 78.
 * i Ibid. pp. 77, /8. 4 Ibid. p. 72.