Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/237

 THE PHOENICIAN TOMB AWAY FROM PHOENICIA. 217 which has now been for five years absolute master of the island, has brought nothing from it of any importance. 1 We may, how- ever, be allowed to express our regret that to his other services Cesnola has not added that of giving us plans, sections, and elevations of the tombs and other civil or religious edifices he was the first to explore. The few figures of this class which are sprinkled at rare intervals over his pages look too much as if they had been compiled from memory. 2 The absence of documents of this kind is sure to lead to more than one misapprehension. But vague as it is we must now endeavour to make the best use we can of Cesnola's narrative and of such other sources of information as are open to us. The tombs in the oldest part of the Idaliot necropolis are oven- shaped. Their width varies from six to ten feet, their height from about four feet to six feet, and their depth from five feet one inch to eight feet. 3 As a rule, a short and narrow corridor leads from the door to the interior. When the earth in which the tombs are dug is loose, their walls are solidified by a lining of mixed clay and chopped straw ; but where the tomb is excavated in the rock this precaution is dispensed with. On three sides of the chamber there is a ledge about thirty-two inches high, upon which the corpses were laid. Of these there were sometimes only one or two, sometimes as many as five or six. Each sepulchre appears to have served a single family. Fig. 148 shows how the bodies were arranged in a tomb for three persons ; those on the right and left were always laid with their heads to the door. The vases and other items of sepulchral furniture were placed sometimes on the ledge, sometimes at a lower level, in the space left free in the 1 Upon the life and discoveries of General di Cesnola, see the second of my articles on the Island of Cyprus in the Revue des deux Mondes (December i, 1878, February i, and May 15, 1879). They are entitled: Llle de Cypre, son role dans V Histoire. In the same papers many facts relative to the other explorers who, between the years 1862 and 1876, have revealed Cypriot art to western archaeology, will be found. It will here suffice to enumerate the names of MM. Lang, Sandwith, de Maricourt, de Vogue, Duthoit, Guillaume Rey, Tiburce, Pie'ridis, and Georgio Colonna Ceccaldi. 2 Look, for instance, at the figures on pages 66 and 67. The transverse section does not agree with the plan. The latter, moreover, has no references, neither does it agree in every respect with the text in which it is in framed. 3 CESNOLA, Cyprus, p. 66. CECCALDI, Monuments antiques de Chypre, p. 35. SANDWITH, On the Different StyJes of Pottery found in Ancient Tombs in the Island of Cyprus (Arch(Poloia, vol. xlv. 1877, pp. 127-142). VOL. I. F F