Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/242

 222 HISTORY OF ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. The workmanship is Greek, but the motive is thoroughly oriental. As a last proof of the close connection between Phoenicia and the occupants of these tombs, in one of them a silver patera with figures upon it has been found ; it is beyond a doubt the work of some artisan of Tyre or Sidon. 1 Were these decorated steles always used as pendents to stone sarcophagi ? Were they always shut up in the tomb chamber, or were they sometimes set up above the grave so that at least their upper part was visible above the ground and acted as a sign like the pyramid in Phoenicia proper ? On these points Cesnola tells us nothing. Neither does he satisfy our curiosity as to the necropolis of Amathus. 2 That town was on the southern coasts, and its situation, its myths, the part it played in history, its worship of Astarte, and the monuments that have been found in it, all combine to convince us that Amathus was one of those towns in which the influence of their Phoenician founders endured the longest. 15 As at Golgos and Idalion, most of the tombs belong to the decadence, but careful excavation soon brought to light a group of sepulchres, finer and more carefully constructed, according to General di Cesnola, than any others he found in the island. They are at the foot of the inclosure and outside it in - a narrow valley to the north-west of the low hill upon which the town was built. They are about a hundred in number, and represent, in all probability, the burying-place of the kings and high priests of Amathus. They are now covered with earth to a depth varying between forty and fifty-four feet, and are built, paved, and roofed with large stones set in regular courses. Some of the stones are as much as twenty feet long by five feet nine inches wide and three feet four inches deep. Some of the tombs have flat (Fig. 153), others ridge (Fig. 154) roofs ; all are paved with great slabs of limestone. Some have one, others two, chambers ; while there are four, at least, in which the arrangement shown in our Fig. 155 has been followed. These sepulchres must have been originally built on the surface of the ground at the bottom of the valley, and then, after the corpses were put in place, deliberately buried in earth in order to render access more difficult. The 1 CESNOLA, Cyprus, plate xi. 2 Ibid. pp. 255-283. 3 The very name of the town, which lias only come down to us in its Greek form of Ap.a@ov<;, is, perhaps, Semitic in its origin, and identical with that of Hamath, the Syrian city in the Valley of the Orontes.