Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/252

 2^2 HISTORY OK ART i PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIKS. living rock. Under the colonnade are openings into chambers surrounded by niches, each niche made to hold a single body. It has also been thought that platforms for sarcophagi were to be recognized, but no fragment of coffin or sarcophagus, or of any sepulchral furniture, has been found in any one of these. hypogea. This is not surprising, for they have for many centuries afforded a shelter to the shepherds and herdsmen of the neighbourhood from the sun and rain ; the ceilings are blackened by the smoke of their fires. Their comparative architectural magnificence for their fa9ades have always been visible must also have been a source of danger. They have no inscriptions to show, but what Fir,. 161. Courtyard of a toml> at Nea-Taphos. From Ross. is known of the fame and wealth of the Paphian sanctuary suggests a very probable explanation of their existence ; they are most likely the tombs of the high priests who ministered in the neighbouring temple, and profited by the piety of its visitors. None of these tombs can be older than the fifth century B.C. The columns with their capitals and the entablature they support are Greek in the details of their architecture ; it is the Doric order, as we find it in Greece. There is even one detail which seems to hint that these colonnades are later than Alexander ; the frieze is deeper than the architrave, a proportion which is not, as a rule, to be met with in buildings anterior to the Parthenon or contemporary with it. But we are justified in mentioning these