Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/256

 236 HISTORY OF ART IN PIKF.MCIA AND ITS DFPENDENCIKS. pass through the doorway or clown the steps ; the ceiling is but little above the head of a man, and we shall see that the bodies themselves had no room to spare. Right and left the rock is cut into three shallow arches; these are 5 feet 10 inches wide, vhile the pilasters between them are from 29 to 30 inches wide at the base and stand out about 14 inches from the wall. 1 .... In the space embraced by each of these arcades two rectan- gular tunnels are cut, each 6 feet 10 inches deep, 2 feet 10 inches high, and i foot 10 inches wide. Such measurements just give room for a corpse to lie at length. The bodies were put in head first, as we know from the positions of the bones in the FIG. 164. Cross section of above tomb. few niches that have been opened." In all this we may recog- nize the rock-cut niches, the fours a cerciicil or corpse-ovens which we have already encountered in Phoenicia. Their number is here increased to seventeen by the three pierced in the farthest wall of the chamber and the pair that flank the entrance. A sepulchre here and there has no more than three niches, and one or two have twenty-one ; while a few have neither staircase nor doorway, properly speaking ; they are reached by a mere perpen- dicular hole, barely large enough to admit the passage of a man's body. 1 BEUL, Fouilles a Carthage, p. 132. 2 Ibid. p. 135.