Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/257

 THE PHCENICIAN TOMB AWAY FROM PHOENICIA. 237 No trace of anything in the shape of a door, of hinges or sealing holes, was found. The tomb was closed in all likelihood by a heavy slab fitting exactly to the opening and kept in place by the lowest step of the staircase (Figs. 165 and I66). 1 The niches for the bodies must also have been closed as soon as occupied. They were built up with small stones imbedded in mortar and covered either with stucco like that upon the rest of the walls, or with a smooth slab. All these niches are now open and empty. The necropolis of Carthage has always been so accessible that it has been more completely sacked than even the cemeteries on the Syrian coast. It was pillaged in antiquity by the legionaries of Scipio and the Roman colonists of Caius Gracchus and Csesar ; for many centuries past it has been used as a quarry for lime. Everything has been carried away, both objects deposited in the niches and chambers, and sepulchral inscriptions. It would seem that formerly the latter were very numerous ; it is said that beneath each niche a little slab was fixed giving the name of the occupant. We are told that the holes by means of which these slabs were fixed are still quite visible, and that they are so small in diameter and so precisely cut that they could hardly have been used for anything but bronze plaques. The use of that valuable material would account for the total disappearance of the slabs. 2 Until more complete excavations or some fortunate chance brings one of the slabs to light, we cannot affirm that these niches bore the names of those by whom they were occupied, an arrange- ment which never existed, or at least which has left no trace of its existence, in the cemeteries of Phoenicia proper. The great peculiarity of the Carthaginian necropolis is its freedom from those differences which are so striking when we pass from one town to another, or from one period to another, in a cemetery on the Syrian coast or in Cyprus. Here we find no pyramids or other salient features rising above the ground, as at Arvad and 1 BEULE, Fouilles a Carthage, pp. 129-131. 2 Ibid. p. 137. BEULE'S evidence on this point is very clear, but it is curious that among so many plaques not one should have been recovered, either in place and under some fall of earth, or upon the floor and hidden by the debris with which most of the chambers are so deeply encumbered that it is impossible to stand up in them. Here is an opportunity for some explorer with more time at his command than Beule could afford.