Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/272

 2^2 HISTORY <>!' ART IN PII<KNICIA AND ITS DKPENDENCIKS. confirmed by Suetonius that during his sojourn in Palestine Yrsp.isian went to consult the oracle of Mount Cannel. " Cannd," he says, " is on the borders of Judoja and Syria ; the mountain and the god have the! same name. The god has neither statue' nor temple, for such is the tradition ; he has only a much venerated altar." 1 The only sij.ni of man in the place was the- altar of rough stones, like that built in the same place by Elijah when he wished to confound the false prophets of Baal.-' A sacrifice could be offered, in the words of the Jewish writer, "on every high hill, and under every green tree."' In the Gneco- Roman period, when it was desired to decorate these high places with architecture, men were content to build a colonnade round their summits. At Belat, to the south of Tyre, traces of one of these ancient sanctuaries have been found. A laurel wood, which decorates and partly hides the ruins with its foliage, must be the remains of the sacred grove by which the altar was once surrounded. 1 In this open-air worship there was nothing to favour the pro- gress of sculpture or architecture ; the god had neither home nor image ; but the Phoenicians had much communication with Egypt, and imported the idea of the temple from her. The only temple which still exists on the soil of Phoenicia is nothing more than the reduction of an Egyptian shrine adapted to the soil and habits of its new country. We are here referring to the building called by the dwellers in its neighbourhood El-Maabcd, or "the temple." As in the buildings of the Nile valley the essential part, the heart and centre of the whole, is a stone tabernacle or monolithic chapel, in which either an image or symbol of the divinity was enshrined.' We have already given a plan (Eig. 39) and a view (Eig. 40) of the building as a whole, but we have yet to describe the arrangements of this small cella, which is closed on three sides and open towards the valley, like the building by which it is surrounded. 6 The tabernacle is composed of four stones, three of which are interposed between the mass of living rock, which 1 TACITUS, History, ii. 78. SUKTONIUS, Vespasian, 5. 2 i Kings xviii. 30-32. 3 i Kings xiv. 23. 4 RKNAN, Mission, p. 687. Cf. pp. 691, 692. 5 See Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. I. Ch. IV. 3. KENAN, Mission, pp. 63-68, and plate x.