Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/299

 THE TEMPLE IN CYPRUS. 277 burning resin, in the case of night illuminations. 1 Finally in the upper part of the coin, between the summits of the pylon towers, hangs the group of the solar disk and the crescent moon. This is all that we get from the coin. The engraver, in spite of his narrow space, made a point of introducing the curious emblem in which the originality of the Paphian worship consisted. He did some violence to proportion, and placed it in the middle of his field, and then to increase its importance he enframed it in that monumental facade which must have seemed so striking to visitors approaching the temple. But he is so pre-occupied with this idea that he never thinks of giving any hint as to the plan of the building, and it is when we attempt to form any guess at its arrangement that our difficulties begin. Behind the pylon there may have been a cella divided into naos and pronaos, the former containing the conical stone. Was this the real arrange- ment, or should we rather believe that the stone was placed, as at Byblos, either in the open air or under a simple pavilion sur- rounded by a colonnade ? We incline towards the latter hypothesis, which seems to agree better with the feeble indications still to be traced on the site. Two plans have been given of these ruins : one was compiled by Gerhard from the information collected by travellers who visited the site in the early years of the century (Fig. 200) ; 2 the second by General di Cesnola. Considering. that Cesnola bought part of the ground and made wide and deep excavations at several points on the plateau formerly occupied by the temple, the plan he gives, summary as it is, deserves to be preferred to the sketches made by hurried travellers ; but we must remember on 1 In several districts of Greece and Asia Minor houses are still lighted by means of small candelabra fashioned on the same principle as these larger things of the same kind. A metal dish is supported on a pointed wooden stem, the lower end of which is driven into the floor of beaten earth. Chips of resinous wood, or &d8i, are burnt in the dish. Many a time, during my travels in the Levant, have I written up the notes of my day's work by the light of such a torch. 2 Voyages d'Ali Bey el Abbassi en Afrique et en Asie pendant les Annees 1803-1807 (Paris, 1814, 8vo), vol. ii. pp. 143-145, and plate 34,, b, c. S. Vox HAMMER, Topographische Ansichten, 8vo, 1811, vol. ii. pp. 150-152 and corresponding plate. H. HETSCH, in Munter, Tempel der himmlischen Gottin zu Paphos, plates i., ii., and p. 30. In the plan we reproduce a must be a peristylar court with a basin (/), b a second court in which the temple proper stood (c] ; in the latter d is the pavilion in which this conical stone was placed. The division of the cella into three aisles corresponds well enough with the representation of the temple figured upon the coins.