Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/402

 3&O HISTORY OF ART i PIKF.MCIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. some remains of Cyclopean masonry at Oum-el-Awamid had be- longed to Phoenician houses, 1 but after the remarks offered on the question by MM. Thobois and Renan it seems difficult to assign any date to these ruins. We can hardly avoid seeing in them the work of some population who, perhaps at some comparatively recent period, had settled upon an ancient site and appropriated the materials they found upon it to their own use." From such remains as these we can learn nothing about the lofty houses of Tyre and Carthage. The latter must have had porticoes, internal courtyards, and, on their upper stories, those open galleries which an Italian would call toggle; such arrange- ments would be demanded by the climate, and moreover we find them actually figured in some of the carved pictures of the Assy- rians, the near neighbours of Eastern Phoenicia. 3 To build such galleries and even to endow them with a certain elegance, no costly FIG. 258. Babe of column from a portico at Larnaca. or stubborn materials were required. Timber alone was enough, or nearly enough. This we realise when we stand in some of the modern houses in these eastern towns and see arrangements which may well have been handed down through many a long century. Take, for instance, the following elements of a portico which occur in a house at Larnaca, in Cyprus. Stone is used only for the base of a wooden shaft (Fig. 258). The peculiar capital, of a design which makes it thoroughly well fitted for its work, is of wood. It supports an architrave, on which lie the ends of a number of round beams, their other extremities being engaged in the wall. 1 DE SAULCY, Voyage d la Mer Morte, vol. i. pp. 46, 47 ; DE VOGUE, Fragments dun Voyage en Orient, pp. 38, 41 et seq. 2 RENAN, Mission, pp. 704, 705, and plates 1., lii., liv., and Iv. 1 Art in Chaldcea and Assyria, vol. i. fig. 76.