Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/302

 272 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.v.a. portant that it serves to dispel any doubt that might still exist with regard to the tombs of Jerusalem. Nevertheless there is here a monument which seems to be much Figs. i8o, 181.— Tomb. Medain-Salih, Euting, p. 15, older, and which De Saulcy calls an Egyptian monolith. In our map of Jerusalem (Fig. 106), 1 it will be found to the south of the 1 MM. Guerin and De Saulcy {Description de la Palestine, torn. ii. pp. 90-104, and De Saulcy, loc. cit.) identify Timnath-Serah or Timnath-Heres as the place where Joshua died and was buried in a tomb close by, called Kharbet-Tibneh. There seems to have been a floating tradition to that effect at the beginning of our era ; for it is mentioned by Eusebius, St. Jerome, and even the Septuagint. But there is not a single detail about the monument in support of this view. It is a plain family tomb such as continued to be built for influential people, long after the captivity, and differs in no particular from the specimen annexed lower down. As far as we are able to judge from De Saulcy's drawing (p. 227) the pilasters of the façade are decidedly Grseco-Roman. However defaced the ornament about the façade towards the court may be, no stretch of imagination can conceive it to look like ursei, as De Saulcy has done ; for it recalls beyond dispute the rosettes and pendentives of the Jerusalem examples (p. 233). This view is shared by Conder,