Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/308

 2 78 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.ka. frequent occurrence in Egypt. 1 There is nothing Greek about this monolith ; the general type of its construction and of its form suggest the Nile Valley and a remote period. 2 But we very much question its having been insulated for the purpose of scooping out the chamber ; a similar hypothesis would not explain why the door was placed at the side — a peculiarity that no one seems to have noticed before. The monument, ac- cording to MM. Liéven and Vla- having been retouched at different times, it was a plain massive pedestal, Fig. 187. — Inscription of Tomb, after Clermont-Ganneau. minck, shows traces of We think that in the beginning with an altar on its upper face, to which wooden steps at the back gave access — one of the many places of worship which Solomon had set up at the very gates of Jerusalem ; but that under a reforming king the altar was demolished, and the ponderous mass cut and used as a sepulchre. The south face was the first to be attacked, and still shows traces of a rough sketch, where they had begun to work (Figs. 184 and 186). For some reason or other they changed their mind, and cut the opening on the west face commanding the wady. That this had not been the original plan is proved by the door not being equi-distant from the two angles, but rather more to the south than to the north. C. Ganneau has shown that the building of this hypogée was pre-exillic ; and that the entrance, at first o m. 80 c. high, was in later times enlarged top and bottom to 1 m. 45 c. 1 M. Ganneau writes that there are scores of other cavities at Siloam with coned ceilings, and troughs which were to receive the body furnished with grooves into which the lid was fitted, in fact, exactly similar to sundry Punic tombs. 2 De Saulcy did not hesitate to date the small temple from Solomon. But his well-known proclivity for adding the matter of a thousand years to the monuments about Jerusalem would make one pause before accepting his dicta, were not his testimony corroborated by MM. Renan and Ganneau. Fig. 188. — Remains of Inscription. Clermont- Ganneau.