History of Phoenicia Part 4

Caralis, or Cagliari, the present capital, lies at the bottom of a deep bay looking southwards, and has an excellent harbour, sheltered in all weathers. There are no remains of Phoenician buildings; but the neighbourhood yields abundant specimens of Phoenician art in the shape of tombs, statuettes, vases, bottles, and the like.[5134] Caralis was probably the first of the settlements made by the Phoenicians in Sardinia; it would attract them by its harbour, its mines, and the fertility of its neighbourhood. From Caralis they probably pa.s.sed to Nora, which lay on the same bay to the south-west; and from Nora they rounded the south-western promontory of Sardinia, and established themselves on the small island now known as the Isola di San Antioco, where they built a town which they called Sulchis or Sulcis.[5135]

Sulcis has yielded votive tablets of the Phoenician type, tombs, vases, &c.[5136] The island was productive of lead, and had an excellent harbour towards the north, and another more open one towards the south.

Finally, mid-way on the west coast, at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Oristano, the Phoenicians occupied a small promontory which projects into the sea southwards and there formed a settlement which became known as Tharras or Tharros.[5137] Very extensive remains, quite unmistakably Phoenician, including tombs, cippi, statuettes in metal and clay, weapons, and the like, have been found on the site.[5138]

The pa.s.sage would have been easy from Sardinia to Corsica, which is not more than seven miles distant from it; but Corsica seems to have possessed no attraction for the Phoenicians proper, who were perhaps deterred from colonising it by its unhealthiness, or by the savagery of its inhabitants. Or they may have feared to provoke the jealousy of the Tyrrhenians, off whose coast the island lay, and who, without having any colonising spirit themselves, disliked the too near approach of rivals.[5139] At any rate, whatever the cause, it seems to have been left to the Carthaginians, to bring Corsica within the range of Phoenician influence; and even the Carthaginians did little more than hold a few points on its sh.o.r.es as stations for their ships.[5140]

If from Sardinia the Phoenicians ventured on an exploring voyage westward into the open Mediterranean, a day's sail would bring them within sight of the eastern Balearic Islands, Minorca and Majorca.

The sierra of Majorca rises to the height of between 3,000 and 4,000 feet,[5141] and can be seen from a great distance. The occupation of the islands by "the Phoenicians" is a.s.serted by Strabo,[5142] but we cannot be sure that he does not mean Phoenicians of Africa, i.e. Carthaginians.

Still, on the whole, modern criticism inclines to the belief that, even before the foundation of Carthage, Phoenician colonisation had made its way into the Balearic Islands, directly, from the Syrian coast.[5143]

Some resting-places between the middle Mediterranean and Southern Spain must have been a necessity; and as the North African coast west of Hippo offered no good harbours, it was necessary to seek them elsewhere.

Now Minorca has in Port Mahon a harbour of almost unsurpa.s.sed excellence,[5144] while in Majorca there are fairly good ports both at Palma and at Aleudia.[5145] Ivica is less well provided, but there is one of some size, known as Pormany (i.e. "Porta magna"), on the western side of the island, and another, much frequented by fishing-boats,[5146]

on the south coast near Ibiza. The productions of the Balearides were not, perhaps, in the early times of much importance, since the islands are not, like Sardinia, rich in metals, nor were the inhabitants sufficiently civilised to furnish food supplies or native manufactures in any quant.i.ty. If, then, the Phoenicians held them, it must have been altogether for the sake of their harbours.

The colonies of the Mediterranean have now been, all of them, noticed, excepting those which lay upon the south coast of Spain. Of these the most important were Malaca (now Malaga), s.e.x or s.e.xti, and Abdera (now Adra). Malaca is said by Strabo to have been "Phoenician in its plan,"[5147] Abdera is expressly declared by him to have been "a Phoenician settlement,"[5148] while s.e.xti has coins which connect it with early Phoenician legends.[5149] The mountain range above Malaca was anciently rich in gold-mines;[5150] s.e.xti was famous for its salt-pans;[5151] Abdera lay in the neighbourhood of productive silver-mines.[5152] These were afterwards worked from Carthagena, which was a late Carthaginian colony, founded by Asdrubal, the uncle of Hannibal. Malaga and Carthagena (i.e. New-Town) had well-sheltered harbours; but the ports of s.e.xti and Abdera were indifferent.

Outside the Straits of Gibraltar, on the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic, were two further sets of Phoenician colonies, situated respectively in Africa and in Spain. The most important of those in Africa were Tingis (now Tangiers) and Lixus (now Chemmish), but besides these there were a vast number of staples ({emporia}) without names,[5153] spread along the coast as far as Cape Non, opposite the Canary Islands. Tingis, a second Gibraltar, lay nearly opposite that wonderful rock, but a little west of the narrowest part of the strait. It had a temple of the Tyrian Hercules, said to have been older than that at Gades;[5154] and its coins have Phoenician legends.[5155] The town was situated on a promontory running out to the north-east at the extremity of a semicircular bay about four miles in width, and thus possessed a harbour not to be despised, especially on such a coast. The country around was at once beautiful and fertile, dotted over with palms, and well calculated for the growth of fruit and vegetables. The Atlas mountains rose in the background, with their picturesque summits, while in front were seen the blue Mediterranean, with its crisp waves merging into the wilder Atlantic, and further off the sh.o.r.es of Spain, lying like a blue film on the northern horizon.[5156]

While Tingis lay at the junction of the two seas, on the northern African coast, about five miles east of Cape Spartel, Lixus was situated on the open Atlantic, forty miles to the south of that cape, on the West African coast, looking westward towards the ocean. The streams from Atlas here collect into a considerable river, known now as the Wady-el-Khous, and anciently as the Lixus.[5157] The estuary of this river, before reaching the sea, meanders through the plain of Sidi Oueddar, from time to time returning upon itself, and forming peninsulas, which are literally almost islands.[5158] From this plain, between two of the great bends made by the stream, rose in one place a rocky hill; and here the Phoenicians built their town, protecting it along the brow of the hill with a strong wall, portions of which still remain in place.[5159] The blocks are squared, carefully dressed, and arranged in horizontal courses, without any cement. Some of them are as much as eleven feet long by six feet or somewhat more in height. The wall was flanked at the corners by square towers, and formed a sort of irregular hexagon, above a mile in circ.u.mference.[5160] A large building within the walls seems to have been a temple;[5161] and in it was found one of those remarkable conical stones which are known to have been employed in the Phoenician worship. The estuary of the river formed a tolerably safe harbour for the Phoenician ships, and the valley down which the river flows gave a ready access into the interior.

In Spain, outside the Pillars of Hercules, the chief Phoenician settlements were Tartessus, Agadir or Gades, and Belon. Tartessus has been regarded by some as properly the name of a country rather than a town;[5162] but the statements of the Greek and Roman geographers to the contrary are too positive to be disregarded. Tartessus was a town in the opinions of Scymnus Chius, Strabo, Mela, Pliny, Festus Avienus, and Pausanias,[5163] who could not be, all of them, mistaken on such a point. It was a town named from, or at any rate bearing the same name with, an important river of southern Spain,[5164] probably the Guadalquivir. It was not Gades, for Scymnus Chius mentions both cities as existing in his day;[5165] it was not Carteia, for it lay west of Gades, while Carteia lay east. Probably it occupied, as Strabo thought, a small island between two arms of the Guadalquivir, and gradually decayed as Gades rose to importance. It certainly did not exist in Strabo's time, but five or six centuries earlier it was a most flourishing place.[5166] If it is the Tarshish of Scripture, its prosperity and importance must have been even anterior to the time of Solomon, whose "navy of Tarshish" brought him once in every three years "gold, and silver, and ivory, and apes, and peac.o.c.ks."[5167] The south of Spain was rich in metallic treasures, and yielded gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, and tin;[5168] trade along the west coast of Africa would bring in the ivory and apes abundant in that region; while the birds called in our translation of the Bible "peac.o.c.ks" may have been guinea-fowl. The country on either side of the Guadalquivir to a considerable distance took its name from the city, being called Tartessis.[5169] It was immensely productive. "The wide plains through which the Guadalquiver flows produced the finest wheat, yielding an increase of a hundredfold; the oil and the wine, the growth of the hills, were equally distinguished for their excellence. The wood was not less remarkable for its fineness than in modern times, and had a native colour beautiful without dye."[5170] Nor were the neighbouring sea and stream less bountiful. The tunny was caught in large quant.i.ties off the coast, sh.e.l.l-fish were abundant and of unusual size,[5171] while huge eels were sometimes taken by the fishermen, which, when salted, formed an article of commerce, and were reckoned a delicacy at Athenian tables.[5172]

Gades is said to have been founded by colonists from Tyre a few years anterior to the foundation of Utica by the same people.[5173] Utica, as we have seen, dated from the twelfth century before Christ. The site of Gades combined all the advantages that the Phoenicians desired for their colonies. Near the mouth of the Guadalete there detaches itself from the coast of Spain an island eleven miles in length, known now as the "Isla de Leon," which is separated from the mainland for half its length by a narrow but navigable channel, while to this there succeeds on the north an ample bay, divided into two portions, a northern and a southern.[5174] The southern, or interior recess, is completely sheltered from all winds; the northern lies open to the west, but is so full of creeks, coves, and estuaries as to offer a succession of fairly good ports, one or other of which would always be accessible. The southern half of the island is from one to four miles broad; but the northern consists of a long spit of land running out to the north-west, in places not more than a furlong in width, but expanding at its northern extremity to a breadth of nearly two miles. The long isthmus, and the peninsula in which it ends, have been compared to the stalk and blossom of a flower.[5175] The flower was the ancient Gades, the modern Cadiz. The Phoenician occupation of the site is witnessed to by Strabo, Diodorus, Scymnus Chius, Mela, Pliny, Velleius Paterculus, aelian and Arrian,[5176] and is further evidenced by the numerous coins which bear the legend of "Agadir" in Phoenician characters.[5177] But the place itself retains no traces of the Phoenician occupation. The famous temple of Melkarth, with its two bronze pillars in front bearing inscriptions, has wholly perished, as have all other vestiges of the ancient buildings. This is the result of the continuous occupation of the site, which has been built on successively by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Moors, and Spaniards. The s.p.a.ce is somewhat confined, and the houses in ancient times were, we are told, closely crowded together,[5178] as they were at Aradus and Tyre. But the advantages of the harbour and the productiveness of the vicinity more than made up for this inconvenience. Gades may have been, as Cadiz is now said to be, "a mere silver plate set down upon the edge of the sea,"[5179] but it was the natural centre of an enormous traffic. It had easy access by the valley of a large stream to the interior with its rich mineral and vegetable products; it had the command of two seas, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; it trained its sailors to affront greater perils than any which the Mediterranean offers; and it enjoyed naturally by its position an almost exclusive commerce with the Northern Atlantic, with the western coasts of Spain and Gaul, with Britain, North Germany, and the Baltic.

Compared with Gades and Tartessus, Belon was an insignificant settlement. Its name[5180] and coins[5181] mark it as Phoenician, but it was not possessed of any special advantages of situation. The modern Bolonia, a little south of Cadiz, is thought to mark the site.[5182]

We have reached now the limits of Phoenician colonisation towards the West. While their trade was carried, especially from Gades, into Luisitania and Gallaecia on the one hand, and into North-western Africa on the other, reaching onward past these districts to Gaul and Britain, to the Senegal and Gambia, possibly to the Baltic and the Fortunate Islands, the range of their settlements was more circ.u.mscribed. As, towards the north-east, though their trade embraced the regions of Colchis and Thrace, of the Tauric Chersonese, and Southern Scythia, their settlements were limited to the aegean and perhaps the Propontis, so westward they seem to have contented themselves with occupying a few points of vantage on the Spanish and West African coasts, at no great distance from the Straits, and from these stations to have sent out their commercial navies to sweep the seas and gather in the products of the lands which lay at a greater distance. The actual extent of their trade will be considered in a later chapter. We have been here concerned only with their permanent settlements or colonies. These, it has been seen, extended from the Syrian coast to Cyprus, Cilicia, Rhodes, Crete, the islands and sh.o.r.es of the aegean and Propontis, the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Southern Spain, and North-western Africa as far south as Cape Non. The colonisation was not so continuous as the Greek, nor was it so extensive in one direction,[5183] but on the whole it was wider, and it was far bolder and more adventurous. The Greeks, as a general rule, made their advances by slow degrees, stealing on from point to point, and having always friendly cities near at hand, like an army that rests on its supports.

The Phoenicians left long intervals of s.p.a.ce between one settlement and another, boldly planted them on barbarous sh.o.r.es, where they had nothing to rely on but themselves, and carried them into regions where the natives were in a state of almost savagery. The commercial motive was predominant with them, and gave them the courage to plunge into wild seas and venture themselves among even wilder men. With the Greeks the motive was generally political, and a safe home was sought, where social and civil life might have free scope for quiet development.

CHAPTER VI--ARCHITECTURE

Origin of the architecture in rock dwellings--Second style, a combination of the native rock with the ordinary wall-- Later on, the use of the native rock, discarded--Employment of huge blocks of stone in the early walls--Absence of cement--Bevelling--Occurrence of Cyclopian walls--Several architectural members comprised in one block--Phoenician shrines--The Maabed and other shrines at Amrith--Phoenician temples--Temple of Paphos--Adjuncts to temples--Museum of Golgi--Treasure chambers of Curium--Walls of Phoenician towns--Phoenician tombs--Excavated chambers--Chambers built of masonry--Groups of chambers--Colonnaded tomb--Sepulchral monuments--The Burdj-el-Bezzak--The Kabr Hiram--The two Meghazil--Tomb with protected entrance--Phoenician ornamentation--Pillars and their capitals--Cornices and mouldings--Pavements in mosaic and alabaster--False arches-- Summary.

The architecture of the Phoenicians began with the fashioning of the native rock--so abundant in all parts of the country where they had settled themselves--into dwellings, temples, and tombs. The calcareous limestone, which is the chief geological formation along the Syrian coast, is worked with great ease; and it contains numerous fissures and caverns,[61] which a very moderate amount of labour and skill is capable of converting into fairly comfortable dwelling-places. It is probable that the first settlers found a refuge for a time in these natural grottos, which after a while they proceeded to improve and enlarge, thus obtaining a practical power of dealing with the material, and an experimental knowledge of its advantages and defects. But it was not long before these simple dwellings ceased to content them, and they were seized with an ambition to construct more elaborate edifices--edifices such as they must have seen in the lands through which they had pa.s.sed on their way from the sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf to the seaboard of the Mediterranean. They could not at once, however, divest themselves of their acquired habits, and consequently, their earliest buildings continued to have, in part, the character of rock dwellings, while in part they were constructions of the more ordinary and regular type. The remains of a dwelling-house at Amrith,[62] the ancient Marathus, offer a remarkable example of this intermixture of styles. The rock has been cut away so as to leave standing two parallel walls 33 yards long, 19 feet high, and 2 1/2 feet thick, which are united by transverse party-walls formed in the same way.[63] Windows and doorways are cut in the walls, some square at top, some arched. At the two ends the main walls were united partly by the native rock, partly by masonry. The northern wall was built of masonry from the very foundation, the southern consisted for a portion of its height of the native rock, while above that were several courses of stones carrying it up further. At Aradus and at Sidon, similarly, the town walls are formed in many places of native rock, squared and smoothed, up to a certain height, after which courses of stone succeed each other in the ordinary fashion. It is as if the Phoenician builders could not break themselves of an inveterate habit, and rather than disuse it entirely submitted to an intermixture which was not without a certain amount of awkwardness.

Another striking example of the mixed system is found at a little distance from Amrith, in the case of a building which appears to have been a shrine, tabernacle, or sanctuary. The site is a rocky platform, about a mile from the sh.o.r.e. Here the rock has been cut away to a depth varying from three to six yards, and a rectangular court has been formed, 180 feet long by 156 feet wide, in the centre of which has been left a single block of the stone, still of one piece with the court, which rises to a height of ten feet, and forms the basis or pedestal of the shrine itself.[64] The shrine is built of a certain number of large blocks, which have been quarried and brought to the spot; it has a stone roof with an entablature, and attains an elevation above the court of not less than twenty-seven feet. The dimensions of the shrine are small, not much exceeding seventeen feet each way.[65]

From constructions of this mixed character the transition was easy to buildings composed entirely of detached stones put together in the ordinary manner. Here, what is chiefly remarkable in the Phoenician architecture is the tendency to employ, especially for the foundations and lower courses of buildings, enormous blocks. When the immovable native rock is no longer available, the resource is to make use of vast ma.s.ses of stone, as nearly immovable as possible. The most noted example is that of the substructions which supported the platform whereon stood the Temple of Jerusalem, which was the work of the Phoenician builders whom Hiram lent to Solomon.[66] These substructions, laid bare at their base by the excavations of the Palestine Exploration Fund, are found to consist of blocks measuring from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and from ten to twelve feet in height. The width of the blocks at the angles of the wall, where alone it can be measured, is from twelve to eighteen feet. At the south-west angle no fewer than thirty-one courses of this ma.s.sive character have been counted by the recent explorers, who estimate the weight of the largest block at something above a hundred tons![67]

A similar method of construction is found to have prevailed at Tyre, at Sidon, at Aradus, at Byblus, at Leptis Major, at Eryx, at Motya, at Gaulos, and at Lixus on the West African coast. The blocks employed do not reach the size of the largest discovered at Jerusalem, but still are of dimensions greatly exceeding those of most builders, varying, as they do, from six feet to twenty feet in length, and being often as much as seven or eight feet in breadth and height. As the building rises, the stones diminish in size, and the upper courses are often in no way remarkable. Stones of various sizes are used, and often the courses are not regular, but one runs into another. A tower in the wall of Eryx is a good specimen of this kind of construction.[68]

Where the stones are small, mortar has been employed by the builders, but where they are of a large size, they are merely laid side by side in rows or courses, without mortar or cement of any kind, and remain in place through their own ma.s.s and weight. In the earliest style of building the blocks are simply squared,[69] and the wall composed of them presents a flat and level surface, or one only broken by small and casual irregularities; but, when their ideas became more advanced, the Phoenicians preferred that style of masonry which is commonly regarded as peculiarly, if not exclusively, theirs[610]--the employment of large blocks with deeply bevelled edges. The bevel is a depression round the entire side of the stone, which faces outwards, and may be effected either by a sloping cut which removes the right-angle from the edge, or by two cuts, one perpendicular and the other horizontal, which take out from the edge a rectangular bar or plinth. The Phoenician bevelling is of this latter kind, and is generally accompanied by an artificial roughening of the surface inside the bevel, which offers a strong contrast to the smooth and even surface of the bevel itself.[611] The style is highly ornamental and effective, particularly where a large s.p.a.ce of wall has to be presented to the eye, unbroken by door or window.[612]

Occasionally, but very rarely, and only (so far as appears) in their remoter dependencies, the Phoenicians constructed their buildings in the rude and irregular way, which has been called Cyclopian, employing unhewn polygonal blocks of various sizes, and fitting them roughly together. The temples discovered in Malta and Gozzo have masonry of this description.[613]

A peculiarity in Phoenician architecture, connected with the preference for enormous blocks over stones of a moderate size, is the frequent combination in a single ma.s.s of distinct architectural members; for instance, of the shaft and capital of pillars, of entire pediments with a portion of the wall below them, and of the walls of monuments with the cornice and architrave. M. Renan has made some strong remarks on this idiosyncrasy. "In the Grecian style," he says, "the beauty of the wall is a main object with the architect, and the wall derives its beauty from the divisions between the stones, which observe symmetrical laws, and are in agreement with the general lines of the edifice. In a style of this kind the stones of a wall have, all of them, the same dimension, and this dimension is determined by the general plan of the building; or else, as in the kind of work which is called 'pseud-isodomic,' the very irregularity of the courses is governed by a law of symmetry. The stones of the architrave, the metopes, the triglyphs, are, all of them, separate blocks, even when it would have been perfectly easy to have included in a single block all these various members. Such facts, as one observes frequently in Syria, where three or four architectural members are brought out from a single block, would have appeared to the Greeks monstrous, since they are the negation of all logic."[614]

In cannot be denied that the habit of preferring large to small blocks, even in monuments of a very moderate size, involved the Phoenician architects in awkwardnesses and anomalies, which offend a cultivated taste; but it should be remembered, on the other hand, that ma.s.siveness in the material conduces greatly to stability, and that, in lands where earthquakes are frequent, as they are along all the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es, not many monuments would have survived the lapse of three thousand years had the material employed been of a less substantial and solid character.

Among the Phoenician constructions, of which it is possible to give some account at the present day, without drawing greatly on the imagination, are their shrines, their temples, the walls of their towns, and, above all, their tombs. Recent researches in Phoenicia Proper, in Cyprus, Sicily, Africa, and the smaller Mediterranean islands, have brought to light numerous remains previously unknown; the few previously known remains have been carefully examined, measured, and in some cases photographed; and the results have been made accessible to the student in numerous well-ill.u.s.trated publications. When Movers and Kenrick published their valuable works on the history of Phoenicia, and the general characteristics of the Phoenician people, it was quite impossible to do more than form conjectures concerning their architecture from a few coins, and a few descriptions in ancient writers. It is now a matter of comparatively little difficulty to set before the public descriptions and representations which, if they still leave something to be desired in the way of completeness, are accurate, so far as they go, and will give a tolerably fair idea of the architectural genius of the people.

One very complete and two ruined shrines have been found in Phoenicia Proper, in positions and of a character which, in the judgment of the best antiquaries, mark them as the work of the ancient people. All these are situated on the mainland, near the site of Marathus, which lay nearly opposite the island of Ruad, the ancient Aradus. The shrine which is complete, or almost complete, bears the name of "the Maabed" or "Temple." Its central position, in the middle of an excavated court, and its mixed construction, partly of native rock and partly of quarried stone, have been already described. It remains to give an account of the shrine or tabernacle itself.[615] This is emplaced upon the ma.s.s of rock left to receive it midway in the court, and is a sort of cell, closed in on three sides by walls, and open on one side, towards the north.

The cell is formed of four quarried blocks, which are laid one over the other. These are nearly of the same size, and similarly shaped, each of them enclosing the cell on three sides, towards the east, the south, and the west. The fourth, which is larger than any of the others, const.i.tutes the roof. It is a ma.s.sive stone, carefully cut, which projects considerably in front of the rest of the building, and is ornamented towards the top with a cornice and string-course, extending along the four sides.[616] Internally the roof is scooped into a sort of shallow vault. The height of the shrine proper is about seventeen feet, and the elevation of the entire structure above the court in which it stands appears to be about twenty-seven feet. M. Renan conjectures that the projecting portion of the roof had originally the support of two pillars, which may have been either of wood, of stone, or of metal, and notes that there are two holes in the bas.e.m.e.nt stone, into which the bottoms of the pillars were probably inserted.[617] He imagines that the court was once enclosed completely by the construction of a wall at its northern end, and that the water from a spring, which still rises within the enclosure, was allowed to overflow the entire s.p.a.ce, so that the shrine looked down upon a basin or shallow lake and gla.s.sed itself in the waters.[618] An image of a deity may have stood in the cell under the roof, dimly visible to the worshipper between the two porch pillars.

The two ruined tabernacles lie at no great distance from the complete one, which has just been described. One of them is so injured that its plan is irrecoverable; but M. Renan carefully collected and measured the fragments of the other, and thus obtained sufficient data for its restoration.[619] It was, he believes, a monolithic chamber, with a roof slightly vaulted, like that of the _Maabed_, having a length of eight feet, a breadth of five, and a height of about ten feet, and ornamented externally with a very peculiar cornice. This consisted of a series of carvings, representing the fore part of an uraeus or basilisk serpent, uprearing itself against the wall of the shrine, which were continued along the entire front of the chamber. There was also an internal ornamentation of the roof, consisting of a winged circle of an Egyptian character--a favourite subject with the Phoenician artists[620]--the circle having an uraeus erect on either side of it, and also of another winged figure which appeared to represent an eagle.[621] The monolithic chamber was emplaced upon a block of stone, ten feet in length and breadth, and six feet in height, which itself stood upon a much smaller stone, and overhung it on all sides. A flight of six steps, cut in the upper block at either side, gave access to the chamber, which, however, as it stood in a pool of water, must have been approached by a boat.

The entire height of the shrine above the water must have been about eighteen feet.

Some other ruined shrines have been found in the more distant of the Phoenician settlements, and representations of them are common upon the _stelae_, set up in temples as votive offerings. On these last the uraeus cornice is frequently repeated, and the figure of a G.o.ddess sometimes appears, standing between the pillars which support the front of the shrine.[622] There is a decided resemblance between the Phoenician shrines and the small Egyptian temples, which have been called _mammeisi_, the chief difference being that the latter are for the most part peristylar.[623] M. Renan says of the _Maabed_, or main shrine at Amrith:--"L'aspect general de l'edifice est Egyptian, mais avec une certaine part d'originalite. Le bandeau et la corniche sur les quatre cotes de la stalle superiere en sont le seul ornement. Cette simplicite, cette severite de style, jointes a l'idee de force et de puissance qu'eveillent les dimensions enormes des materiaux employes, sont des caracteres que nous avons deja signales dans les monumens funeraires d'Amrith."[624]

From the shrines of the Phoenicians we may now pa.s.s to their temples, of which, however, the remains are, unfortunately, exceedingly scanty.

Of real temples, as distinct from shrines, Phoenicia Proper does not present to us so much as a single specimen. To obtain any idea of them, we must quit the mother country, and betake ourselves to the colonies, especially to those island colonies which have been less subjected than the mainland to the destructive ravages of barbarous conquerors, and the iconoclasm of fanatical populations. It is especially in Cyprus that we meet with extensive remains, which, if not so instructive as might have been wished, yet give us some important and interesting information.

The temple of Paphos, according to the measurements of General Di Cesnola,[625] was a rectangular building, 221 feet long by 167 feet wide, built along its lower corners of large blocks of stone, but probably continued above in an inferior material, either wood or unbaked brick.[626] The four corner-stones are still standing in their proper places, and give the dimensions without a possibility of mistake.

Nothing is known of the internal arrangements, unless we attach credit to the views of the savant Gerhard, who, in the early years of the present century, constructed a plan from the reports of travellers, in which he divided the building into a nave and two aisles, with an ante-chapel in front, and a sacrarium at the further extremity.[627] M.

Gerhard also added, beyond the sacrarium, an apse, of which General Di Cesnola found no traces, but which may possibly have disappeared in the course of the sixty years which separated the observations of M.

Gerhard's informants from the researches of the later traveller.

The arrangement into a nave and two aisles is, to a certain extent, confirmed by some of the later Cyprian coins, which certainly represent Cyprian temples, and probably the temple of Paphos.[628] The floor of the temple was, in part at any rate, covered with mosaic.[629]

This large building, which extended over an area of 36,800 square feet, was emplaced within a sacred court, surrounded by a _peribolus_, or wall of enclosure, built of even larger blocks than the temple itself, and entered by at least one huge doorway. The width of this entrance, situated near a corner of the western wall, was nearly eighteen feet.[630] On one side of it were found still fixed in the wall the sockets for the bolts on which the door swung, in length six inches, and of proportionate width and depth. The peribolus was rectangular, like the temple, and was built in lines parallel to it. The longer sides measured 690 and the shorter 530 feet. One block, which was of blue granite and must have come either from Asia Minor or from Egypt, measured fifteen feet ten inches in length, with a width of seven feet eleven inches, and a depth of two feet five inches.[631] It is thought that the court was probably surrounded by a colonnade or cloister,[632]

though no traces have been at present observed either of the pillars which must have supported such a cloister or of the rafters which must have formed its roof. Ponds,[633] fountains, shrubberies, gardens, groves of trees, probably covered the open s.p.a.ce between the cloister and the temple, while well-shaded walks led across it from the gates of the enclosure to those of the sanctuary.

If we allow ourselves to indulge our fancy for a brief s.p.a.ce, and to complete the temple according to the idea which the coins above represented naturally suggest, we may suppose that it did, in fact, consist of a nave, two aisles, and a cell, or "holy of holies," the nave being of superior height to the aisles, and rising in front into a handsome facade, like the western end of a cathedral flanked by towers.

Through the open doorway between the towers might be seen dimly the sacred cone or pillar which was emblematic of deity; on either side the eye caught the ends of the aisles, not more than half the height of the towers, and each crowned with a strongly projecting cornice, perhaps ornamented with a row of uraei. In front of the two aisles, standing by themselves, were twin columns, like Jachin and Boaz before the Temple of Solomon. The aisles were certainly roofed: whether the nave also was covered in, or whether, like the Greek hypaethral temples, it lay open to the blue vault of heaven, is perhaps doubtful. The walls of the buildings, after a few courses of hewn stone, were probably of wood, perhaps of cedar, enriched with the precious metals, and the pavement was adorned with a mosaic of many colours, "white, yellow, red, brown, and rose."[634] Outside the temple was a ma.s.s of verdure. "In the sacred precinct, and in its dependencies, all breathed of voluptuousness, all spoke to the senses. The air of the place was full of perfumes, full of soft and caressing sounds. There was the murmur of rills which flowed over a carpet of flowers; there was, in the foliage above, the song of the nightingale, and the prolonged and tender cooing of the dove; there were, in the groves around, the tones of the flute, the instrument which sounds the call to pleasure, and summons to the banquet chamber the festive procession and the bridal train. Beneath the shelter of tents, or of light booths with walls formed by the skilful interlacing of a green ma.s.s of boughs, through which the myrtle and the laurel spread their odours, dwelt the fair slaves of the G.o.ddess, those whom Pindar called, in the drinking-song which he composed for Theoxenus of Corinth, 'the handmaids of persuasion.'"[635] Here and there in the precincts, sacred processions took their prescribed way; ablutions were performed; victims led up to the temple; votive offerings hung on the trees; festal dances, it may be, performed; while in the cloister which skirted the peribolus, dealers in shrines and images chaffered with their customers, erotic poets sang their lays, lovers whispered, fortune-tellers plied their trade, and a throng of pilgrims walked lazily along, or sat on the ground, breathing in the soft, moist air, feasting their eyes upon the beauty of upspringing fountain and flowering shrub, and lofty tree, while their ears drank in the cadences of the falling waters, the song of the birds, and the gay music which floated lightly on the summer breeze.

Phoenician temples had sometimes adjuncts, as cathedrals have their chapter-houses and muniment rooms, which were at once interesting and important. There has been discovered at Athienau in Cyprus--the supposed site of Golgi--a ruined edifice, which some have taken for a temple,[636] but which appears to have been rather a repository for votive offerings, a sort of ecclesiastical museum. A picture of the edifice, as he conceives it to have stood in its original condition, has been drawn by one of its earliest visitants. "The building," he says,[637] "was constructed of sun-dried bricks, forming four walls, the base of which rested upon a substruction of solid stone-work. The walls were covered, as are the houses of the Cypriot peasants of to-day, with a stucco which was either white or coloured, and which was impenetrable by rain. Wooden pillars with stone capitals supported internally a pointed roof, which sloped at a low angle. It formed thus a sort of terrace, like the roofs that we see in Cyprus at the present day. This roof was composed of a number of wooden rafters placed very near each other, above which was spread a layer of rushes and coa.r.s.e mats, covered with a thick bed of earth well pressed together, equally effective against the entrance of moisture and against the sun's rays. Externally the building must have presented a very simple appearance. In the interior, which received no light except from the wide doorways in the walls, an immovable and silent crowd of figures in stone, with features and garments made more striking by the employment of paint, surrounded, as with a perpetual worship, the mystic cone. Stone lamps, shaped like diminutive temples, illumined in the corners the grinning _ex-votos_ which hung upon the walls, and the curious pictures with which they were accompanied. Grotesque bas-reliefs adorned the circuit of the edifice, where the slanting light was reflected from the white and polished pavement-stones."[638] In length and breadth the chamber measured sixty feet by thirty; the thickness of the bas.e.m.e.nt wall was three feet.[639]

Midway between the side walls stood three rows of large square pedestals--regularly s.p.a.ced, and dividing the interior into four vistas or avenues, which some critics regard as bases for statues, and some as supports for the pillars which sustained the roof.[640] Two stone capitals of pillars were found within the area of the chamber; and it is conjectured that the entire disappearance of the shafts may be accounted for by their having been of wood,[641] the employment of wooden shafts with stone bases and capitals being common in Cyprus at the present time.[642] Against each of the four walls was a row of pedestals touching each other, which had certainly been bases for statues, since the statues were found lying, mostly broken, in front of them. The figures varied greatly in size, some being colossal, others mere statuettes. Most probably all were votive offerings, presented by those who imagined that they had been helped by the G.o.d of the temple to which the chamber belonged, as an indication of their grat.i.tude. The number of pedestals found along one of the walls was seventy-two,[643] and the original number must have been at least three times as great.

Another Cyprian temple, situated at Curium, not far from Paphos, contained a very remarkable crypt, which appears to have been used as a treasure-house.[644] It was entered by means of a flight of steps which conducted to a low and narrow pa.s.sage cut in the rock, and giving access to a set of three similar semi-circular chambers, excavated side by side, and separated one from another by doors. Beyond the third of these, and at right angles to it, was a fourth somewhat smaller chamber, which gave upon a second pa.s.sage that it was found impossible to explore.[645] The three princ.i.p.al chambers were fourteen feet six inches in height, twenty-three feet long, and twenty-one feet broad. The fourth was a little smaller,[646] and shaped somewhat irregularly. All contained plate and jewels of extraordinary richness, and often of rare workmanship. "The treasure found," says M. Perrot, "surpa.s.sed all expectation, and even all hope. Never had such a discovery been made of such a collection of precious articles, where the material was of the richest, and the specimens of different styles most curious. There were many bracelets of ma.s.sive gold, and among them two which weighed a pound apiece, and several others of a weight not much short of this. Gold was met with in profusion under all manner of forms--finger-rings, ear-rings, amulets, flasks, small bottles, hair-pins, heavy necklaces.

Silver was found in even greater abundance, both in ornaments and in vessels; besides which there were articles in electrum, which is an amalgam of silver with gold. Among the stones met with were rock-crystals, carnelians, onyxes, agates, and other hard stones of every variety; and further there were paste jewels, cylinders in soft stone, statuettes in burnt clay, earthen vases, and also many objects in bronze, as lamps, tripods, candelabra, chairs, vases, arms, &c. &c. A certain amount of order reigned in the repository. The precious objects in gold were collected together princ.i.p.ally in the first chamber. The second contained the silver vessels, which were arranged along a sort of shelf cut in the rock, at the height of about eight inches above the floor. Unfortunately the oxydation of these vessels had proceeded to such lengths, that only a very small number could be extracted from the ma.s.s, which for the most part crumbled into dust at the touch of a finger. The third chamber held lamps and fibulae in bronze, vases in alabaster, and, above all, the groups and vessels modelled in clay; while the fourth was the repository of the utensils in bronze, and of a certain number which were either in copper or in iron. In the further pa.s.sage, which was not completely explored, there were nevertheless found seven kettles in bronze."[647]

In the construction of the walls of their towns, especially of those which were the most ancient, the feature which is most striking at first sight is that on which some remarks have already been made, the attachment of the lower portion of the wall to the soil from which the wall springs. At Sidon, at Aradus, and at Semar-Gebeil, the _enceinte_ which protected the town consisted, up to the height of ten or twelve feet, of native rock, cut to a perpendicular face, upon which were emplaced several courses of hewn stone. The principle adopted was to utilise the rock as far as possible, and then to supplement what was wanting by a superstructure of masonry. Large blocks of stone, shaped to fit the upper surface of the rock, were laid upon it, generally endways, that is, with their smallest surface outwards, their length forming the thickness of the wall, which was sometimes as much as fifteen or twenty feet.[648] The ma.s.sive blocks, once placed, were almost immovable, and it was considered enough to lay them side by side, without clamps or mortar, since their own weight kept them in place. It was not thought of much consequence whether the joints of the courses coincided or not; though care was taken that, if a coincidence occurred in two courses, it should not be repeated in the third.[649] The elevation of walls does not seem to have often exceeded from thirty to forty feet, though Diodorus makes the walls of Carthage sixty feet high,[650] and Arrian gives to the wall of Tyre which faced the continent the extraordinary height of a hundred and fifty feet.[651]

If we may generalise from the most perfect specimens of Phoenician town-walls that are still fairly traceable, as those of Eryx and Lixus,[652] we may lay it down, that such walls were usually flanked, at irregular intervals, by square or rectangular towers, which projected considerably beyond the line of the curtain. The towers were of a more ma.s.sive construction than the wall itself, especially in the lower portion, where vast blocks were common. The wall was also broken at intervals by gates, some of which were posterns, either arched or covered in by flat stones,[653] while others were of larger dimensions, and were protected, on one side or on both, by bastions. The sites of towns were commonly eminences, and the line of the walls followed the irregularities of the ground, crowning the slopes where they were steepest. Sometimes, as at Carthage and Thapsus, where the wall had to be carried across a flat s.p.a.ce, the wall of defence was doubled, or even tripled. The restorations of Daux[654] contain, no doubt, a good deal that is fanciful; but they give, probably, a fair idea of the general character of the so-called "triple wall" of certain Phoenician cities.

The outer line, or {proteikhisma}, was little more than an earthwork, consisting of a ditch, with the earth from it thrown up inwards, crowned perhaps at top with a breastwork of masonry. The second line was far more elaborate. There was first a ditch deeper than the outer one, while behind this rose a perpendicular battlemented wall to the height, from the bottom of the ditch, of nearly forty feet. In the thickness of the wall, which was not much less than the height, were chambers for magazines and cisterns, while along the top, behind the parapet, ran a platform, from which the defenders discharged their arrows and other missiles against the enemy. Further back, at the distance of about thirty yards, came the main line of defence, which in general character resembled the second, but was loftier and stronger. There was, first, a third ditch (or moat, if water could be introduced), and behind it a wall thirty-five feet thick and sixty feet high, pierced by two rows of embrasures from which arrows could be discharged, and having a triple platform for the defenders. This wall was kept entirely clear of the houses of the town, and the different storeys could be reached by sloping ascents or internal staircases. It was flanked at intervals by square towers, somewhat higher than the walls, which projected sufficiently for the defenders to enfilade the a.s.sailants when they approached the base of the curtain.

The tombs of the Phoenicians were, most usually, underground constructions, either simple excavations in the rock, or subterranean chambers, built of hewn stone, at the bottom of sloping pa.s.sages, or perpendicular shafts, which gave access to them. The simpler kinds bear a close resemblance to the sepulchres of the Jews. A chamber is opened in the rock, in the sides of which are hollowed out, horizontally, a number of caverns or _loculi_, each one intended to receive a corpse.[655] If more s.p.a.ce is needed, a pa.s.sage is made from one of the sides of the chamber to a certain distance, and then a second chamber is excavated, and more _loculi_ are formed; and the process is repeated as often as necessary. But chambers thus excavated were apt to collapse, especially if the rock was of the soft and friable nature so common in Phoenicia Proper and in Cyprus; on which account, in such soils, the second kind of tomb was preferred, sepulchural chambers being solidly built,[656] either singly or in groups, each made to hold a certain number of sarcophagi. The most remarkable tombs of this cla.s.s are those found at Amathus, on the south coast of Cyprus, by General Di Cesnola.

They lie at the depth of from forty to fifty-five feet below the surface of the soil,[657] and are square chambers, built of huge stones, carefully squared, some of them twenty feet in length, nine in breadth, and three in thickness, and even averaging a length of fourteen feet.[658] Two shapes occur. Some of the tombs are almost perfect cubes, the upright walls rising to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and being then covered in by three or four long slabs of stone. Others resemble huts, having a gable at either end, and a sloping roof formed of slabs which meet and support each other. A squared doorway, from five to six feet in height, gives entrance to the tombs at one end, and has for ornament a fourfold fillet, which surrounds it on three sides.

Otherwise, ornamentation is absent, the stonework of both walls and roofs being absolutely plain and bare. Internally the chambers present the same naked appearance, walls and roofs being equally plain, and the floor paved with oblong slabs of stone, about a foot and a half in length.

The grouped chambers are of several kinds. Sometimes there are two chambers only, one opening directly into the other, and not always similarly roofed. Occasionally, groups of three are found, and there are examples of groups of four. In these instances, the exact symmetry is remarkable. A single doorway of the usual character gives entrance to a nearly square chamber, the exact dimensions of which are thirteen feet four inches by twelve feet two inches. Midway in the side and opposite walls are three other doorways, each of them three foot six inches in width, which lead into exactly similar square chambers, having a length of twelve feet two inches, and a width of ten feet nine.[659]

Chambers of the character here described contain in almost every instance stone sarcophagi. These are ranged along the walls, at a little distance from them. The chambers commonly contain two or three; but sometimes one sarcophagus is superimposed upon another, and in this way the number occasionally reaches to six.[660] Mostly, the sarcophagi are plain, or nearly so, but are covered over with a sloping lid. Sometimes, however, they are elaborately carved, and const.i.tute works of art, which are of the highest value. An account will be given of the most remarkable of these objects in the chapter on Phoenician aesthetic Art.

Another distinct type of Phoenician tomb is that which is peculiar to Nea-Paphos, and which is thought by some to have been employed exclusively by the High Priests of the great temple there.[661] The peculiarity of these burial-places is, that the sepulchral chambers are adjuncts of a quadrangular court open to the sky, and surrounded by a colonnade supported on pillars.[662] The court, the colonnade, the pillars, the entablature, and the chambers, with their niches for the dead, are all equally cut out of the rock, as well as the pa.s.sage by which the court is entered, at one corner of the quadrangle. The columns are either square or rounded, the rounded ones having capitals resembling those of the Doric order; and the entablature is also a rough imitation of the Doric triglyphs, and guttae. The entrances to the sepulchral chambers are under the colonnade, behind the pillars;[663]

and the chambers contain, beside niches, a certain number of bases for sarcophagi, but no sarcophagi have been found in them. The quadrangle is of a small size, not more than about eighteen feet each way.

Thus far we have described that portion of the sepulchral architecture of the Phoenicians which is most hidden from sight, lying, as it does, beneath the surface of the soil. With tombs of this quiet character the Phoenicians were ordinarily contented. They were not, however, wholly devoid of those feelings with respect to their dead which have caused the erection, in most parts of the world, of sepulchral monuments intended to attract the eye, and to hand on to later ages the memory of the departed. Well acquainted with Egypt, they could not but have been aware from the earliest times of those ma.s.sive piles which the vanity of Egyptian monarchs had raised up for their own glorification on the western side of the valley of the Nile; nor in later days could such monuments have escaped their notice as the Mausoleum of Halicarna.s.sus[664] or the Tomb of the Maccabees.[665] Accordingly, we find them, at a very remote period, not merely anxious to inter their dead decently and carefully in rock tombs or subterranean chambers of ma.s.sive stone, but also wishful upon occasions to attract attention to the last resting-places of their great men, by constructions which showed themselves above the ground, and had some architectural pretensions. One of these, situated near Amrith, the ancient Marathus, is a very curious and peculiar structure. It is known at the present day as the Burdj-el-Bezzak,[666] and was evidently constructed to be, like the pyramids, at once a monument and a tomb. It is an edifice, built of large blocks of stone, and rising to a height of thirty-two feet above the plain at its base, so contrived as to contain two sepulchral chambers, the one over the other. Externally, the monument is plain almost to rudeness, being little more than a cubic ma.s.s, broken only by two doorways, and having for its sole ornament a projecting cornice in front. Internally, there is more art and contrivance. The chambers are very carefully constructed, and contain a number of niches intended to receive sarcophagi, the lower having accommodation for three and the upper for twelve bodies.[667] It is thought that originally the cubic ma.s.s, which is all that now remains, was surmounted by a pyramidical roof, many stones from which were found by M. Renan among the debris that were scattered around. The height of the monument was thus increased by perhaps one-half, and did not fall much short of sixty-five feet.[668] The cornice, which is now seen on one side only, and which is there imperfect, originally, no doubt, encircled the entire edifice.

The other constructions erected by the Phoenicians to mark the resting-places of their dead are simple monuments erected near, and generally over, the tombs in which the bodies are interred. The best known is probably that in the vicinity of Tyre, which the natives call the Kabr-Hiram, or "Tomb of Hiram."[669] No great importance can be attached to this name, which appears to be a purely modern one;[670] but the monument is undoubtedly ancient, perhaps as ancient as any other in Phoenicia.[671] It is composed of eight courses of huge stones superimposed one upon another,[672] the blocks having in some cases a length of eleven or twelve feet, with a breadth of seven or eight, and a depth of three feet. The courses retreat slightly, with the exception of the fifth, which projects considerably beyond the line of the fourth and still more beyond that of the sixth. The whole effect is less that of a pyramid than of a stele or pillar, the width at top being not very much smaller than that at the base. The monument is a solid ma.s.s, and is not a square but a rectangular oblong, the broader sides measuring fourteen feet and the narrower about eight feet six inches. Two out of the eight courses are of the nature of substructions, being supplemental to the rock, which supplies their place in part; and it is only recently that they have been brought to light by means of excavation. Hence the earlier travellers speak of the monument as having no more than six courses. The present height above the soil is a little short of twenty-five feet. A flight of steps cut in the rock leads down from the monument to a sepulchral chamber, which, however, contains neither sepulchral niche nor sarcophagus.