Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/255

THE PHOENICIAN TOMB AWAY FROM PHOENICIA. 165 and 1 66, which represent a tomb chosen as a type by Beule after having visited, as he tells us, many thousands of these sepulchres. 1 A staircase about a yard wide, and consisting of nine rather steep steps, leads down to the doorway of the chamber, which is nearly seven feet high and slightly arched at the top. The walls of the staircase, like those of the tomb chamber, are covered with a hard and fine white stucco ; they are, in fact, the whited sepulchres to which Christ compares the Pharisees. 2 The chamber FIGS. 162 and 163. Plan and section of a tomb at Malta. From the Archaologia. itself, in the tomb we have taken as a type, is 22 feet 4 inches long by 10 feet 10 inches wide, and 7 feet 6 inches high. "The chief characteristic of the Carthaginian tombs is not only sim- plicity, but economy. All the arrangements are made so as to take up the least possible space. Only one person at a time can 1 BEULE, Fouille s a Carthage, 4to, Paris, 1861, pp. 121-143. 2 ST. MATTHEW, xxiii. 27. Saint Chrysostom explains the phrase of the evangelist by these words : ra<oi Ke^picr^evot yitya) re KCU ct(r/3eo-Ta>.