Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/269

THE PHOENICIAN TOMB AWAY FROM PIKI.NK i.. 249 the customs and superstitions of the peasantry show traces of the habits and beliefs which ruled during the period whose monuments we have just been describing ; the Syrian cult of Adonis has left its mark, it is thought, on more than one popular Sardinian festival. 1 Some day, perhaps, the remains of the hardy mariners of Phoenicia will be found on coasts which at present seem to have preserved no souvenir of their visits. Such discoveries may help us to a solution of some minor problems, but they will hardly modify the results already obtained in any material degree. Ye are now well acquainted with the Phoenician tomb. Ill preserved as it is in nearly every instance, it allows us to point out certain permanent features, which we may here recapitulate. The Phoenicians never burned their dead ; from first to last they placed them underground. With the passage of time natural grottoes were superseded by artificial chambers cut from the rock ad hoc. In these every variety of sepulchral bed is to be found ; a ledge raised a few inches above the floor of the chamber or a trough sunk in its centre, sarcophagi, both fixed and movable, plain and decorated, and sometimes like the Egyptian mummy cases in form ; finally and especially, the oven-shaped niche excavated in the chamber wall, a receptacle which combined the great advantages of requiring no coffin and of leaving the chamber itself free for the celebration of funerary rites, and for the easy passage of future corpses to the places reserved for them in the family sepulchre. The marked predilection shown by the Phoenicians for this method of entombment was in strict harmony with their practical and utilitarian genius ; they sought for economy in every thing they did ; they hated all unnecessary expenditure of time, effort, or money. It is, perhaps, to this trait in their character that the absence of funerary inscriptions is to be traced. What was the use, they may have said, of engraving epitaphs in those secret and walled up chambers, which would never again be entered after the last niche was filled ? When the Phoenicians found themselves in a country where sepulchres on the surface of the soil were used, and attention called to them by an external tombstone, they conformed to that usage. Look, for instance, at the epitaphs of the Sidonian merchants who died at Athens. These are often engraved both in Greek and Phoenician. The Semitic reticence is exchanged for 1 PAIS, La Sardegna, p. 97, and No. 5. VOL I. K K