Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/347

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHOENICIAN TEMPLE. 325 it guarded any strongly marked signs of its oriental descent down to the day when it disappeared in the conflagration lighted by its own defenders we cannot now say ; neither can we tell how far its walls extended nor what the dimensions of the temple proper, the naos, may have been. As for the other shrines in the Punic town all that we know about them is that the temple of Baal-Hammon was in the Forum, 1 and that of Tanit upon a hill separated from the Byrsa by one of the principal streets. 2 This hill was not so high as the Byrsa, but it offered nearly as large a platform, and several temples of secondary importance were grouped about the sanctuary of the goddess who was the real patroness of Carthage, and who, as the Virgo C&lestis, or Juno, preserved that role down to the very last days of paganism. 5. On the General Characteristics of the Phoenician Temple. We have spared no pains to follow up the slightest traces of every temple built by the Phoenicians on the coast of Syria itself, and in the islands and on the shores of the Mediterranean, wherever they had permanent colonies. In our search disappointments have been frequent. Literary and epigraphic texts are too short and vague to give much information. Bas-reliefs often show the altar, the sacred emblem and the officiating priest well enough, but they abridge the temple very sternly indeed. As for the ruins themselves, it often happens that, as at the Maabed of Amrit, the arrangements about which we feel most curiosity have disappeared and left no sign. In Cyprus the ruins are in better condition, and perhaps when they are systematically explored they may tell us 1 BEULE, Fouilles a Carthage, pp. 3 1 and 8 1 . 2 Ibid. pp. 9, 26, 27. Between this hill and the sea. and between the former and the water tanks, all those votive steles consecrated to Tanit, face of Baal, were found. Of these there are ninety in the British Museum and more than two thousand at Paris ; the latter are due to the excavations of M. de Sainte-Marie. Most of them were found at the sides of the hollow, hedge-bordered road, which runs from the sea and passes between the Byrsa and the hill on which the temple of Tanit is supposed to have stood. It is likely that this road follows the line of one of the principal streets of ancient Carthage. Almost all the steles are broken ; those which are intact are about twenty-four inches high. As a rule they are rough at their lower extremity, which seems to prove that they were planted in the ground. Their backs are roughly dressed.