Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/353

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHOENICIAN TEMPI. i:. Under a burning sky the coolness of deep shadow and the freshness of falling- water are the most delightful of luxuries ; they are, in fact, necessities. We may therefore suppose that in these quadrangles there were sparkling fountains with basins hollowed in the pavement, and drooping planes thrusting their roots through the humid soil beneath. Water was required for ablutions and sacrifices, and for quenching the thirst of the crowd of priests and priestesses who lived in the temple and its precincts, and of the countless pilgrims who flocked to it at certain times by land and sea. This water must have been brought from the sides of the neighbouring hills. On the Syrian coast, where the snows and springs of the Lebanon fed innumerable torrents, this was easy enough. In Cyprus it was a more difficult matter. There water had to be brought often from a great distance, in subterranean conduits cut in the rock. Traces of these conduits are to be found in all parts of the island. They are carried across valleys in siphons. 1 To the eastern traveller who has seen Turkish or Persian mosques with their sparkling fountains and majestic trees, it is not difficult to call up a picture of what the great sanctuary of Paphos must have been to one coming upon it after a long climb up the wooded slopes of the hill on which it stood. 2 The temples had festivals corresponding to the changes of the seasons. In the more celebrated among them, in those of Paphos, Byblos and Eryx, the thing worshipped was really the energy shown by nature in destroying and reproducing life in the world, in repairing by a continual process of generation the losses caused by death. In those times men followed the never-ending, ever- beginning drama of life with a sympathy and sensibility that we in these days have some difficulty in understanding. In winter the languor, the mourning of nature, affected their souls ; they wept the death of Adonis, of the young solar god who had been taken from a world of which he was the charm and ornament. With the return of spring, in the first days of April, their delight in the 1 CESXOLA found traces of these aqueducts near Amathus, Curium, Citium, Throni, and, he says, in one or two places in the north of the island (Cyprus, pp. 187, 341). - The precincts of the temple were probably inhabited by crowds of white pigeon?, the favoured bird of Aphrodite. In the courtyard of the great mosque at Mecca there are more than two thousand doves, which are looked upon as belonging to the Cherif. Pilgrims buy grain for them, and to feed them is looked upon as an imperative duty for all who visit the sanctuary (Au BEY, vol. ii. p. 367).