Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/424

402 HISTURV OF ART IN PHIKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. On the cast and west the vhole building was Hanked by two strong bastions (c), their angles rounded like those of the harbour itself. These bastions were composed of a strong curtain with three faces, supported within on piers and arches. They had courtyards inside them. This curtain was crenellated and on its platform there was room to work military engines. On the north side the whole building was still further strengthened by two square forts. Between the foot of the external wall and the water there was a continuous quay, within which a series of small parallel cisterns was contrived." l Daux is not content to re-establish the plan of the ground-floor from the remains still in place, from the stretches of wall, and even fragments of vaults which are yet standing ; he has attempted to restore the arrangements of the upper floors, and to that end has made use of the broken masonry lying about the site. We are unable either to dispute or to appreciate the value of his work ; we have no means of knowing how much of it is pure conjecture and how much founded on evidence. We must, therefore, decline to follow him into the details of his restoration, and be content with pointing out certain features which are attested both by his formal statements and by some of the drawings in his plates. Being entirely of concrete, this palace had a look of weight and solidity not unlike that of Chaldaean and Assyrian buildings. The rooms were only lighted by windows four feet eight inches high and two feet two inches wide, so that they must have been dark enough, especially as the walls were nearly four feet thick at their thinnest part. Some of the halls distributed about the central court were rectangular, others round ; the four round ones were in the angles and were covered by hemi-spherical domes. The other rooms, which were longer and wider, had spherical vaults. In each of the four angle towers of the main building, as well as in the pair flanking the great doorway, there was a rectangular spiral staircase with landings and thirty inches wide. It led up to the flat roofs. The rooms on the first story were reached by a different set of staircases contrived in the thickness of the walls. No trace of a stone or even of a stucco casing has been found. o 1 DAUX, Rechcrchfs, pp. 201. 202.