Grotto tombs, with a decorated entrance cut upon the rock wall, seem to have been most generally employed in Central Phœnicia. They are exemplified by the numerous remains of this kind at Saida (Sidon) and Jebeil (Byblus). A tomb at the latter place shows a simple but interesting façade; its ornamentation, by the heavy gable and ring-formed acroterium, is strikingly similar to forms occurring in Central Asia Minor (Phrygia). (_Fig._ 96.) Its flat border and plain five-leaved rosette in the tympanon triangle give no evidence of Hellenic influence. The interior of these tombs is generally a large room, with curved ceiling and niches upon three of its sides, sunk into the rock, one above another, like those of the Catacombs, to hold the rows of coffins. The finest of the sarcophagi of Jebeil is decorated with festoons, wreaths, single leaves and branches, in a naïve style of ornament betraying no knowledge of Greek sculpture. In Southern Phœnicia a monumental development of the sarcophagus seems to have been chiefly favored. The tomb known as that of Hiram (Gabr-hiram), south of Sur (Tyre), is an immense coffer, 3 m. high, with a heavy arched cover, raised upon a plinth built of hewn blocks 4.24 m. long, 2.64 m. broad, and 3 m. high, the upper part of which is formed by a monolithic slab almost one meter in thickness. Not far from this site, at Um-el-Auamid, is a large sarcophagus, 2.40 m. long and 1.24 m. broad, with a gable-shaped lid decorated by clumsy corner acroterias. Against one of its sides stands a small altar, remarkable for the corners of its battlemented termination, which must be similar to the horns of the altar which stood in the tabernacle of Solomon’s Temple.
[Illustration: Fig. 96.--Façade of a Rock-cut Tomb at Jebeil.]
Of the domestic architecture of Phœnicia can be mentioned only an entirely unornamented house, hewn from the rock, in Amrith, and a portal at Um-el-Auamid, where the middle block of the triple lintel is decorated with the Egyptian disk and uræos-serpents upon either side. The materials employed by the Phœnician architects seem generally to have been the cedars of Lebanon and the various metals of transmarine commerce; it is on this account that the preserved monuments are so few, and their remains so bare of carved decoration.