CHAPTER VI--ARCHITECTURE.
Origin of the architecture in rock dwellings--Second style, a combination of the native rock with the ordinary wall-- Later on, the use of the native rock, discarded--Employment of huge blocks of stone in the early walls--Absence of cement--Bevelling--Occurrence of Cyclopian walls--Several architectural members comprised in one block--Phoenician shrines--The Maabed and other shrines at Amrith--Phoenician temples--Temple of Paphos--Adjuncts to temples--Museum of Golgi--Treasure chambers of Curium--Walls of Phoenician towns--Phoenician tombs--Excavated chambers--Chambers built of masonry--Groups of chambers--Colonnaded tomb--Sepulchral monuments--The Burdj-el-Bezzak--The Kabr Hiram--The two Meghazil--Tomb with protected entrance--Phoenician ornamentation--Pillars and their capitals--Cornices and mouldings--Pavements in mosaic and alabaster--False arches-- Summary.
The architecture of the Phoenicians began with the fashioning of the native rock--so abundant in all parts of the country where they had settled themselves--into dwellings, temples, and tombs.

The calcareous limestone, which is the chief geological formation along the Syrian coast, is worked with great ease; and it contains numerous fissures and caverns,[61] which a very moderate amount of labour and skill is capable of converting into fairly comfortable dwelling-places.

It is probable that the first settlers found a refuge for a time in these natural grottos, which after a while they proceeded to improve and enlarge, thus obtaining a practical power of dealing with the material, and an experimental knowledge of its advantages and defects.

But it was not long before these simple dwellings ceased to content them, and they were seized with an ambition to construct more elaborate edifices--edifices such as they must have seen in the lands through which they had passed on their way from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the seaboard of the Mediterranean.

They could not at once, however, divest themselves of their acquired habits, and consequently, their earliest buildings continued to have, in part, the character of rock dwellings, while in part they were constructions of the more ordinary and regular type.