In some spots the
chalky mass has been literally honeycombed by the quarrying gravedigger,
and regular lines of chambers follow one another in the direction of
the strata, after the fashion of the rock-cut tombs of Upper Egypt.
They present a bare and dismal appearance both within and without. The
entrances are narrow and arched, the ceilings low, the walls bare and
colourless, unrelieved by moulding, picture, or inscription. At one
place only, near the modern village of Hanaweh, a few groups of figures
and coarsely cut stelae are to be found, indicating, it would seem, the
burying-place of some chief of very early times.

[Illustration: 273.jpg THE SCULPTURED ROCKS OF HANAWEH]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Lortet.

These figures run in parallel lines along the rocky sides of a wild
ravine. They vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet in height, the bodies
being represented by rectangular pilasters, sometimes merely rough-hewn,
at others grooved with curved lines to suggest the folds of the Asiatic
garments; the head is carved full face, though the eyes are given in
profile, and the summary treatment of the modelling gives evidence of
a certain skill. Whether they are to be regarded as the product of a
primitive Amorite art or of a school of Phoenician craftsmen, we are
unable to determine. In the time of their prosperity the Tyrians
certainly pushed their frontier as far as this region. The wind-swept
but fertile country lying among the ramifications of the lowest spurs of
the Lebanon bears to this day innumerable traces of their indefatigable
industry--remains of dwellings, conduits and watercourses, cisterns,
pits, millstones and vintage-troughs, are scattered over the fields,
interspersed with oil and wine presses. The Phoenicians took naturally
to agriculture, and carried it to such a high state of perfection as
to make it an actual science, to which the neighbouring peoples of the
Mediterranean were glad to accommodate their modes of culture in later
times.*

* Their taste for agriculture, and the comparative
perfection of their modes of culture, are proved by the
greatness of the remains still to be observed: "The
Phoenicians constructed a winepress, a trough, to last for
ever." Their colonists at Carthage carried with them the same
clever methods, and the Romans borrowed many excellent
things in the way of agriculture from Carthaginian books,
especially fr