Title | Picturesque Palestine, Sinai, and Egypt, Vol. 2 |
Creator (LCNAF) |
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Publisher | D. Appleton and Company |
Date | 1883 |
Description | Index: Phoenicia and Lebanon / by the Rev. H. W. Jessup -- The Phoenician plain / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- Acre, the key of Palestine, Mount Carmel and the river Kishon, Maritime cities and plains of Palestine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Lydda and Ramleh, Philistia / By Lt. Col. Warren -- The south country of Judaea / by the Rev. Canon Tristram -- The southern borderland and Dead Sea / by Professor Palmer -- Mount Hor and the cliffs of Edom, The convent of St. Catherine / by Miss M. E. Rogers -- Sinai / by the Rev. C. P. Clarke -- The land of Goshen, Cairo, Memphis, Thebes, Edfu and Philae / by S. Lane-Poole. |
Subject.Geographic (TGN) |
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Genre (AAT) |
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Language | English |
Type (DCMI) |
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Original Item Location | DS107 .W73 v.2 |
Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b1703789~S11 |
Digital Collection | Exotic Impressions: Views of Foreign Lands |
Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/exotic |
Repository | Kenneth Franzheim II Rare Books Room, William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, University of Houston Libraries |
Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/william-r-jenkins-architecture-art-library |
Use and Reproduction | No Copyright - United States |
Identifier | exotic_201304_015 |
Title | Page 3 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | exotic_201304_015_017.jpg |
Transcript | PHCENICIA AND LEBANON. 3 The rectangle is built of huge stones, the largest of which on the north-east corner is thirty feet long, nine feet nine inches high, and four feet seven inches wide, and at an elevation of thirty feet from the ground on the inside. The most of the stones are of similar dimensions, some thicker and narrower and some shorter and wider. Those on the south side have a wide coarse level or draft, and unfinished attempts at a moulding on the top of some of them. The quarry is on the slope of the hill a few rods from the north-east corner. The northeast corner block has a rude lion carved in high relief on its northern face. The corresponding block on the north-western corner has a lion standing by a cypress tree. This style of rude ornament is still in use among the Syrian stonemasons, and even the Arab women use the lion and cypress tree in decorating the interior mud walls of their rude houses. On both the inner and outer sides of the north portal are niches with canopies for statues. On the inside was once a portico forty-five feet wide and seventeen feet deep. Its roof and columns are fallen and mostly buried beneath the debris. The capitals of the pilasters on the main wall are early Corinthian. In the southern central part of the rectangular area is the Ionic temple, its cella being seventy- five feet by forty-five feet. To the north are two flights of steps of the width of the temple, covering a space sixty feet in length northward. The temple is built of the same light- coloured limestone with the court, but the blocks are much smaller, varying from six to ten feet long, and from three to four feet in breadth and thickness. It is surrounded by half columns, which become at the corners three-quarter columns. There are four at the south end and five on each side, all being three feet five inches in diameter and twenty-seven feet high. In the interior lie piles of fallen blocks and half columns in utter confusion. In the winter a fine fountain gushes out from under it, and in its original state the fountain was doubtless, as at Fijeh (see page 440, vol. i.) and Afka (Apheca) (see page 16), the attractive feature of the spot, and connected with the worship of those ancient days, now so completely enwrapped in mystery. The water is sweet, cold, and pure; it escapes from beneath the western wall of the enceinte, its former place of exit being buried beneath the debris. The northern ruin is also a rectangular enclosure, standing north-west of the great court, and at an angle with it. It contained several small temples, one on the south-east corner, another at the south-wrest corner, and one outside the western wall forty-five feet by fifteen feet. Behind the platform at the south-west corner are the pedestals of numerous columns, which may have surrounded the cella of a temple whose portico occupied the platform. The little temple on the south-east corner has a portico thirteen feet by twenty-six feet, and twenty feet high, now in ruins, and a vestibule twenty-six feet by forty feet. The portal between them is seven feet wide by ten feet high, its lintel being a monolith thirteen feet long, having an unfinished moulding and cornice, with an Qgg cornice under the dice and flowers common to the portals of the great court, and a spread eagle above. The stone above the lintel is fifteen feet long. The stones are laid up without mortar, and beautifully joined, like those in Baalbek and Palmyra. The only building laid up in mortar is the ruined Crusaders' Church on the eastern |