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 6 |
Format (IMT) |
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File Name | exotic_201304_015_020.jpg |
Transcript | 6 PICTURESQUE PALESTINE. After the union of Arvad with the Sidonians it still retained its own king as a vas 1 the Phoenician monarch. To this brave and hardy insular population, who vied with th Tyrians and Sidonians for the palm as navigators of the Mediterranean and Black § belonged the two towns opposite on the coast, Antaradus (Tartus), and Marathus ('Am t where are found the most perfect, important, and beautiful remains of Phoenician architecture The trip to Ruad can be easily made in the summer months, and generally in the sprii unless the wind blows a gale, as the sailors of Ruad are skilful and perfectly fearh From Tartus we rode southward along the coast to 'Ain el Haiyeh and 'Amrit. It y the time of wheat harvest. The whole country was golden yellow with the ripened or newly harvested grain, and the muzzled oxen were treading out the corn on the circular earthen threshing floors. South-east of Tartus stands the Cathedral of the Crusaders, a fine edii one hundred and thirty feet by ninety-three feet, divided into nave and aisles by two row clustered pillars. As is usual in the Syrian cities, this grand Christian edifice is now the property of the Muslims, and we found a Muslim sheikh seated on a mat teaching a do/en little unwashed boys to read the Koran. It is partly roofless, but not an utter ruin. It is a painful and interesting sight, yet such sights abound through this entire region from Aleppo to Tripoli. The beautiful lordly castles of the French and English. Crusaders, with their Gothic chapels and spacious halls, are now turned into stables or filthy hovels, or used by Turkish mudirs and their zabties and servants. Leaving the Tartus Cathedral, we reach in one hour the ruins of'Amrit, so thoroughly explored by M. Renan, and which he has admirably illustrated in the plates of his M Mission de Phcenice." The ruins of'Amrit are peculiar and striking, being the most perfect Phoenician structures in Syria. There are three lofty massive monuments, one of which is composed oi pedestal sixteen feet square and six feet high, with sculptured lions at the corners; on this stands a monolithic shaft fourteen feet high. The second has a pedestal fifteen feet square and ten feet high, on which stands a huge cylindrical block, and the whole is surmounted by a o shaped stone, the extreme height being thirty-three feet. Beneath each structure are sepulchral chambers hewn in the rock, with loculi of a large size, measuring eight and a half by three and a quarter feet. The third is partially destroyed. Lenormant regards these cone-sha; monuments as having a peculiar meaning in the ancient Baal-worship—" At Paphos, the si representing Ashtoreth was of a conical form." In the island of Malta, in one of the Phoenician sanctuaries, was a very lofty semicircular recess, which was the " Holy of Holies," and "in Giganteja there was found in this recess the conical stone which, as at Paphos, was theeinbler of the nature goddess." " We cannot enter here on an explanation of the brutal and obsc symbolism that was the origin of this representation of the divinity by a conical stone. 1* monoliths, or enormous stone cylinders, terminated at the summit by a cone or a rounded called by the Arabs of our day ' mughazir (spindles), were placed like the Egyptian obe before the temple of Atargatis at Bambyce. Probably there were some also at the temp* BOB |