away so as to leave standing two parallel walls 33 yards long, 19 feet
high, and 2 1/2 feet thick, which are united by transverse party-walls
formed in the same way.[63] Windows and doorways are cut in the walls,
some square at top, some arched. At the two ends the main walls were
united partly by the native rock, partly by masonry. The northern wall
was built of masonry from the very foundation, the southern consisted
for a portion of its height of the native rock, while above that were
several courses of stones carrying it up further. At Aradus and at
Sidon, similarly, the town walls are formed in many places of native
rock, squared and smoothed, up to a certain height, after which courses
of stone succeed each other in the ordinary fashion. It is as if the
Phoenician builders could not break themselves of an inveterate habit,
and rather than disuse it entirely submitted to an intermixture which
was not without a certain amount of awkwardness.

Another striking example of the mixed system is found at a little
distance from Amrith, in the case of a building which appears to have
been a shrine, tabernacle, or sanctuary. The site is a rocky platform,
about a mile from the shore. Here the rock has been cut away to a
depth varying from three to six yards, and a rectangular court has been
formed, 180 feet long by 156 feet wide, in the centre of which has been
left a single block of the stone, still of one piece with the court,
which rises to a height of ten feet, and forms the basis or pedestal of
the shrine itself.[64] The shrine is built of a certain number of large
blocks, which have been quarried and brought to the spot; it has a stone
roof with an entablature, and attains an elevation above the court of
not less than twenty-seven feet. The dimensions of the shrine are small,
not much exceeding seventeen feet each way.[65]

From constructions of this mixed character the transition was easy