to buildings composed entirely of detached stones put together in the
ordinary manner. Here, what is chiefly remarkable in the Phoenician
architecture is the tendency to employ, especially for the foundations
and lower courses of buildings, enormous blocks. When the immovable
native rock is no longer available, the resource is to make use of vast
masses of stone, as nearly immovable as possible. The most noted example
is that of the substructions which supported the platform whereon stood
the Temple of Jerusalem, which was the work of the Phoenician builders
whom Hiram lent to Solomon.[66] These substructions, laid bare at their
base by the excavations of the Palestine Exploration Fund, are found to
consist of blocks measuring from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length,
and from ten to twelve feet in height. The width of the blocks at the
angles of the wall, where alone it can be measured, is from twelve to
eighteen feet. At the south-west angle no fewer than thirty-one courses
of this massive character have been counted by the recent explorers, who
estimate the weight of the largest block at something above a hundred
tons![67]

A similar method of construction is found to have prevailed at Tyre,
at Sidon, at Aradus, at Byblus, at Leptis Major, at Eryx, at Motya, at
Gaulos, and at Lixus on the West African coast. The blocks employed do
not reach the size of the largest discovered at Jerusalem, but still are
of dimensions greatly exceeding those of most builders, varying, as they
do, from six feet to twenty feet in length, and being often as much as
seven or eight feet in breadth and height. As the building rises, the
stones diminish in size, and the upper courses are often in no way
remarkable. Stones of various sizes are used, and often the courses are
not regular, but one runs into another. A tower in the wall of Eryx is a
good specimen of this kind of construction.[68]