Proceedings of the expedition to explore the northern coast of Africa, from Tripoly eastward

by Frederick William Beechey; H. W. Beechey

There is only one cella, in this instance, for the reception of the dead, and it appears to have been allotted to a single body only; but as the interior is much incumbered with soil washed in through the door-way from without, we could not say decidedly that there is no place for a second body beneath the upper one, without some previous excavation.

The cella is not placed opposite to the entrance of the tomb, as is usual in other examples, but on the right hand side of it in entering; and this arrangement has been made in conformity with the position of the rock in which it is excavated, and not from any caprice on the part of the architect. The date of this tomb would appear, from its architectural details, to be posterior to the time of the Ptolemies; but no degeneracy of style is observable in the paintings, which would not disgrace the best periods of Grecian art. We must at the same time recollect, that the architecture employed in the decoration of excavated tombs is not to be judged by so severe a standard as that which is applicable to the exteriors of buildings; the details in the first case are purely ornamental, and may be placed in the same scale with those of interiors, in which the fancy of the architect is always left more at liberty than it can be allowed to be in external decoration: and what would therefore be bad taste in one of these instances is not necessarily such in the other. Neither does it appear to have been the practice of the ancients to give an air of gloom or sadness to the abodes which they allotted to the service of the dead, and on which they have bestowed, at all periods, so much labour and expense. We find historic, allegorical, and pastoral subjects represented on such occasions in the gayest colours; as if it had been their wish to disarm death of its terrors, and to moderate the intensity of affliction by diverting the mind from the loss of the deceased to the honours which are paid to their memory. The shades of the departed were also supposed to take delight in the attention bestowed upon their mortal remains; and to wander with complacency over the gay and costly chambers which piety and affection had consecrated to their use. A departure from the established practice of the ancients in the exterior decorations of their temples and public buildings, ought not then perhaps to be received, in the instances mentioned, as a mark of vitiated taste, or of the recent date of the fabric in which such anomaly may be observed: and in applying this remark to the excavated tombs at Cyrene (scarcely any two of which are alike in their proportions) we have the more reason to regret the almost total absence of inscriptions, by which the dates of the several fabrics might be clearly ascertained. It is probable that many of these might be found on tablets, once let into, or placed over, some part of each tomb; and now buried beneath the soil and the wrecks of the exterior façades, which incumber the chambers and the approaches to them. In many instances busts have been placed over the pediments of the outer porticoes, and we often found fragments of statues in the chambers and cellæ within. So many of the tombs are however filled up to a considerable height above the level of their pavement with an accumulation of soil from without, that it is scarcely possible to say what they contain; while the entrances are usually incumbered with the fragments of the fallen porticoes which once formed the ornaments of the exteriors. On the day of our arrival at Cyrene we perceived the marble bust of a female figure, from which the head had been recently broken, lying in front of one of the excavated tombs; and on inquiring of some straggling Arabs, who had preceded us, what was become of the remainder, they at first pleaded ignorance on the point altogether; but on our proving to them, from the whiteness of the fractured parts, that we were certain the head must have been very lately broken off, they asked us what we would give them if they should find it. A bargain was now made that if the head were at all perfect, so as to be worth our taking it away, they should have a Spanish dollar for bringing it; but if we left it in their possession they were only to have the head for their pains. The words were no sooner uttered than one of the fellows scrambled into a tomb close at hand, and brought out with him the relic in question; which was, however, so much defaced by the process which had been employed in severing it from the body, as to be wholly unworthy of removal, and it was left by the side of the trunk with the full and free consent of both parties. We are sorry to say that the practice of breaking heads from the figures has been very general at Cyrene; and has been occasioned in many instances by the inability of the Arabs to carry off a whole statue to Bengazi or Tripoly (where they might have a chance of disposing of it to advantage) and their eagerness to secure the profits which might result to them from the transport and sale of a part of it. We took care to make it generally understood, after this discovery, that we would never purchase anything that had been recently mutilated; and that we should certainly complain to Bey Mahommed at Derna whenever we heard that any injury of the kind had been committed on his Highness’s property.

If the excavated tombs of Cyrene have been pointed out as objects of no trivial interest, those, also, which have been built in every part of its neighbourhood are no less entitled to our attention and admiration. Several months might be employed in making drawings and plans of the most conspicuous of these elegant structures; and the few examples which our short stay allowed us to secure them (as given in the plate, page 464) will give but an imperfect idea of the variety observable in their forms and details. Many of these are built in imitation of temples, although there are scarcely two of them exactly alike; and their effect on the high ground on which they mostly stand, as seen from different parts of the city and suburbs, is more beautiful than we can pretend to describe. A judicious observer might select from these monuments, as well as from the excavated tombs above mentioned, examples of Grecian and Roman architecture through a long succession of interesting periods; and the progress of the art might thus be traced satisfactorily, from its early state among the first inhabitants of Cyrene, to its degeneracy and final decay under Roman colonists in the decline of the empire.

The larger tombs were usually divided in the centre by a wall along the whole length of the building (which is the case in one of those represented in the plate, p. 464), and several bodies were disposed one over the other in each of the compartments thus obtained. Every place containing a body was covered with a slab of marble or stone, in the manner of those described in the excavated tombs; and there were sometimes two of these places abreast of each other, and the same number at their head or feet, according to the size of the tomb. Innumerable busts and statues originally adorned the constructed tombs (as we have already observed to be the case in those which have been excavated in the mountain), and many of these are still seen half buried beneath heaps of rubbish and soil, at the foot of the buildings they once surmounted. Those entirely above ground we usually found broken in several pieces, or mutilated so as to be much disfigured; but we have not the least doubt that there are many of them still existing in a perfect state, within a few feet, and often a few inches, of the surface, which might easily be obtained by excavation.

Two Arabs of the place, who had one day observed us looking at some of the statues here alluded to, came the next morning to our tent, and gave us to understand that they knew of one, in a perfect condition, which they could point out to us for an adequate reward. We made the only bargain with them which it would have been safe to conclude, among so many mutilated pieces, lying round us in all directions, which was simply, that if it proved to be worth taking away we would give them a certain number of dollars for the information which they had afforded us. On our accompanying them to the place where the figure lay, they soon cleared the earth from a female statue, in very good style, and tolerable preservation, excepting that the surface of the face and upper part of the body had entirely lost its polish and become extremely rough. As the statue was of larger dimensions than life, and consequently very heavy, it would not, under these circumstances, have been worth our while to remove it from the place where it was; and we accordingly gave the Arabs a bakhshees for their trouble, and told them that we did not think it good enough to remove; but that if we should ultimately take it away we would give them the reward before specified. With this arrangement, however, (though a perfectly just one,) they proved to be so little satisfied, that on the following morning in passing by the place, we found that the statue had been placed upright, and pelted with stones for their own or their children’s amusement. The lips were knocked off, and the face and body otherwise mutilated; though not to the degree which we expected when we first observed the figure placed up as a mark for every idle passenger to amuse himself with throwing at. We were not a little concerned to see the mischief which we ourselves (however innocently) had in fact been the cause of, and gave out that we intended to write to Mahommed Bey that he might discover and punish the delinquents! adding, that if any similar outrage should be practised in future, the severest retaliation might be expected.

After this we were careful, when we discovered a good statue, to bury it an inch or two in the soil which surrounded it, effacing at the same time all traces of our work; and never indulged ourselves in looking at any object of importance when we thought ourselves observed by the Arabs. For such is the inconsistency of Arab character, that the very same statue which they would walk over continually without ever honouring it with more than a glance en passant, would in all probability be broken in pieces the moment it became an object of particular notice. The style of architecture in which the monumental tombs have been constructed varies according to the dates of the building, and apparently, also, to the consequence of the persons interred in them; the order employed is almost always Doric, particularly in the earlier examples. It seems probable that the custom of burying the entire body obtained very generally in Cyrene and other cities of the Pentapolis; and this is one of the few instances in which we perceive any analogy between the customs of the Cyreneans and those of the Egyptians. It is certain, however, that the practice of burning the bodies, and of preserving the ashes in urns, prevailed also among the inhabitants of the Cyrenaica as it did in other Grecian states[15]. At the present day there are no remains either of bodies or of cinereal urns in any of the tombs with which we are acquainted, one of them only excepted: in which a leg and foot, which appeared to have been rather dried than embalmed, was found in a very perfect state. There are places formed in the wall, at the extremity of one of the cellæ in an excavated tomb, for the reception, apparently, of cinereal urns, as will be seen in the elevation we have given of it; but this is the only example of the kind we have met with, and we are left to determine, in other cases, from the dimensions of the cellæ, whether they contained bodies or ashes. The reason of this is that (from whatever cause) all the tombs, whether excavated or constructed, have been opened and rifled of their contents; and we never saw a single instance in which this had not been the case. In the constructed tombs, when the cover was too heavy to remove without a great deal of labour, a hole was always found knocked in the side of the sarcophagus; and the tablets or slabs of stone or marble which closed the cellæ and the places for the bodies, in those which were excavated, were in no instance found in their places entire by any individual of our party. The tombs of persons of distinction, at Cyrene, appear to have been erected in conspicuous positions without any regard to order or arrangement; at the will, perhaps, of the deceased themselves, or of those at whose expense they were interred: but the sarcophagi of those of inferior consideration were ranged in line, whenever the ground would allow of it, so as to take up as little space as possible, and to present an appearance of regularity; the sizes of the latter very seldom varied materially, and their forms were usually alike. The arrangement of the sarcophagi was not always the same; but they were almost invariably placed at right angles, in the manner represented (page 464) in the ground-plan and elevation which we have given of them. The sarcophagus itself was generally composed of a single block of stone, hollowed out roughly for the reception of the body; and its cover consisted of another single stone shaped into the form represented in the plate, without any great attention to finish, but always with considerable regularity.

This form of sarcophagus was common among the ancients in other parts of the world, and continued in very general use to a late period of the Roman empire. In the plain below the city (to the northward) there is a considerable number of handsome tombs, both excavated and constructed (those of the latter sort naturally preponderating); and among these there must be many (we are sorry to say) which we never had an opportunity of examining: our route over this tract of country having chiefly been confined to the road from Cyrene to Apollonia (now Marsa Susa) its port; situated at the foot of the range of high land the summit of which forms the plain in question: and as the ground in this part is thickly wooded, and crossed by ravines in different directions, the buildings which might still exist upon it would not be seen by passengers unless they lay immediately in their track. There are also many to the southward of the town which we had no leisure to examine; our researches among the tombs having for the most part been limited to the more immediate neighbourhood of the city, where there is still a very ample field for inquiry, without trespassing on the ground we have just mentioned.

The summit of the mountain on which Cyrene is built has been cleared of the wood which no doubt once incumbered it, and we easily found a convenient place for our tents, which were pitched, on our arrival near the centre of the town. The whole of this tract, as far as the eye could reach, was thickly covered with the most luxuriant vegetation, to the height of four and five feet; and as the place had not been visited since the rainy season, we found none of the grass trodden down, and were obliged to commence the operation of levelling it before we could make ourselves comfortable in our abodes.

The heavy dews which fell immediately after the sun was down made our passage through this obstruction rather inconvenient from five or six in the evening till nearly mid-day, and there was no part of Cyrene which we could pass to between those hours without being completely wet through. In a few days, however, we had formed several footpaths to the principal points of attraction, and many of these led over fallen columns and statues which wholly escaped notice till our feet struck against them. Indeed so much was the whole town encumbered with vegetable matter that very few objects were presented to the eye when first we arrived at the place: and we almost despaired of finding any matter of interest unconnected with the fountain and the tombs. Every wetting that we got, however, added to our satisfaction, by augmenting the list of the remains; and we soon perceived that we had established ourselves in the neighbourhood of two theatres and of several other objects well worth attention. The road to the fountain was (it may be imagined) one of the first which was made; and the passage of our servants and horses along it, as they went to fetch water for the consumption of the party, soon rendered it the most practicable of any. It led also to the galleries which we have already mentioned along the northern face of the mountain; and became very shortly such a favourite path to every individual of our number, that each of us, in first coming out of the tent, turned as naturally into it as if there were no other. About midway between our tents and the fountain, the track which had been made through the high grass about us passed close along the scene of one of the theatres, the largest of the two just alluded to; but before we proceed to the description of this building, and of others which engrossed our attention at Cyrene, we shall turn from the subject and lay before our readers the contents of the following chapter.

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