There it wasted away, a prey to sullen melancholy, under the sway of inexorable deities, chief amongst whom, according to the Phoenician idea, was Mout (Death),* the grandson of El; there the slave became the equal of his former master, the rich man no longer possessed anything which could raise him above the poor, and dreaded monarchs were greeted on their entrance by the jeers of kings who had gone down into the night before them.
*Among the Hebrews his name was Maweth, who feeds the
departed like sheep, and himself feeds on them in hell. Some
writers have sought to identify this or some analogous god
with the lion represented on a stele of Piraeus which
threatens to devour the body of a dead man.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph in Lortet.
The corpse, after it had been anointed with perfumes and enveloped in linen, and impregnated with substances which retarded its decomposition, was placed in some natural grotto or in a cave hollowed out of the solid rock: sometimes it was simply laid on the bare earth, sometimes in a sarcophagus or coffin, and on it, or around it, were piled amulets, jewels, objects of daily use, vessels filled with perfume, or household utensils, together with meat and drink. The entrance was then closed, and on the spot a cippus was erected—in popular estimation sometimes held to represent the soul—or a monument was set up on a scale proportionate to the importance of the family to which the dead man had belonged.* On certain days beasts ceremonially pure were sacrificed at the tomb, and libations poured out, which, carried into the next world by virtue of the prayers of those who offered them, and by the aid of the gods to whom the prayers were addressed, assuaged the hunger and thirst of the dead man.** The chapels and stellæ which marked the exterior of these “eternal” *** houses have disappeared in the course of the various wars by which Syria suffered so heavily: in almost all cases, therefore, we are ignorant as to the sites of the various cities of the dead in which the nobles and common people of the Canaanite and Amorite towns were laid to rest.****
* The pillar or stele was used among both Hebrews and
Phoenicians to mark the graves of distinguished persons.
Among the Semites speaking Aramaic it was called nephesh,
especially when it took the form of a pyramid; the word
means “breath,” “soul,” and clearly shows the ideas
associated with the object.
** An altar was sometimes placed in front of the sarcophagus
to receive these offerings.
*** This expression, which is identical with that used by
the Egyptians of the same period, is found in one of the
Phoenician inscriptions at Malta.
**** The excavations carried out by M. Gautier in 1893-94,
on the little island of Bahr-el-Kadis, at one time believed
to have been the site of the town of Qodshu, have revealed
the existence of a number of tombs in the enclosure which
forms the central part of the tumulus: some of these may
possibly date from the Amorite epoch, but they are very poor
in remains, and contain no object which permits us to fix
the date with accuracy.
In Phoenicia alone do we meet with burial-places which, after the vicissitudes and upheavals of thirty centuries, still retain something of their original arrangement. Sometimes the site chosen was on level ground: perpendicular shafts or stairways cut in the soil led down to low-roofed chambers, the number of which varied according to circumstances: they were often arranged in two stories, placed one above the other, fresh vaults being probably added as the old ones were filled up. They were usually rectangular in shape, with horizontal or slightly arched ceilings; niches cut in the walls received the dead body and the objects intended for its use in the next world, and were then closed with a slab of stone. Elsewhere some isolated hill or narrow gorge, with sides of fine homogeneous limestone, was selected.*
* Such was the necropolis at Adlûn, the last rearrangement
of which took place during the Græco-Roman period, but
which externally bears so strong a resemblance to an
Egyptian necropolis of the XVIIIth or XIXth dynasty, that we
may, without violating the probabilities, trace its origin
back to the time of the Pharaonic conquest.
In this case the doors were placed in rows on a sort of façade similar to that of the Egyptian rock-tomb, generally without any attempt at external ornament. The vaults were on the ground-level, but were not used as chapels for the celebration of festivals in honour of the dead: they were walled up after every funeral, and all access to them forbidden, until such time as they were again required for the purposes of burial. Except on these occasions of sad necessity, those whom “the mouth of the pit had devoured” dreaded the visits of the living, and resorted to every means afforded by their religion to protect themselves from them. Their inscriptions declare repeatedly that neither gold nor silver, nor any object which could excite the greed of robbers, was to be found within their graves; they threaten any one who should dare to deprive them of such articles of little value as belonged to them, or to turn them out of their chambers in order to make room for others, with all sorts of vengeance, divine and human. These imprecations have not, however, availed to save them from the desecration the danger of which they foresaw, and there are few of their tombs which were not occupied by a succession of tenants between the date of their first making and the close of the Roman supremacy. When the modern explorer chances to discover a vault which has escaped the spade of the treasure-seeker, it is hardly ever the case that the bodies whose remains are unearthed prove to be those of the original proprietors.