245. View of Madracen. (From a plate in Blakesley’s ‘Four Months in Algeria.’)
From objects and scribblings of various kinds found in the interior, it appears to have remained open till nearly the time of the Moslem conquest, but shortly afterwards to have been closed, and to have defied all the ingenuity of explorers till a passage was forced in 1866 by Messrs. MacCarthy and Berbrugger, acting under the orders and at the expense of the late Emperor Napoleon III.[[194]] The entrance was found passing under the sill of the false door on the east from a detached building standing outside the platform, and which seems to have been originally constructed to cover and protect the entrance. From this a winding passage, 560 ft. in length, led to the central chamber where it is assumed the royal bodies were once deposited, but when opened no trace of them remained, nor anything to indicate who they were, nor in what manner they were buried.
The other tomb, the Madracen, is very similar to this one, but smaller. Its peristyle is of a sort of Doric order, without bases, and surmounted by a quasi-Egyptian cornice, not unlike that on the Tomb of Absalom at Jerusalem (Woodcut No. [240]), or that at Dugga (Woodcut No. [243]). Altogether its details are more elegant, and from their general character there seems no reason for doubting that this tomb is older than the Kubr Roumeïa, though they are so similar to each other that their dates cannot be far distant.[[195]]
There seems almost no reason for doubting that the Kubr Roumeïa was the “Monumentum commune Regiæ gentis” mentioned by Pomponius Mela,[[196]] about the middle of the first century of our era, and if so, this could only apply to the dynasty that expired with Juba II., A.D. 23, and in that case the older monument most probably belonged to the previous dynasty, which ceased to reign with Bocchus III., 33 years before the birth of Christ.
One of the most interesting points connected with these Mauritanian tombs is their curious similarity to that of Hadrian at Rome. The square base, the circular colonnade, the conical roof, are all the same. At Rome they are very much drawn out, of course, but that arose from the “Mole” being situated among tall objects in a town, and more than even that, perhaps, from the tendency towards height which manifested itself so strongly in the architecture of that age.
The greatest similarity, however, exists in the interior. The long winding corridor terminating in an oblong apartment in the centre is an identical feature in both, but has not yet been traced elsewhere, though it can be hardly doubted that it must have existed in many other examples.
If we add to these the cenotaph at St. Rémi (Woodcut No. [231]), we have a series of monuments of the same type extending over 400 years; and, though many more are wanted before we can fill up the gaps and complete the series, there can be little doubt that the missing links once existed which connected them together. Beyond this we may go still further back to the Etruscan tumuli and the simple mounds of earth on the Tartar steppes. At the other end of the series we are evidently approaching the verge of the towers and steeples of Christian art; and, though it may seem the wildest of hypotheses to assert that the design of the spire of Strasbourg grew out of the mound of Alyattes, it is nevertheless true, and it is only non-apparent because so many of the steps in the progress from the one to the other have disappeared in the convulsions of the interval.
Domestic Architecture.
We know, not only from the descriptions and incidental notices that have come down to us, but also from the remains found at Pompeii and elsewhere, that the private dwellings of the Romans were characterised by that magnificence and splendour which we find in all their works, accompanied, probably, with more than the usual amount of bad taste.