X. A TEMPLE OF BAAL AND SEPULCHRE OF PHŒNICIA.
About midway between Tyre and Sidon lies what has been called by Porter and Tristram a kind of Syrian Stonehenge; but neither they nor Vandevelde, who likewise mentions it, really visited the spot.
The remains are not even mentioned in Carl Ritter’s elaborate compilation, the “Erd-Kunde,” nor in Robinson or Thompson; but as I have visited them five times, namely in October 1848, October 1849, September 1855, October 1857, and September 1859, I may as well tell what I know of these monuments, which I believe to be of some importance.
The site on which they stand is a large open cultivated ground, nearly opposite Sarafend, (Sarepta,) between the high-road and the sea, a quarter of an hour south of the vestiges of Adloon, whose broken columns and large pieces of tesselated pavement lie actually upon the highway, so that our horses and mules walk over the household pavements, or the road pavement of hexagonal slabs.
Adloon may be at half distance between Soor and Saida. It has been conjectured that the name is an Arabic modification of Adnoun, and that again derived from Ad nonum, meaning the ninth Roman mile from Tyre; but as far as my memory serves me, that does not correspond with the real distance.
There are upright stones standing from four to six feet each above the present level of the ground, but which may not be the original level. There may have been a considerable rise accumulated in process of time. The largest stone still shows six feet by a breadth of two. They anciently formed a parallelogram, (not a circle, which is commonly believed to be an emblem belonging to Baal-worship,) as may be seen in the following plan, which represents their present appearance:—
The twelve stones marked 0 are still erect; the rest, whose places are marked by dots, are either
prostrate on the ground, or have entirely disappeared. Between them all are spaces of two or three yards each. The stones appear to have been carefully hewn originally, though now the edges are worn off, or pieces have fallen away from the substances of most of them. They bear, however, no chisel-indications of having been connected by lintels across the tops: they have not been placed as trilithons.
Outside the parallelogram, at the distance of six yards, stand two other stones of the same description, which probably served as a portal of approach.