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 stellae 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.*