the building, and is ornamented towards the top with a cornice and string-course, extending along the four sides.[616] Internally the roof is scooped into a sort of shallow vault.  The height of the shrine proper is about seventeen feet, and the elevation of the entire structure above the court in which it stands appears to be about twenty-seven feet.  M. Renan conjectures that the projecting portion of the roof had originally the support of two pillars, which may have been either of wood, of stone, or of metal, and notes that there are two holes in the basement stone, into which the bottoms of the pillars were probably inserted.[617] He imagines that the court was once enclosed completely by the construction of a wall at its northern end, and that the water from a spring, which still rises within the enclosure, was allowed to overflow the entire space, so that the shrine looked down upon a basin or shallow lake and glassed itself in the waters.[618] An image of a deity may have stood in the cell under the roof, dimly visible to the worshipper between the two porch pillars.

The two ruined tabernacles lie at no great distance from the complete one, which has just been described.  One of them is so injured that its plan is irrecoverable; but M. Renan carefully collected and measured the fragments of the other, and thus obtained sufficient data for its restoration.[619] It was, he believes, a monolithic chamber, with a roof slightly vaulted, like that of the Maabed, having a length of eight feet, a breadth of five, and a height of about ten feet, and ornamented externally with a very peculiar cornice.  This consisted of a series of carvings, representing the fore part of an uraeus or basilisk serpent, uprearing itself against the wall of the shrine, which were continued along the entire front of the chamber.  There was also an internal ornamentation of the roof, consisting of a winged circle of an Egyptian character—­a favourite subject with the Phoenician artists[620]—­the circle having an uraeus erect on either side of it, and also of another winged figure which appeared to represent an eagle.[621] The monolithic chamber was emplaced upon a block of stone, ten feet in length and breadth, and six feet in height, which itself stood upon a much smaller stone, and overhung it on all sides.  A flight of six steps, cut in the upper block at either side, gave access to the chamber, which, however, as it stood in a pool of water, must have been approached by a boat.  The entire height of the shrine above the water must have been about eighteen feet.

Some other ruined shrines have been found in the more distant of the Phoenician settlements, and representations of them are common upon the stelae, set up in temples as votive offerings.  On these last the uraeus cornice is frequently repeated, and the figure of a goddess sometimes appears, standing between the pillars which support the front of the shrine.[622] There is a decided resemblance between the Phoenician