But the most striking of the Phoenician sepulchral monuments are to be found in the north of Phoenicia, and not in the south, in the neighbourhood, not of Tyre and Sidon, but of Marathus and Aradus.  Two of them, known as the Meghazil,[673] form a group which is very remarkable, and which, if we may trust the restoration of M. Thobois,[674] must have had considerable architectural merit.  Situated very near each other, on the culminating point of a great plateau of rock, they dominate the country far and wide, and attract the eye from a long distance.  One seems to have been in much simpler and better taste than the other.  M. Renan calls it “a real masterpiece, in respect of proportion, of elegance, and of majesty."[675] It is built altogether in three stages.  First, there is a circular basement story flanked by four figures of lions, attached to the wall behind them, and only showing in front of it their heads, their shoulders, and their fore paws.  This basement, which has a height of between seven and eight feet, is surmounted by a cylindrical tower in two stages, the lower stage measuring fourteen and the upper, which is domed, ten feet.  The basement is composed of four great stones, the entire tower above it is one huge monolith.  An unusual and very effective ornamentation crowns both stages of the tower, consisting of a series of gradines at top with square machicolations below.

The other monument of the pair, distant about twenty feet from the one already described, is architecturally far less happy.  It is composed of four members, viz. a low plinth for base, above this a rectangular pedestal, surmounted by a strong band or cornice; next, a monolithic cylinder, without ornaments, which contracts slightly as it ascends; and, lastly, a pentagonal pyramid at the top.  The pedestal is exceedingly rough and unfinished; generally, the workmanship is rude, and the different members do not assort well one with another.  Still it would seem that the two monuments belong to the same age and are parts of the same plan.[676] Their lines are parallel, as are those of the subterranean apartments which they cover, and they stand within a single enclosure.  Whether the same architect designed them both it is impossible to determine, but if so he must have been one of the class of artists who have sometimes happy and sometimes unhappy inspirations.

Both the Meghazil are superimposed upon subterranean chambers, containing niches for bodies, and reached by a flight of steps cut in the rock, the entrance to which is at some little distance from the monuments.[677] But there is nothing at all striking or peculiar in the chambers, which are without ornament of any kind.