Another tomb, in the vicinity of the Meghazil, is remarkable chiefly for the care taken to shelter and protect the entrance to the set of chambers which it covers.[678] The monument is a simple one.  A square monolith, crowned by a strong cornice, stands upon a base consisting of two steps.  Above the cornice is another monolith, the lower part squared and the upper shaped into a pyramid.  The upper part of the pyramid has crumbled away, but enough remains to show the angle of the slope, and to indicate for the original erection a height of about twenty feet.  At the distance of about ten yards from the base of the monument is a second erection, consisting of two tiers of large stones, which roof in the entrance to a flight of eighteen steps.  These steps lead downwards to a sloping passage, in which are sepulchral niches, and thence into two chambers, the inner one of which is almost directly under the main monument.  Probably, a block of stone, movable but removed with difficulty, originally closed the entrance at the point where the steps begin.  This stone ordinarily prevented ingress, but when a fresh corpse was to be admitted, or funeral ceremonies were to be performed in one of the chambers, it could be “rolled"[679] or dragged away.

Phoenician architects were, as a general rule, exceedingly sparing in the use of ornament.  Neither the pillar, nor the arch, much less the vault, was a feature in their principal buildings, which affected straight lines, right-angles, and a massive construction, based upon the Egyptian.  The pillar came ultimately to be adopted, to a certain extent, from the Greeks; but only the simplest forms, the Doric and Ionic, were in use, if we except certain barbarous types which the people invented for themselves.  The true arch was scarcely known in Phoenicia, at any rate till Roman times, though false arches were not infrequent in the gateways of towns and the doors of houses.[680] The external ornamentation of buildings was chiefly by cornices of various kinds, by basement mouldings, by carvings about doorways,[681] by hemispherical or pyramidical roofs, and by the use of bevelled stones in the walls.  The employment of animal forms in external decoration was exceedingly rare; and the half lions of the circular Meghazil of Amrith are almost unique.

In internal ornamentation there was greater variety.  Pavements were sometimes of mosaic, and glowed with various colours;[682] sometimes they were of alabaster slabs elaborately patterned.  Alabaster slabs also, it is probable, adorned the walls of temples and houses, excepting where woodwork was employed, as in the Temple of Solomon.  There is much richness and beauty in many of the slabs now in the Phoenician collection of the Louvre,[683] especially in those which exhibit the forms of sphinxes or griffins.  Many of the patterns most affected are markedly Assyrian in character, as the rosette, the palm-head, the intertwined ribbons, and the rows of gradines which occur so frequently.  Even the Sphinxes are rather Assyrian than Egyptian in character; and exhibit the recurved wings, which are never found in the valley of the Nile.  In almost all the forms employed there is a modification of the original type, sufficient to show that the Phoenician artist did not care merely to reproduce.