Nothing but a few fragments is now left of the temples built by the Phœnicians in Cyprus. The great prosperity of this island under the Romans and in the middle ages is the direct cause of the destruction of the monuments of an earlier age. The superb cathedrals of Famagusta and Nicosia, the fine churches built under the Lusignan dynasty, the formidable ramparts constructed by the Venetians, rose at the expense of ancient buildings, the materials of which were turned to profit as stone-quarries. The celebrated sanctuary of Astarte at Paphos, for instance, is only known to us by the conventional representation of it upon coins belonging to the Roman period. We are able to distinguish in this figure a court surrounded by a balustrade, and beyond the court a structure which reminds us of the pylons of Egyptian temples: it is a gigantic gate between two towers, provided with a large aperture through which we perceive the sacred stone, flanked by two candelabra; above hover the star and crescent. The roof, on which doves are resting, was supported by columns forming a portico. Tacitus, who relates the visit of Titus to the temple of Paphos, says that the goddess was represented in it under “the form of a circular block, rising in the form of a cone, gradually diminishing from the base to the summit.” This description corresponds with the stone which the medals show us. According to the excavations carried on by P. di Cesnola on the site of the temple, the building was almost 220 ft. long by 164 ft. broad; the peribolus measured 688 ft. by 540 ft.; the principal gate, perhaps that which figures on the coin, had an aperture more than 16 ft. broad. The temple of Golgoi (Athieno), the ruins of which were disinterred by Cesnola, was a rectangular building constructed of bricks dried in the sun; the substructure alone was of stone. On the north and on the east were doors with wooden frames. Within, wooden pillars, surmounted by stone capitals, supported the roof, formed of pieces of wood placed close together, on which mats and reeds were arranged with a thick layer of beaten earth. The exterior of the temple, coated with white rough-cast, must have been of a most modest appearance. The interior, on the contrary, was laden with the richest ornaments. In the middle of the enclosure a tall cone of grey stone was found, a yard high, which must have been the sacred stone of the goddess, and reminds us of the image at Paphos described by Tacitus. Round the mystic cone, a whole population of stone statues painted in brilliant colours, set in a line along the walls or ranged in files in the centre of the building, formed, as at Tello, the dumb train of worshippers of the goddess. Votive offerings were hung on the walls above a row of bas-reliefs, analogous to those of the Assyrian palaces. Stone lamps in the form of shrines, fastened to the walls, lighted up this curious scene.