of clay became common here, as in Babylonia. Coffins of lead have also been found in the rock-tombs of Phoenicia. But beside these, heavy oblong stone-coffins with a simple slab of stone as a lid were in use in ancient times; along with flat lids, lids raised in a low triangle are also found; later still, and latest of all, are coffins and sarcophagi adorned with acroteria and other ornaments of the Greek style.[509] In the flat limestone rocks which run at a moderate elevation in the neighbourhood of Sidon, and contain the vast necropolis of that city, there is a cavern, now called Mogharet Ablun, _i.e._ the cave of Apollo. Beside the entrance, in a depression covered by a structure attached to the rock-wall (the rock-tombs were supplemented and extended by structures attached to the wall), was found a coffin of blackish blue stone, the form of which indicates the shape of the buried person after the manner of the mummy-coffins of Egypt, and displays in colossal relief the mask of the dead in Egyptian style, with an Egyptian covering for the head and beard on the chin; the band round the neck ends behind in two hawk's heads. The inscription in Phenician letters teaches us that this coffin contained Esmunazar, king of Sidon. Similar sarcophagi in stone, in part expressing the form even more accurately, seven or eight in number, have been discovered in other chambers of the burial-place of Sidon, and in the burial-places of Byblus and Antaradus, but only in cubical, _i.e._ in more ancient chambers. Marble coffins of this kind have also been found in the Phenician colonies of Soloeis and Panormus in Sicily, and of the same shape in burnt earth in Malta and Gozzo. The Phenicians, therefore, came to imitate the coffins of the Egyptians. Similar imitation of Egyptian burial is proved by the gold plates found in Phenician chambers, which are like those with which we find the mouth closed in Egyptian mummies, and the discovery of golden masks in Phenician chambers,[510] which correspond to the gilding of the masks of the face of the innermost Egyptian coffins which immediately surround the linen covering. As the face-mask of the external coffin imitated the face of the dead in stone or in coloured wood, so also ought the inner gilded face to preserve the features of the dead. This imitation of the Egyptian style of burial among the Phenicians must go back to a great antiquity. It is true that Esmunazar of Sidon did not rule till the second half of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century B.C.[511] Yet the shape and style of his coffin reminds us of older Egyptian patterns; it is most like the stone coffins of Egypt which have come down from the beginning of the sixth century. And if the ancient tombs opened at Mycenæ behind the lion's gate belong to Carians influenced by Phenician civilisation (p. 74), if golden masks are here found on the face of the dead, the Phenicians must have