At all events
there were the walls of the great airy rooms made of the naked
stone, exquisitely beveled and chiseled, and frescoed with the
planetary deities--Eloti, the Moon with her chariot drawn by white
bulls, the Sun and his four horses, with his emblem of a column in
the form of a rising flame--types taken from the heavens and from
the abyss. There were roofs of sound fir and sweet cedar, carven
cornices, cave-like window embrasures with no glass, and little
circular rooms built about shrines in which sat broken images of
Baal the sun god, of a sandaled Astarte, and a ravening Melkarth,
with the lion's skin.
From a great upper corridor there went a stairway, each deep step
of which was placed on the back of a stone lion of increasing
size, until the tallest lion's head extended close to the painted
ceiling, and there were comfortable benches cut in his gigantic
paws. Many of the rooms were without furnishing, some were filled
with vague, splendid stuff mouldering away, and others with most
luxuriously-devised ministries to beauty and comfort.
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