Bk. II. Ch. VI. TEISIPLE AT JERUSALEM. 219 Semitic shrines but rebuilt in Roman times. That at Pahnyra, for instance, is a building very closely resembling that at Jerusalem, in so far at least as the outer enclosure is concerned. i It consists of a cloistered enclosure of somewhat larger dimensions, measuring exter- nally 730 ft. by 715, with a small temple of an anomalous form in the centre. It wants, however, all the inner enclosures and curious sub- structures of the Jewish fane; but this may have arisen from its having been rebuilt in late Roman times, and consequently shorn of these peculiarities. It is so similar, however, that it must be regarded as a cognate temple to that at Jerusalem, though re-erected by a people of another race. A third temple, apparently very similar to these, is that of Kan- govar in Persia.^ Only a portion now remains of the great court in which it stood, and which Avas nearly of the same dimensions as those of Jerusalem and Palmyra, being 660 ft. by 568. In the centre are the vestiges of a small temple. At Aizaini in Asia Minor 3 is a fourth, with a similar court; but here the temple is more important, and assumes more distinctly the forms of a regular Roman peristylar temple of the usual form, though still small and insignificant for so considerable an enclosure. The mosque of Damascus was once one of these great square temple-enclosures, with a small temple, properly so called, in the centre. It may have been as magnificent, perhaps more so, than any of these just enumerated, but it has been so altered by Christian and Moslem rebuildings, that it is almost impossible now to make out what its original form may have been. None of these are original buildings, but still, when put together, and compared the one with the other, and, above all, when examined by the light Avhich discoveries farther east have enabled us to throw on the subject, they enable us to restore this style in something like its pristine form. At present, it is true, they are but the scattered fragments of an art of which it is feared no original specimens now remain, and which can only therefore be recovered by induction from similar cognate examples of other, though allied, styles of art. 1 Dawkins and Wood, " The Ruins of Palmyra," Lond. 1753. 2 Texier, " Armenie et la Perse," vol. i. pi. 62 and 68. 3 Texier, " Asie Mineure," pi. 10 to 21.
