Here, saved inexplicably from the wreck of the past, were a thousand testimonies to that lost and but half-guessed art of the elder world.

Beautiful things, made in the days when King Solomon built the Temple at Jerusalem, lined the walls, and filled the stone shelves, together with curios of that later day when Phoenicia stood first in knowledge of the plastic and glyptic arts.

Workers in gold and ivory, in gems and talismans, in brass and fine linen and purple had done the marvels which those courtier adventurers brought with them over the sea, and to these, from year to year, had been added the treasure of private chests--necklaces and coronals and hair-loops, bottles and vases of glass coloured with metallic oxides, and patterned aggry-beads, now sometimes found in ancient tombs on the Ashantee coasts.

Beneath an altar set with censers and basins of gold was a chest brought from Amathus, its ogive lid carved with _bigae_ or two-horsed chariots, and it was in this chest, Jarvo told them, that the Hereditary Treasure had been kept.

The chamber walls were covered with bas-reliefs in the ill-proportioned and careful carving of the Phoenician artists not yet under Greek influence, and all about were set the wonderful bronzes, such as Tyrian artificers made for the Temple.