They were not, however, wholly devoid of those feelings with respect to their dead which have caused the erection, in most parts of the world, of sepulchral monuments intended to attract the eye, and to hand on to later ages the memory of the departed.

Well acquainted with Egypt, they could not but have been aware from the earliest times of those massive piles which the vanity of Egyptian monarchs had raised up for their own glorification on the western side of the valley of the Nile; nor in later days could such monuments have escaped their notice as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus[664] or the Tomb of the Maccabees.[665] Accordingly, we find them, at a very remote period, not merely anxious to inter their dead decently and carefully in rock tombs or subterranean chambers of massive stone, but also wishful upon occasions to attract attention to the last resting-places of their great men, by constructions which showed themselves above the ground, and had some architectural pretensions.

One of these, situated near Amrith, the ancient Marathus, is a very curious and peculiar structure.

It is known at the present day as the Burdj-el-Bezzak,[666] and was evidently constructed to be, like the pyramids, at once a monument and a tomb.

It is an edifice, built of large blocks of stone, and rising to a height of thirty-two feet above the plain at its base, so contrived as to contain two sepulchral chambers, the one over the other.