Neither the pillar, nor the arch, much less the vault, was a feature in their principal buildings, which affected straight lines, right-angles, and a massive construction, based upon the Egyptian.

The pillar came ultimately to be adopted, to a certain extent, from the Greeks; but only the simplest forms, the Doric and Ionic, were in use, if we except certain barbarous types which the people invented for themselves.

The true arch was scarcely known in Phoenicia, at any rate till Roman times, though false arches were not infrequent in the gateways of towns and the doors of houses.[680] The external ornamentation of buildings was chiefly by cornices of various kinds, by basement mouldings, by carvings about doorways,[681] by hemispherical or pyramidical roofs, and by the use of bevelled stones in the walls.

The employment of animal forms in external decoration was exceedingly rare; and the half lions of the circular Meghazil of Amrith are almost unique.
In internal ornamentation there was greater variety.

Pavements were sometimes of mosaic, and glowed with various colours;[682] sometimes they were of alabaster slabs elaborately patterned.