Alabaster slabs also, it is probable, adorned the walls of temples and houses, excepting where woodwork was employed, as in the Temple of Solomon.

There is much richness and beauty in many of the slabs now in the Phoenician collection of the Louvre,[683] especially in those which exhibit the forms of sphinxes or griffins.

Many of the patterns most affected are markedly Assyrian in character, as the rosette, the palm-head, the intertwined ribbons, and the rows of gradines which occur so frequently.
Even the Sphinxes are rather Assyrian than Egyptian in character; and exhibit the recurved wings, which are never found in the valley of the Nile.

In almost all the forms employed there is a modification of the original type, sufficient to show that the Phoenician artist did not care merely to reproduce.
On the whole the architecture must be pronounced wanting in originality and in a refined taste.

What M.Renan says of Phoenician art in general[684] is especially true of Phoenician architecture.