there with enormous strength for periods of more than one and a 

 half minutes. Considering that prodigious work was accomplished 

 in this way by Poidebard, it is probable that the Phoenicians them- 

 selves used divers of similar ability to position the foundations of 

 the harbor walls. If so, it would be interesting to know if the 

 Phoenician divers ever used an artificial air supply. 



A group of photographs taken with a camera made at the naval 

 base at Beirut showed Poidebard that the moles had foundations 

 of carefully laid blocks, the upper parts faced with stone and filled 

 in with concrete. Some of the blocks were keyed together with 

 dowels of iron and packed with lead. The south part of the mole 

 was twenty-six feet wide, and the west part, where it was exposed 

 to the full force of the open sea, was thirty-three feet wide. The 

 Quai de la Source was once a massive concrete wharf which divided 

 the east basin in two, the easternmost part used as a shipbuilding 

 and repair yard. 



North and south of the island of Tyre there stretched extensive 

 reefs and ridges of rock running parallel to the shore. These cer- 

 tainly helped to protect the approaches to the harbors, but the 

 ingenious Phoenicians improved on nature by building vast walls 

 along the reef tops. These breakwaters were a hundred feet wide. 



Little more tlian fragments of masonry 

 remain to marl< the once proud harbors of 

 the classical world. This photograph shows 

 what were possibly foundation stones of 

 the rectangular shore frontage of part of 

 the harbor at Carthage, founded about 

 814 B.C. and destroyed by the Romans 

 in 146 B.C. 



152 



