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Barrish Kefr Kîla & Dêr Shim'ûn October 28, 1899
On a ridge running north & south to the westward of Kalb Lauzi are situated two ruins which we visited on the return from Kefr Kîla. The first is the ruin of a small village almost due west of Kefr Kîla. It is much dilapidated and preserves only a fragment of the east wall of an oblong building possibly a church.
This was built in the simplest style. The window heads are semicircles cut in the lintels without mouldings.
The domestic architecture seems to have been entirely in megalithic style of the most primative kind
The second ruin is that of small monastery with small square tower and plain arched portal preserved.
It is conspicuous as a land mark.
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To the (blank) of Kefr Kila and (blank) of Ḳalb Lauzi are extensive remains of a town of importance and early date. The chief ruin here is called by the natives dâr el-melik (palace of the King) nearby is an elaborate rock cut tomb with an inscription in Greek and, in the immediate neighborhood, the ruins of extensive buildings and private houses.
The ruins of the palace are not particulary extensive consisting of only a small building preserved in two stories with small plain windows and two well built round arches, springing from piers ^ with moulded caps, ^ which covered a passage about 8ft wide connecting the courtyard with the tower in the north. Besides this only the tower portions of the walls are found and these greatly dilapidated. The court-yard
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to the south of the palace is of interest, it is a broad level square cut in the living rock into the rising ground south of the main structure. At the southern side a sort of fractured roadway or ramp is also cut out of the rock, leading from the level of the courtyard to that of the rising ground.
Within this square excavation a deep gutter runs all the way around the court at a distance of several feet from the walls. In the centre a raised platform covers a large cistern.+
Tomb. The rock cut tomb from the palace is of special interest from the inscription and date which it bears. The tomb was that of Claudius Sosander a governor of the province and the date fixes the building of the tomb in the year (blank).
A squeeze, copy and photographs were made plus insc by W.K.P It was just published by de Vogüé
+see photo
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The tomb consists of a large open square, excavated in the living rock with a dromos leading down on one side - opposite this the face of the rock is pierced with openings which lead into the tomb chambers excavated beneath the surface. The openings and the rock above them are carved to represent a portico or facade. The^ sq. ^columnar supports indeed are inserted but the architrave is of natural rock.
The square piers are capped with well wrought moulded blocks and the architrave is heavy and richly moulded. Above the ruins a frieze of bucrania and garlands, a well-known motive of Greco Roman ornament.
This work is peculiarly interesting from an architects point of view because the rectangular piers, the moulded caps and architrave are of the same general style
