Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/251

Rh The walls in the neighbourhood are the traces of the enclosures round the tents. I know that much has been written about these nawâmîs, but having no books of reference with me I submit this opinion with diffidence. The late Professor Palmer, along with Mr. Drake, visited these nawâmîs and groups of many others, and gives the following remarks in his book, "The Desert of the Exodus." Professor Palmer thus describes them:— "Shortly after passing 'Ain el 'Eljâ (Râs el 'Ain) we came to a group of nawâmîs, those quaint beehive huts of which I have before spoken. "They stood on the hills to the east of the wady, and were more perfectly preserved than any which we had hitherto seen in the peninsula. "They consisted of two detached houses, on separate hills, and a group of five on the side of a higher eminence. The first two had been used as Arab burial-places; but of the second group at least three out of the five were apparently untouched. "Their dimensions average 7 feet high by 8 feet in diameter inside. They were circular, with an oval top, the construction being precisely the same as that of the nawâmîs in Wâdy Hebrân, but the perfect condition in which they have been preserved exhibits in a much more striking degree the neatness and art of their builders. In the centre of each was a cist, and beside that a smaller hole, both roughly lined with stones; these were covered with slabs of stone, over which earth had accumulated. "Some human bones which we found in the cist at first led us to the conclusion that they were tombs; but the small size of the cist, and the evident fact that they had never contained perfect skeletons, proved the idea to be erroneous. In the smaller cist the earth showed signs of having undergone the action of fire, and, in one or two, small pieces of charred bone and wood were found. The doors, which are about 2 feet square, are admirably constructed, with lintel and doorposts. All the stones used in the construction are so carefully selected as almost to give the appearance of being hewn, and those in some of the doors have certainly been worked, if not with any instrument, at least by being rubbed smooth with other stones. "A flint arrow-head and some small shells were found in one of the nawâmîs. They are evidently dwelling-houses; but I must leave to those who are better versed than I am in the science of prehistoric man the task of determining to what race they once belonged; the remains are certainly some of the most interesting which I have met with in the East. The country all around is covered with them, every hillside having some remains of nawâmîs upon it; but, owing to their exposed position, they have none of them been preserved in so perfect a state as those just described. Close by the nawâmîs were some stone circles. There would seem to have been a large settlement of these people in the neighbourhood of 'Ain el 'Elyâ. "The word nâmûs is not known beyond Sinai, the Arabs in other parts of the desert calling them merely gasûr, or castles."