Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/361

Rh inscriptions in the character, but so defaced that we could hardly decipher a single word. Some of the tombs were evidently intended to receive two or more bodies; and some are cut into sarcophagi, the groove for the lid still remaining entire. Over several of the entrances is a cross enclosed within a circular line.

But the finest specimen of these cemeteries is a subterranean vault, also cut out of the rock, and measuring sixty feet square. The original entry being stopped up, we were obliged to crawl on our hands and knees through a narrow opening to get into the interior. We now found ourselves on the platform of an upper gallery, extending round three sides of the enclosed space, and divided into a number of compartments intended for tombs. Eelow this was another gallery, of smaller dimensions, and similarly excavated, all the entrances to the tombs being arched. In one angle of the roof was a funnel six yards square, which is carried through the superincumbent rock to the height of eightysix feet, gradually tapering to the top, where it measures only four feet square. This was evidently intended to admit air into the subterranean vault. The original entrance was in the surface of the rock, and is decorated with a number of designs emblematical of mortality. In the left compartment is a heap of bones, and a female represented as running away in fear towards an owl perched at some distance from her. Above the arch is another heap of bones, and in the compartment to the right a cypress tree and a cock. There were several Greek epitaphs on the tombs in the interior, but so defaced as to be quite illegible.

There is another vault of smaller dimensions at a short distance from the above, containing niches for eight tombs, and which the natives informed us is connected with the larger cemetery by two underground passages. We essayed to prove the truth of this statement, but finding the passages choked up with rubbish were obliged to abandon the attempt.

Crossing the stream we visited the ruins of a mosque, erected on the site of a more ancient edifice, and chiefly with the materials collected from former buildings. Here we found a number of pillars, which the villagers told us had lately been dug up in the vicinity, but being devoid of chapiters, we could not