Page:The Northern Ḥeǧâz (1926).djvu/125

 There are about ten heaps of larger size and more varied composition, in which it might, perhaps, be possible to find something.

Behind the ruins we branched off a little to the west into a small šeʻîb and found ourselves in front of monumental tombs hollowed out in the white limestone rock (Figs. 39, 40, 41). These tombs obviously recall Wâdi Mûsa. We encamped by them at 5.56. Having made some examination of the surrounding neighborhood, we obtained our geographical latitude for the evening (temperature: 31.8° C).

Our new guide brought up a lame old man driving a lean goat, which he offered to sell for the sum of four meǧîdijjât ($3.60). Ismaʻîn and Mḥammad handled the animal and then returned it to the old man with the suggestion that he let it graze until its bones were covered with at least as much flesh as one ḳaṭa’ bird (see above, p. 94). I could not sleep at all during the night, as I was tormented by fever, and our new companion Sâlem kept up a continual shouting to warn any possible robbers that we were under his protection. Whenever Sâlem was quiet, our old guide, the robber Slîmân (Fig. 42), shouted in an even louder voice that he would shoot anyone who interfered with us or our property.

On Sunday, June 12, 1910, I visited the necropolis of Moṛâjer Šuʻejb before sunrise. The tombs had been hollowed out of the soft limestone rocks. In front of each one the slope had been cut away to form a vertical wall, and through this wall had been cut a door that led into a large excavated room, on the floor and on walls of which were the individual graves. Many of the entrances were adorned with crumbling decorations (Figs. 43–52). The necropolis is over one kilometer long and nearly two hundred meters broad, but not a single grave had been completely preserved. The soft limestone rock had crumbled and cluttered the rooms and the doorways. The best preserved graves are those in the western part, where the rock is somewhat harder; the northern and especially the southern parts have completely decayed. For more than two hours I crawled from tomb to tomb, searching for inscriptions, but I did not find a single one. They had been carved out in the soft limestone walls, which had