VARIOUS SARCOPHAGI HEWN OUT OF ROCKS.
A third kind of sarcophagus is that hewn horizontally, like an oven, in the sides of rocks. In these were placed earthenware coffins, like that described in the preceding page. The whole length of the cavity was, in one instance which I measured, somewhat more than that of the human body. At the mouth, or at the bottom, or somewhere near it, there was placed a tablet or a stele (fig. 5), with the name of the deceased on it.[99]
Another kind consisted of an arched alcove, excavated in the side of a rock, the base in its whole length being a sarcophagus. Sometimes these were single; at other times they were triple, and then occupied the three sides of a subterraneous chamber; the doorway filling up the fourth. (Fig. 7)
After these come the sepulchres on a larger scale, containing several recesses (fig. 8), in which the sarcophagi are perpendicular to the sides, and not, as just seen, parallel. In some instances these sarcophagi are excavated breast high from the ground, and are of a length and height just sufficient for the sliding in of a coffin. Of these there is one in a garden near Sayda, in tolerable preservation. The chamber is subterranean; and although the inscriptions[100] over the mouth of each sarcophagus are still legible, yet the stucco which coated the walls is, from the moisture which oozes through the ceiling, quite discoloured, and, in many places, crumbled away. In the immediate vicinity of the same city are perhaps a hundred sepulchral chambers, the general conformation of which varies only in the greater or less number of the cells.
These form a sixth class, wherein the cells are squares or parallelograms, having their sarcophagi sunk from the level of the floor. (Fig. 9) Most of them have an arched entrance, where once hung a door. In one or two only can be discovered some indistinct remains of the sculpture which adorned the entrance or the interior. In a few of them some bones are found, but all seem to have been rifled, and marks of the pickaxe are often visible in the sides and in the floors, proceeding, no doubt, from the attempts which have been made to find treasures, supposed to have been concealed in them.
In some places two or more sepulchres are connected with each other by a door of communication, although examples of this are fewer along the coast than in the interior. Near the sea, throughout the whole length of Mount Lebanon and the mountainous chain northward of it, an argillaceous rock, easy to work and easy of access, afforded great facilities for these excavations, and probably induced each separate family to choose its own tomb apart from that of another: in the interior of the country other causes seem to have operated. Thus, in the modern village of Malûla, on the road from Damascus to Emesa, the modern Hems, where a solitary projecting rock seems to have confined these excavations within a narrow compass, we find innumerable chambers hewn into a variety of forms, close to and above each other, and in many cases communicating. The outer one, by which entrance is obtained to the others, in some instances has its door several yards from the ground, and is accessible only by a ladder, or by steps cut out of the rock, probably to prevent sacrilegious profanation.[101]
Before we come to the sepulchral chamber with the paintings, I will first say a few words of another of the same kind, discovered posterior to that above mentioned. Its existence was made known to me by one of the boys, who assisted in holding the candles during the time I was employed in drawing. A description of it will serve as a useful step to the gradations which we have been trying to establish in tracing these sepulchres from their simple to their most perfect shape.
It is situate, like the other, on the first rise of Mount Lebanon, within a mile and a half of Sayda, and almost due east of it, above and near to the small village of Heleléyah, and close to the footpath leading from that village to Dayr Mar Elias. The entrance was almost choked up with mould, washed in (as in the foregoing instance) by the winter rains. Being provided with candles, I entered, and found it to be a low vaulted chamber. In the sides and extremity of it were cells, having in their floors sarcophagi, which sarcophagi had evidently been rifled many generations ago. On the ceiling was painted, towards the four corners, a something not unlike a carpenter’s square. The south-east side was totally defaced, and the bottom nearly so. The chamber was hewn out of an argillaceous rock: but it seemed to have been executed with no great care, as the sides and arches of the recesses had many inequalities.
I now proceed to the description of the cavern at Abu Ghyás; this being, as we have already observed, the name given to the sepulchral chamber, near the glen so called.