Mysterious Sepulchres, Podove.
These are large tombstones, some as much as six feet long by three in height, of a tea-caddy shape, resting on a broader stone platform. The impression they give you is that they are descendants of Roman sarcophagi, and indeed their upper part is exactly similar to some Roman monuments.[188] There is, so far as I have seen, no inscription on them; but occasionally, as on some of those at Podove, they are ornamented with incised arches at the end and side of a quasi-Gothic form, which may be useful in determining their date. The erosion of the stone and mutilated condition of many probably point to considerable antiquity, as also does the fact that I have twice noticed them overturned and blocking up the channel of streams which had undermined their original standing ground. They certainly bear no resemblance to the turbaned columns of Turkish cemeteries, and indeed an examination of those at Podove convinced me that many had been purposely mutilated by the unbeliever.
All these facts point to the conclusion that they are, as the Bosniacs express it when they want to indicate a date previous to the Turkish captivity, ‘more than three hundred years old.’ On the other hand, if not Moslem, neither are they like the memorial stone crosses, such as one we were shortly to see at Gučiagora, which are the undoubted work of Christians, and which date back at least to the sixteenth century.
There are, however, some modern monuments which we noticed at one place in the Herzegovina which resemble these in outline; these were in a small Jewish graveyard outside Mostar, and had Hebrew inscriptions on them. But the Jews of Bosnia and the Herzegovina are all a Spanish-speaking people, who took refuge from their Christian oppressors within the borders of more tolerant Islâm in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Previous to this settlement there do not seem to have been any Jews in the country, since in early Bosnian history, so occupied with religious struggles, so blood-stained with fanaticism, there is not, so far as I am aware, any mention of them. Even at the present day they are, as regards numbers, an insignificant minority, domiciled almost exclusively in a few of the larger towns.[189] It is hardly conceivable, therefore, that in early times the Hebrews should have occupied the country to such an extent as to have dotted it with these monuments, which are to be found passim throughout Bosnia. On the other hand, the stones that we saw near Mostar were considerably smaller than these ancient examples; and it seems quite possible that the Jews, with their national thriftiness, should have simply used some of these old blocks which they found ready to hand, cutting off the time-worn exterior or exposing a new surface for their inscriptions, but for convenience sake retaining the original form. Whatever the explanation of these Mostar monuments, I feel constrained to give up the hypothesis that these older memorials are of Jewish workmanship.
But to whom, then, are these mysterious blocks to be referred? A better key to the solution of their origin and date is to be obtained by comparing them with some monuments of more finished execution and greater fecundity of ornament described by Sir Gardner Wilkinson,[190] as existing near Imoschi and at other places on the Dalmatian frontier. These, although not exactly answering to the ruder handiwork of the Bosnian midlands, are yet so evidently allied, that what is true of them must to a great extent be true of these before us. On the blocks described by Sir Gardner there occur devices such as huntsmen with bows and spears, knight’s holding sword and shield, and even occasionally rude armorial bearings, all which fix the date of their execution between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.
There were other peculiarities about ‘these unknown sepulchres,’ as Sir Gardner calls even the more storied Dalmatian monuments. On many appeared a crescent moon with star or stars, and on others an arm holding a sword. Now it is a curious fact that, of these two devices, one—the moon and star—is the emblem of Illyria occurring in the middle of the old Bosnian escutcheon;[191] the other—the arm of offence—is the ensign of Primorie, the Serbian coast-land. These sepulchral devices seem, therefore, to have been badges of nationality or clanship; unless, indeed, anyone prefers to suspect that the moon and star possessed a superstitious, before they acquired a heraldic, import.[192]
In the lonely gorge of the Želesnica, to the south-west of Serajevo, we found one of these lunar monuments, which I mention here as it further illustrates the connection between the Bosnian and Dalmatian tombs. It was a sarcophagus of the same kind as those at Podove, but with a crescent rudely engraved at one end. In juxtaposition with this was an upright slab, I can scarcely call it a cross, about six feet high and much mutilated.
But there is another point of resemblance even more important than the half moon, to connect the sepulchres we saw with those described by Sir Gardner.