The ponderous key was turned, and we entered the church. The door was closed behind us, to prevent the entrance of any person not belonging to our party. Immediately in front of the door is a marble slab, set in the pavement and inclosed by a low railing; this is called the Stone of Unction, on which Christ’s body was laid to be anointed. It is over the real stone, and completely covers it, as the guide explains, to prevent the latter being broken and worn by the numerous pilgrims that visit it.
Further off is the spot where the Virgin Mary stood while the body of Christ lay on the Stone of Unction, and further on to the right is the rotunda, which contains, in its centre, the shrine after which the church is named—The Holy Sepulchre.
The sepulchre is covered by a small building twenty-six feet by eighteen, of a style of architecture impossible to describe in writing. There is an entrance by a low door in the east end, and this brings you into the so-called Chapel of the Angel, for the reason that here sat the angel that rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre. A fragment of the stone is shown; the Latin monks say, however, that the real stone was stolen by the Armenians, and is shown by them in the Armenian Chapel on Mount Zion.
From this chapel we enter the sepulchre, a small vault about seven feet square, and having on one side the sepulchral couch, about two feet high, and covered with marble; in fact, everything is of marble to such an extent that no part of the original rock can be seen, and it is hard to accept the assurances that the whole tomb is carved out of the solid rock. The couch of the sepulchre is used as an altar, and is carefully portioned off among the contending sects. I presume that any one of them would prefer to see the church and its contents utterly destroyed rather than any one of the others should obtain possession of it. Quarrels are not infrequent in the church over the right of possession or service, and on one occasion there was a scuffle, with a good deal of hair-pulling and rending of garments, in the sepulchre itself, between a Greek and a Latin monk. The Greek was the physical superior, and came off victorious.
To enumerate, in the shape of an itinerary, all the places we visited in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, would be to make