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rirrtimiORIENTAL SKETCIIES.—Second Series.Number 7.THE TOM 15S OP THE HOLY PITY.“But v.t* must waiulor v.-itli«TiiiglyIii oilier Uuh'I.-' to tiio ;whrru our BnIn.rV aj-hr* ho.Pur ;i in iy i*lt;*v oiSo may the poor Jew now sadly siny’ as he wanders, a despised and persecuted outcast, among the desolations of the once proud capital of his ancestors. Wherever he turns his eyes—on Zion. Moriah. Olivet—he is remindedi rby rock-hewn monument ami* yawning cave, that Jerusalem is not only hisliolv city, but that the ashes of his an-^ .lt; -cestora are there; that it-is, as the captive said in Babylon, ‘‘the place of my fathers’ sonulchres.” Nell. ii. 3. Thei.tombs are among tbe most interesting monument:' of Jerusalem. The temple ‘‘hath not left one stone;’’ the palaces of Solomon and Ilerod have, long sincecrumbled to dust; the Jerusalem of the/prophets and apostles •'became heaps5’(Jer. ix. 11) centuries ago, but thetombs remain almost as perfect as whenthe princes of Israel were there laid “in irlorv. cvcrv one in his own house.”CT * 'Isa. xiv. 18. I was sadly disappointed when, after days and weeks of careful and toilsome research, I could only discover a very few authentic vestiges of “the citv of the Great King;’—a few fragments of the colossal wall thatV_ -enclosed the temple courts; a few broken shafts here and there in the lanes, or protruding from some noisome rubbish heap; a few remnants of the fortifications that once defended Zion. All besides is gone: buried deep, deep beneath modern dwellings.'When excavatintr ibr the foundation of the English Church, portions of the obi houses and aqucuuets of Zion werenearly forty foot below the p-esent surface ! W e need rmt wonder that the identification of the particular building- lt;»f ]primitive ages is now so difficult: and that even theAposition of tbe vallevs which onceKuAid^d the quarters of the city, has conn; t*» be the subject of keen eoutro-versv amon o antiquarians. The lt;-U v«, v-— * ^of Ilerod was built on the ruins of the city of Solomon: the citv of the Cru-J • *sadcrs was built on the rums of that of TIerod: and modern Jerusalem isfoundalike interesting and instructive, fromt| the light they throw upon the customs of God’s ancient people, and from the illustrations they afford of many passages in God’s Word.JEWISH TOMBS.The earliest burial-places on record were eaves. When Sarah died, Abraham bought the cave of Machpelali, and buried her there. Samuel is said to have been buried “in his house-at Kainah,” 1 Sam. xxr. 1; by which, I believe, is meant the tomb he had excavated for himself there, for the Hebrew word Beth, “house,” is sometimes used to signify tomb, as in Isa. xiv. 18, and Kceles. xii. 5, “Man goeth to his long home,” literallyfcto his eternal house.” We read, moreover, of King Asa, that “they buried him in his own sepulchre which he had digged for himself in the city of David.” 2 Chron. xvi. 14. Elisha was buried in a cave, 2 Kings xiii 21; the sepulchre of Lazarus was a cave, John xi. 38; and the Holy Sepulchre was a new cave which Joseph of Arimathea had “hewn out in the rock” for himself. Matt, xxvii. 60.In our own land we are all familiar with the grassy mounds and marble monuments which fill the cemeteries, and which pass away almost as quickly as man himself. In Rome and Pompeii we see the habitations of the dead lining the great highways, and crumbling to ruin like the palaces of their tenants. But the moment we set our feet on the shores of Palestine, we feel that we are in an ancient country—the home of a primeval people, whose tombs appear in cliff and glen, and mountain-side, all hewn in the living rock, and permanent as the rock itself. The tombs-xT Jerusalem are rock-hewn caves. I found them in every direction.affords space for an architectural facade. or a projecting rock a fitting place for excavation, there is sure to be a semilchrc. I visited them uiWherever the face of a cragOlivet and Scopus, on Zion a ml Moriah,inside the modern city and outside;.but t-hev chiefly abound in the rocky9‘ %/banks of Ilinnom and the Kidron.founded on the ruins of them all. Hills and cliffs have been rounded off; ravines have been filled up; palaces and fortresses have been overthrown, and their very ruins have been covered over with the rubbish of millenniums. Could David revisit his royal capital, or could Herod come back to the scene of his magnificence and his crimes, or could Godfrey rise from his tomb, so complete has been the desolation, so Teat the chamre even in the featuresgle slab.1■of-the site, that I believe they would find as much difficulty in settling topographical details as modern scholars do..Nothing but excavation can settle satisfactorily and finally the vexed questions of Jerusalem’s topography. A week’s work in trenches would do more to solve existing mysteries than scores of volumes and years of learned research. It may well excite the wonder of Biblical scholars, that while the mounds of Assyria, and Babylonia, andChaldea, have been excavated at enor-/mous cost, not a shilling has been expended upon the Holy City. By judicious excavation, under the direction of an accomplished antiquarian, the lines of the ancient walls, the sites of the great buildings, the sepulchres of the kings, and the beds of the valleys, might all be traced. A flood of light would thus be shed upon one of the most interesting departments of Biblical topography: and who can tell what precious treasures of ancient art might be discovered? Will no man of influence and wealth in our country under-wtake this work? Will no learned society contribute of its funds to carry itWill not our beloved Erince,Near the iunction of these ravines, the* 1overhanging cliffs are actually honeycombed. Hundreds of dark openings were in view when I stood beside En-Rosrel. Some of these tombs areV small grottoes, with only one or two receptacles for bodies; others are of great extent, containing chambers, galleries, passages, and Joculi, almost without number, each tomb forming a little necropolis. The doors are low and narrow, so as to be shut by a sin-This slab was called gohil, * that is, “a thing rolled,” from the fact ( that it was rolled back from the open- t ing in a groove made for it. The stone being heavy, and the groove gen- t erally inclining upwards, the operation | t of opening required a considerable ex- ( crtion of strength. Hence the anxious ] inquiry of the two Marys, “Who shall \ roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?” Mark xvi. 3. The j stone always fitted closely, and could easily be sealed with one of those ] large signets such as were then in use.0: perhaps the Holy Sepulchre may ] have had a wedge, or small bar, pushedinto the rock behind it. like that at/the tombs of the kings (described below), and preventing the stone from being rolled back. To this the seal might be attached (Matt, xxvii 66.) The facades of many are elaborately ornamented; but one thing is very remarkable, they contain no inscriptions. The tombs of Egypt are covered with hieroglyphics, giving long histories of the dead, and of the honors paid to their remains. The tombs of Palmyra not only have written tablets over the entrances; but every separate niche, or load us in the interior has its inscription. I have counted more than fifty such in a single mausoleum; yet I have never been able to discover a single letter in one of tbe tombs of the Holy j City, nor a single painting, sculpture,who ha? Ulrca.lv rendered luch signal »*vin* on any ancient Jewish tombservice at Hebron, render*still creator I in Palestine, calculated to throw light» * . •of Lazarus; but tbe dead were soon forgotten, and except in the case of a few patriarchs, kings (Acts vii. 16; ii. 29), and prophets (Matt, xxiii. 29) we have no reaord ef tombs having been even held in remembrancerThere were always a few in every age who coveted outward show and splendor in their tombs, as well as in their houses. Such was the upstart Sheb-na, whose vanity and pretention the prophet Isaiah describes and denounces: “What hast thou here, and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewn thee out a sepulchre here, as he that heweth him out a sepulchre on high, that graveth an habitation forhimself in *a rock?” xxii. 16. It is evident that the greater part of the ornamental facades, and architectural tombs, are of a late date, and not purely Jewish.JEWISH MODE OF BURIAL.The Jews used no coffins or sarcophagi. The body was washed (Acts ix, 37), anointed (Mark xvi. 1; John xix. 40), wrapped in linen cloths (Johnxix. 40; xi. 44), and laid in the niche prepared for it—an excavation about two feet wide, three high, and six deep, opening endwise in the side of the roek-chamber. The mouth of the loculus was then shut by a slab of stone, and sealed witn cement. In some cases the bodies were laid on a kind of open shelf, such as I have seen in many of the chambers. It was thus that our Lord was laid, for John tells us that Mary “stooped down into the sepulchre, and.seeth two angels, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where thebody of Jesus had lain.”xx. 21.The kings of Israel were buried with more pomp. In addition to the anointing of the sweet spices, “burnings” were made for them. Thus Jeremiah says to Zedekiali: “Thou shalt die in peace, and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings which wereobefore thee, so shall they burn for*thee.” And in the case of Asa we are told there was “a great burning.” (2 Chron. xvi.. 14). It is not meant that the bodies were burned, but that sweet spices and perfumes were burned in honor of them, and probably in their sepulchres. The bodies of Saul and Jonathan are the only ones which we read of as bavins been burned. 1Sam.xxxi. 11-13.—J. L. Porter, A. 31.service to Biblical knowledge, by encouraging such an enterprise?It is pleasant to think that amid ruin and confusion there are still some monuments left in and around the Holy City, as connecting links between the present and the distant past. The sepulchres of the Jewish nobles remain though their palaces are gone. We can see where they were buried, if we cannot see where they lived. I could not describe with what intense emotion I heard my friends speak familiarly of the tombs of David and Absalom, of the Judges, the kings, and the prophets; and what was the excited state of my feelings when they proposed one bright morning a walk toTophet and Aceldama. Some of these names may be, and doubtless are, apocryphal ; none of them may be able to stand the test of full historic investigation; but the high antiquity of themonuments^ themselves cannot be denied; and an inspection of them ison the story, name, or rank of thedead.Simplicity and security appear to have been the only things the Jews aimed at in the construction of their sepulchres. To be buried with their fathers was their only ambition. They seem to have had no desire to transmit their names to posterity through the agency of their graves. It has been well said that the words, “Let me bury my dead out of my sight,” “No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day”—express, if not the general feeling of the Jewish nation, at least the general spirit of the Old Testament. With the Jews the tomb was an unclean place, which men endeavored to avoid rather than honor by pilgrimages. The homage paid to them is of late date, -and the offspring of a corrupt age. When near relatives died it was, as it still is, customary for females to go and weep at their graves, as Martha and Mary did at the grave
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