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The lofty and perpendicular cliffs around the ruined site of Petra, the ancient capital of Idumæa, are filled with innumerable tombs, in which the chambers are usually small; while the entrances to them exhibit great variety, and are sometimes large and magnificent. A great number of these tombs are small and plain, mere excavations in the face of the rock, and are entirely similar to the numerous sepulchres around Jerusalem.

Some of these houses of the dead are found in retired dells and secret chasms, or sometimes among the heights on either side, to which flights of steps cut in the rock lead up in several places.-See ROBINSON's Researches, vol. ii. pp. 520, 530, 532.

"I do not think that there are two sepulchres in Wady Mousa perfectly alike; on the contrary, they

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vary greatly in size, shape, and embellishments. some places, three sepulchres are excavated one over the other, and the side of the mountain is so perpendicular that it seems impossible to approach the uppermost, no path whatever being visible; some of the lower have a few steps before their entrance."-BURCKHARDT's Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, p. 427.

TOMBS USED AS DWELLINGS.

ISAIAH lxv. 4.

"(A people) which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments."

MARK V. 2, 3, 5.

"And when (Jesus) was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs ;

and always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones."

"The most curious of all the tombs in Egypt" was occupied, at the time Dr. Robinson visited it, by an Arab family, with their cattle. The walls were already black with smoke, and many of the paintings destroyed. -ROBINSON'S Researches, vol. i. note iv. p. 543.

"We arrived before sunset at Om Keis (the ancient Gadara, on the south-east side of the Lake of Tiberias). We were very kindly received by the sheikh of the natives who inhabit the ancient sepulchres; the tomb we lodged in was capable of containing between twenty and thirty people; it was of an oblong form, and the cattle, &c. occupied one end, while the proprietor and his family lodged in the other; it was near this spot that the people lived in the tombs during the time of our Sa· viour. . . . The sepulchres, which are all under ground, are hewn out of the live rock, and the doors, which are very massy, are cut out of immense blocks of stone; some of these are now standing, and actually working on their hinges, and used by the natives; of course the hinge is nothing but a part of the stone left projecting at each end, and let into a socket cut in the rock; the faces of the doors were cut in the shape of pannels."IRBY and MANGLES, pp. 297, 298.

"The people of Gournou live in the entrance of such (mummy) caves as have already been opened, and, by making partitions with earthen walls, they form habitations for themselves, as well as for their cows, camels, buffaloes, sheep, goats, dogs, &c. ... Though they have at their disposal a great quantity of all sorts of bricks, which abound in every part of Gournou, from the surrounding tombs, they have never built a single house....

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...Their dwelling is generally in the passages between the first and second entrance into a tomb. The walls and the roof are as black as any chimney. The inner door is closed up with mud, except a small aperture sufficient for a man to crawl through. Within this place the sheep are kept at night ;...over the doorway there are always some half-broken Egyptian figures, and the two foxes, the usual guardians of burial-places. A

small lamp, kept alive by fat from the sheep, or rancid oil, is placed in a niche in the wall, and a mat is spread on the ground; and this formed the grand divan, wherever I was. There the people assembled round me, their conversation turning wholly on antiquities. Such a one had found such a thing, and another had discovered a tomb....I was sure of a supper of milk and bread served in a wooden bowl; but, whenever they supposed I should stay all night, they always killed a couple of fowls for me, which were baked in a small oven heated with pieces of mummy-cases, and sometimes with the bones and rags of the mummies themselves. It is no uncommon thing to sit down near fragments of bones; hands, feet, or skulls, are often in the way; for these people are so accustomed to be among the mummies, that they think no more of sitting on them, than on the skins of their dead calves. I also became indifferent about them at last, and would have slept in a mummy-pit as readily as out of it."-BelZONI's Travels, pp. 158, 159, 181, 182.

NAILS IN EASTERN TOMBS.

ISAIAH Xxii. 23-end.

"And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons. In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that is fastened in the sure place be removed, and be cut down, and fall; and the burthen that was upon it shall be cut off; for the Lord hath spoken it."

Mr. Arundell has the following passage upon these verses: "I think these three verses may be illustrated

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