mult of these retained mourners, and the other attendants, appear to have begun immediately after the person expired. "The moment," says Chardin, "any one returns from a long journey, or dies, his family burst into cries that may be heard twenty doors off; and this is renewed at different times, and continues many days, according to the vigour of the passions. Especially are these cries long and frightful in the case of death, for the mourning is right down despair, and an image of hell.”

The longest and most violent acts of mourning are when they wash the body; when they perfume it; when they carry it out to be interred. During this violent outcry, the greater part even of the relations do not shed a single While the funeral procession moves forward, with the violent wailings of the females, the male attendants engage in devout singing.b

tear.

It is evident that this sort of mourning and lamentation was a kind of art among the Jews: " Wailing shall be in the streets; and they shall call such as are skilful of lamentation to wail."e Mourners are hired at the obsequies of Hindoos and Mahommedans as in former times. To the dreadful noise and tumult of the hired mourners, the following passage of Jeremiah indisputably refers; and shews the custom to be derived from a very remote antiquity: "Call for the mourning women that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come, and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eye-lids gush out with waters."d

b Russel's Hist. of Aleppo, vol. i, p. 305, et seq.

Amos v, 16. Forbes's Orient. Mem. vol. iii, p. 251, 270.

a Jer. ix, 17. See also Morier's Trav. vol. i, p. 62.

The relations of the deceased often testify their sorrow in a more serious and affecting manner, by cutting and slashing their naked arms with daggers. To this absurd and barbarous custom, the prophet thus alludes: "For every head shall be bald, and every beard clipped; upon all hands shall be cuttings, and upon the loins sackcloth: And again," Both the great and the small shall die in the land; they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves."g It seems to have been very common in Egypt, and among the people of Israel, before the age of Moses, else he had not forbidden it by an express law: "Ye are the children of the Lord your God; ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead." Mr. Harmer refers to this custom, the "wounds in the hands” of the prophet, which he had given himself, in token of affection to a person. And Calmet seems to think that "the marks of the Lord Jesus, which the apostle Paul bore on his body, might be the scars of those wounds which he had inflicted on his arms, as proofs of his love to his Redeemer." But it is not to be supposed that either of these inspired teachers would venture to display their affection to any person, by wilfully transgressing a divine law, couched in clear and precise terms; nor that such unwarrantable tokens of regard would be recorded with approbation in the sacred writings.

The funeral processions of the Jews in Barbary, are conducted nearly in the same manner as those in Syria. The corpse is borne by four to the place of burial: in the first rank march the priests, next to them the kindred of

the deceased; after whom come those that are invited to the funeral; and all singing in a sort of plain song, the forty-ninth Psalm. To the more sedate singing of the Jewish mourners, Mr. Harmer is inclined to refer these words of Amos: "A man's uncle shall take him up, and he that burneth him to bring out the bones out of the house, and shall say to him that is by the sides of the house, Is there yet any with thee; and he shall say, No. Then shall he say, Hold thy tongue, for we may not make mention of the name of the Lord." "In the forty-ninth Psalm, the devout worshipper expresses his hope, that God will raise up his people to life, after they have been long in the state of the dead; but when, in a house so crowded with inhabitants, that there should be ten men in it, all should perish by the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, so that not one should remain, was it not natural, that he who searched that desolate abode, should say when he carried out the last dead body for interment, Be silent; it does not become us to make mention of God's care of Israel, in hereafter raising us from the dead, when he is thus visibly forsaking his people? Or in the words of our translation: Hold thy tongue, for we may not make mention of the name of the Lord." It is evidently the design of the prophet, to warn his people that public calamities were approaching, so numerous and severe, as should make them forget the usual rites of burial, and even to sing one of the songs of Zion over the dust of a departed relative. This appears to be confirmed by a prediction in the eighth chapter: "And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God; there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall j Amos vi, 10. Harmer's Observ. vol. iii, p. 8, 9.

cast them forth with silence;" they shall have none to lament and bewail; none to blow the funeral trump or touch the pipe and tabor; none to sing the plaintive dirge, or express their hope of a blessed resurrection, in the strains of inspiration. All shall be silent despair.

k

The orientals bury without the walls of their cities, unless when they wish to bestow a distinguishing mark of honour upon the deceased. For this reason, the sepulchres of David and his family, and the tomb of Huldah the prophetess, were within the city of Jerusalem; and perhaps the only ones to be found there.' The sepulchres of the Hebrews, that were able to afford the necessary expense, were extensive caves or vaults, excavated in the native rock by the art and exertions of man. The roofs were generally arched; and some were so spacious, as to be supported by colonnades. All round the sides were cells for the reception of the sarcophagi; these were ornamented with appropriate sculpture, and each was placed in its proper cell. The cave or sepulchre admitted no light, being closed by a great stone which was rolled to the mouth, by the narrow passage or entrance." Many of these receptacles are still extant in Judea; two in particular are more magnificent than all the rest, and for that reason snpposed to be the sepulchres of the kings. One of these is in Jerusalem, and contains twenty-four

Potter's Grecian Antiq. vol. ii, p. 218.-The Greeks and Romans uniformly buried without the precincts of their towns; but we have accounts both of royal and of private tombs within the city of Jerusalem. Buckingham's Trav. vol. ii, p. 31. 11 Kings ii, 10; and 2 Kings xvi, 20.

m Some of them were shut with stone doors, which were hung in the same manner as the doors of their houses, by a long circular spindle running up into the architrave above, and a short lower pivot in a socket in the threshold below. Buckingham's Trav. vol. ii, p. 254–256.

cells; the other, containing twice that number, is without the city. "You are to form to yourself," says Lowth, speaking of these sepulchres, "an idea of an immense subterraneous vault, a vast gloomy cavern, all round the sides of which are cells to receive the dead bodies; here the deceased monarchs lie in a distinguished sort of state, suitable to their former rank, each on his own couch, with his arms beside him, his sword at his head, and the bodies of his chiefs and companions round about him."n

"Whoever," says Maundrell, "was buried there, this is certain, that the place itself discovers so great an expense both of labour and of treasure, that we may well suppose it to have been the work of kings. You approach it at the east side, through an entrance cut out of the natural rock, which admits you into an open court of about forty paces square, cut down into the rock, with which it is encompassed instead of walls. On the south side of the court, is a portico, nine paces long and four broad, hewn likewise out of the rock. This has a kind of architrave running along its front adorned with sculpture of fruits and flowers, still discernible, but by time much defaced. At the end of the portico on the left hand, you descend to the passage into the sepulchres. Passing through it, you arrive in a large apartment about seven or eight yards square, cut out of the natural rock. Its sides and ceiling are so exactly square, and its angles so just, that no architect with levels and plummets could

n Lowth's Trans. vol. ii, p. 328, 329. Buckingham's Trav. vol. i, p. 319, 320-324. Again: "All round the sides of this mountain" (Zion), says the same writer," and particularly on that facing towards the valley of Hinnom, are numerous excavations, which may have been habitations of the living, but are more generally taken for sepulchres of the dead." Vol. ii, p. 30.