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OBSERVATION XXVI.

Of the Places chosen by the ancient and modern Arabs for the Interment of their Dead.

A VERY ingenious writer, in his translation. of the book of Job, has given this version of Job's description of the sepulchral distinctive honours paid to the Emirs, or Arab princes and leading warriors of the land of Uz, and its adjoining countries, in the close of the 21st chapter of that noble ancient Eastern poem:

"With pomp he's carry'd to the grave; his name "There lives afresh, in monumental fame : "There he enjoys, in some delicious vale, "Turf ever green, and springs that never fail; "Preceded, followed, to his dusty bed, "By all the former, all the future dead."

And then gives this note on the 33d verse: The clods of the valley shall be sweet to him. "The soft clods of the valley (made soft and tender by gentle showers) are sweet to him. Their sepulchral grots were frequently in vallies, cut in the bottom of rocky hills. Such a situation of a tomb, together with springs of water or moderate rains to keep the turf perpetually green, was accounted a happy sepulture among the Arabs, as being a means of preserving the remembrance of the Scot's Job, p. 169.

deceased in honour." To make no remarks on the little agreement between green turf and grots in rocky hills together; and not to enquire how the verdure of a spot could have kept alive the remembrance of one buried hard by; I cannot but make this observation on the main point, the burying in vallies, that this seems rather to be a deduction from his supposed sense of the text, instead of an account taken from Arabian authors, or travellers into those countries, tending to illustrate these words of Job. A management which too often appears, even in eminent writers.

For I apprehend that in truth the Arabs, in elder and later times, rather chose to inter their dead in rising grounds than in vallies.

As to the modern Bedouin Arabs, we are told, in the account published by de la Roque of those of Mount Carmel, "that the frequent change of the place of their encampment, not admitting their having places set apart for burial, they always choose a place somewhat elevated for that purpose, and at some distance from the camp. They make a grave there, into which they put the corpse, and cover it with earth, and a number of great stones, lest the wild beasts should get at the body."

In like manner the ancient burial-place between Suez and Mount Sinai, which Niebuhr visited, was found on the top of a high and steep mountain. The noble sepulchres of the

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ancient Palmyrene Arabs, according to Mr. Wood's account, were in the hills in the neighbourhood of that magnificent city. And thus we find the burial-place for people of honour and distinction at Bethel, in the time the ten tribes made a separate kingdom, was in the mount there; and the sepulchre of Shebna, a great man in the Jewish court, was in an elevated situation;" Get thee unto this treasurer, even unto Shebna, which is over the house, and say, What hast thou here? and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here, as he that heweth him out a sepulchre on high, and that graveth an habitation for himself in a rock? Behold the LORD will carry thee away with a mighty captivity.

From hence it is apparent, that if great men were sometimes buried in vallies, it was no part of the splendor of interment among the Arabs, who were wont rather to choose elevated places for the sepulture of princes, and people of high distinction. How then, it is

natural to ask, came Job to speak of the clods of the valley, when describing magnificence of burial? I should suppose, in answer to this question, that Job is to be understood, not as intending to mark out the wonted places of their interment, but the manner of ornamenting their sepulchres-planting flowers and odoriferous herbs or shrubs, on or about their

Kings xxiii. 16, compared with 1 Kings xiii. 2. "Isaiah xxii. 15-17.

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their graves: Clods like those of a valley or torrent (verdant and flowery) shall surround him, and be pleasing to him. The liveliness of Eastern poetry here representing the dead, as having the same preceptions as if they were alive in their sepulchres he shall watch in the heap (of earth or stones that cover him,) for such, the margin of our translation tells us, is the more exact import of the Hebrew; the clods around him, like those in some pleasant valley, or on the border of some torrent, shall be sweet unto him.

Thus when it is said, The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon: they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our GoD it is visible that a glory like that of Lebanon, an excellency like that of Carmel and Sharon, is the thing that is meant; not that the trees of Lebanon were to be removed into the desert, and the verdure and flowers of the two other places. The clods of the valley are to be understood, I apprehend, after the same manner-Clods like those of the vallies where torrents run, which are verdant and flowery, shall be pleasing to him.

So Dr. Shaw has told us, that a great extent of ground being allotted without their cities, for the burial of their dead, "each family has a proper portion of it, walled in like a garden, × Isaiah xxxv. 1, 2.

where the bones of their ancestors have remained undisturbed for many generations. . . . In these inclosures the graves are all distinct and separate whilst the intermediate space is either planted with flowers; bordered round with stone; or paved with tiles."

Mr. Blunt mentions an observation relating to this matter, which he made, and which I do not remember to have met with any where else; it is given us in these words: "Those who bestow a marble-stone over them, have it in the middle cut through about a yard long, and a foot broad; therein they plant such kind of flowers as endure green all the year long; which seem to grow out of the dead body, thinking thereby to reduce it again into play, though not in the scene of sensible creatures, yet of those vegetables, which is the next degree, and perhaps a preferment beyond the dust.z

OBSERVATION XXVI

Boughs, Flowers, &c. used in ornamenting Sepulchres in the East.

As they sometimes plant herbs and flowers about the graves of the dead, so Dr. Addison observed, that the Jews of Barbary adorned

y P.219.

z Voy. 197, reprinted in the Collect. of Voy. and Travels from the Library of the Earl of Oxford, vol. 1, p. 547.

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