CHAPTER XXIV. ROUND JERUSALEM. THE Joppa Gate lay nearest to my hotel, and was, hence, that by which I commonly passed outside the walls. The Valley of Hinnom sank, at first, very gradually, to the south-east. About 500 yards to the west, upon rising ground at the side of the road to Gaza, was the leper hospital; on the left, from its deep, broad ditch, rose a mass of huge walls and low towers, forming the citadel, over which floated the Turkish flag. A minaret towered up proudly beyond, while from the gardens inside the crenelated rampart rose some olive-trees, and the outside sloping walls of the Titanic base were feathered everywhere with the creeping plants which in Palestine take the place of our ivy. The whole constituted a grim, forbidding Bastille, with memories red with blood. A broad, bare A broad, bare space west of it, looking down the valley, is a favourite spot for the tents of travellers. Clumps of ancient olive-trees, growing on the open slopes, dot the gradual descent, and are in great favour with camel-drivers for their shade, in which the beasts can rest, and they themselves eat their simple meals. As we descend the valley, the east side, which is Mount Zion, sinks, almost at once, quite steeply, while on the west the slope is gentle. The prevailing colour of the barren hills is yellow, but the young spring green of some small fields down the valley, and a sprinkling of olive-trees on the west, and the dark foliage of the poplars rising from the Armenian gardens, over the weather-worn city wall, soften the wildness of the view. Yet, as Strabo said in the generation before Christ, Jerusalem is very stony, and the environs are both barren and parched.1 The road was enlivened with travellers of all nationsArabs and their camels; asses with every possible form of load; turbaned pedestrians; veiled women, and pilgrims of both sexes, coming back to Jerusalem, or setting out from it. How much men freely undergo in the hope of earning heaven, so long as the self-denial leaves their inner lives untouched! There were almost as many women as men among these far-travelled visitors to the holy shrines; but while all had expended so much "bodily exercise which profiteth little" in honour of their religion, how many worshipped in spirit and in truth, having begun by purifying the temple of the soul? A good many, let us hope, but yet- ! Lepers sat at the roadside begging, with their tin dishes before them for alms; some very far gone in their malady; others apparently as yet untouched by it, though certain after a time to be as sorely afflicted as the rest. Well might one pity them. Passing downwards under the proud towers and walls of the citadel, one reaches a path leading to the top of Mount Zion by a steep ascent. The summit is flat, or at most gently undulating, between the city wall and the steep side of the hill, and, as I have before said, is in some places turned into small fields, protected by old walls of dry stone. Most of the surface, however, is used as the Christian cemetery, different strips being set apart for Latins, Greeks, Armenians, and foreigners, who sleep peacefully under the rubbish of the ancient Jerusalem. The English Protestant 1 Strabo, Geog., p. 880, ed. 1570. cemetery is distinct from this; the former opens from the ground of Bishop Gobat's schools, and is sacred, already, with the dust of not a few of our countrymen. Some women were sitting beside a new grave in the larger burial-ground, weeping loudly and almost convulsively, so that one would have supposed them overwhelmed with sorrow for the loss of a dear friend or relation. But it appeared that all this to-do was only professional acting, duly hired for so much coin, and meant no more than the groans and weeping of so many stage damsels in a theatre. It seems strange that such simulated grief should find. a market, but is it much more unreal than the palls, bands, feathers, and other hideous fripperies which our undertakers furnish at a fixed scale of prices? At any rate it is very old. Wailing women are the counterpart, in the primitive East, of our funeral music for the rich, or great, or good, and their office is to express the deep emotion of the survivors. The hired mourners raise their shrieks in the house of death, in the funeral procession, and at the grave, to which they come for seven successive mornings to renew their lamentations. One begins and the others join, with skilled dexterity of words, tones, and attitudes. Thus it was in the house of Jairus, when his little daughter lay dead,' and thus it was when "great lamentation" was made over St. Stephen,2 and in all other cases where grief for the dead is mentioned in Scripture.3 The most touching feature in burials in the East is the quickness with which they follow death. As dissolution approaches, a sick-chamber is still thronged, as it was in the troubled home of Jairus, with a crowd of neighbours and friends, all frantic with grief. Mr. Mills* mentions 1 Matt. ix. 24; Mark v. 38. 8 See ante, p. 177. • Mills, Nablus, p. 152. Her one case of a poor dying woman whom he visited. brother supported her, and the rest pressed round, raising their hands and bursting out into agonising shrieks; the noise and the crowd being themselves enough to kill her. Indeed, she died in the midst of the tumult, just perhaps as the daughter of Jairus did. She breathed her last about eleven in the morning, and her funeral took place at three the same afternoon. The friends assembled at that hour and bore away the body, which was simply shrouded in white calico, without any coffin, and laid on a bier much like our own, except that it had a high border round it to prevent the corpse from being shaken off. The women took the foremost place in the funeral procession, but in this case there were no hired mourners, as there are in Mahommedan funerals, for the deceased was a Christian, and the real sorrow of those who attended her to the grave needed no art to deepen the sadness of the cries which broke continually from them. out any shovel or other tool, simply by hand, with the aid of a chance stone. As the corpse lay awaiting interment, it was still quite warm, but a doctor, sent for by Mr. Mills, pronounced life extinct. The grave was only about two feet deep, with a layer of stones on the bottom and at the sides, barely leaving room enough to cover the body. When it had been laid in its shallow bed, large stones were put across, resting on those at the sides, so as to make a kind of coffin-lid, to protect the dead from the small stones and earth, which were gathered with hands and feet into a low mound over her form. She had been full of mirth the evening before, but now! The females, to the number of a dozen or more, remained all night at the dead woman's house, almost continually lifting up their voices in mournful lamentations, and early next morning went out to the grave, to sit there and weep, as the Jews supposed The grave was dug with Mary had done in the case of Lazarus. This they continued to do for nine successive days. In the evening of the burial-day food was prepared by neighbours and consumed in a funeral meal by the afflicted household, who ate together. This is the counterpart to the "cup of consolation" which Jeremiah speaks of, as given to comfort mourners for the loss of their father or mother, and to the "bread of men" which Ezekiel was forbidden to eat when his wife died.3 Near the cemetery is an old Christian church, the Successor of one which stood on Mount Zion before the erection of the Church of the Sepulchre; that is, at least as early as 300 years after Christ's birth. In the times. of the Crusaders apparently it was rebuilt, but in its present form it dates only from A.D. 1333, when it had come into the hands of the Franciscans. For 300 years back, however, the Mahommedans have taken it into their possession, and they guard what they think its more sacred parts with almost greater jealousy than they show about the Mosque of Omar. The Tomb of David was one of the holy places in the church as long ago as the reign of the Frankish kings, and it is still claimed as a glory of the spot by its present custodians, who say it is underground, and let no unbeliever see it. Probably there are ancient tombs below the present surface, but this is not apparently the place to look for the tomb of the Psalmist-king. A long, bare room, up a flight of steps in the building, is however open, on payment of a small fee; its attraction being the tradition that here Christ ate the Last Supper with His disciples. But the Jerusalem of Christ's day, I need hardly repeat, is buried below thirty feet of rubbish. |