They took
off all their clothes except the Abba, and sat smoaking and laughing
till midnight; I wished to imitate them, but did not dare to strip, for
fear of shewing the leathern girdle containing my money, which I wore
under my clothes. Towards the morning the fire went out, and the company
was asleep: I then opened the door to let the smoke out, and slept a few
hours under the influence of the morning breeze.
[p.251]There is an ancient ruined square building at Souf, with several
broken columns. From one of them I copied the following inscription,
written in very small characters:
[Greek].
Upon a pillar near it is a fine inscription, but now quite illegible.
At the spring of Ayn Keykebe, which is covered by a small arched
building, I copied some characters from a broken stone lying in the
water; the following were the ending of the inscription:
[Greek].
Near the sources are numerous caverns, in which the poor families of
Souf reside.
May 2d.--Being impatient to reach Djerash, I left Souf early in the
morning, taking with me a guide, who was afterwards to have conducted me
towards Szalt, in the Djebel Belka. Our road lay along the mountain on
the west side of Wady Deir. On the E. side of the wady, half an hour
from Souf, is the ruined place called Kherbet Mekbela [Arabic]. Three
quarters of an hour from Souf, in our road, and just over the ruined
city of Djerash, are the ruins called Kherbet el Deir, with a Turkish
chapel named Mezar Abou Beker. Our road lay S.S.E. In one hour we
passed, n the declivity of the mountain, descending towards Djerash, a
place which I supposed to have been the burying place of
DJERASH.
[p.252]Djerash. I counted upwards of fifty sarcophagi, and there were
many more; they are formed of the calcareous stone with which the Zoueit
and Moerad mountains are composed. Some of them are sunk to a level with
the surface of the ground, which is very rocky; others appear to have
been removed from their original position. The largest was ten spans in
length, and three and a half in breadth; but the greater part are much
smaller, and are not even large enough to contain the corpse of a full
grown person. On the sides of a few of them are sculptured ornaments in
bas-relief, as festoons, genii, &c. but in a mutilated state, and not
remarkable for beauty of execution; I saw only one that was elegantly
wrought. The whole of these sarcophagi had flat covers, a few of which
still remain. Upon one of the largest of the sarcophagi, and which is
one of those first met with in going from Souf, is a long inscription,
but so mutilated as to be almost wholly illegible.
