Several Broad
Steps Lead Up To The Entrance, And In Front Of All Is A Colonnade Of
Four Columns, Standing Between Two Pilasters.
On each of the three sides
of the great chamber is an apartment for the reception of the dead.
A
similar excavation, but larger, opens into each end of the vestibule,
the length of which latter is not equal to
[p.425] that of the colonnade as it appears in front, but terminates at
either end between the pilaster and the neighbouring column. The doors
of the two apartments opening into the vestibule are covered with
carvings richer and more beautiful than those on the door of the
principal chamber. The colonnade is about thirty-five feet high, and the
columns are about three feet in diameter with Corinthian capitals. The
pilasters at the two extremities of the colonnade, and the two columns
nearest to them, are formed out of the solid rock, like all the rest of
the monument, but the two centre columns, one of which has fallen, were
constructed separately, and were composed of three pieces each. The
colonnade is crowned with a pediment, above which are other ornaments,
which, if I distinguished them correctly, consisted of an insulated
cylinder crowned with a vase, standing between two other structures in
the shape of small temples, supported by short pillars. The entire
front, from the base of the columns to the top of the ornaments, may be
sixty or sixty-five feet. The architrave of the colonnade is adorned
with vases, connected together with festoons. The exterior wall of the
chamber at each end of the vestibule, which presents itself to the front
between the pilaster and the neighbouring column, was ornamented with
colossal figures in bas-relief; but I could not make out what they
represented. One of them appears to have been a female mounted upon an
animal, which, from the tail and hind leg, appears to have been a camel.
All the other ornaments sculptured on the monument are in perfect
preservation.
The natives call this monument Kaszr Faraoun (Arabic), or Pharaoh’s
castle; and pretend that it was the residence of a prince. But it was
rather the sepulchre of a prince, and great must have been the opulence
of a city, which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its
rulers.
[p.426] From this place, as I before observed, the Syk widens, and the
road continues for a few hundred paces lower down through a spacious
passage between the two cliffs. Several very large sepulchres are
excavated in the rocks on both sides; they consist generally of a single
lofty apartment with a flat roof; some of them are larger than the
principal chamber in the Kaszr Faraoun. Of those which I entered, the
walls were quite plain and unornamented; in some of them are small side
rooms, with excavations and recesses in the rock for the reception of
the dead; in others I found the floor itself irregularly excavated for
the same purpose, in compartments six to eight feet deep, and of the
shape of a coffin; in the floor of one sepulchre I counted as many as
twelve cavities of this kind, besides a deep niche in the wall, where
the bodies of the principal members of the family, to whom the sepulchre
belonged, were probably deposited.
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