Meccah or Jeddah) Eve’s
grave, of green sods, about fifty yards in length, is shown to this day”;
but the great traveller probably never issued from the town-gates.
And
Sir W. Harris, who could not have visited the Holy Place, repeats, in
1840, that Eve’s grave of green sod is still shown on the barren shore of
the Red Sea.” The present structure is clearly modern; anciently, I was
told at Jeddah, the sepulchre consisted of a stone at the head, a
second at the feet, and the navel-dome.
The idol of Jeddah, in the days of Arab litholatry, was called Sakhrah
Tawilah, the Long Stone. May not this stone of Eve be the Moslemized
revival of the old idolatry? It is to be observed that the Arabs, if
the tombs be admitted as evidence, are inconsistent in their dimensions
of the patriarchal stature. The sepulchre of Adam at the Masjid
al-Khayf is, like that of Eve, gigantic. That of Noah at Al-Buka’a is a
bit of Aqueduct thirty-eight paces long by one and a half wide. Job’s
tomb near Hulah (seven parasangs from Kerbela) is small. I have not
seen the grave of Moses (south-east of the Red Sea), which is becoming
known by the bitumen cups there sold to pilgrims. But Aaron’s sepulchre
in the Sinaitic peninsula is of moderate dimensions.
On leaving the graveyard I offered the guardian a dollar, which he
received with a remonstrance that a man of my dignity should give so
paltry a fee.
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