:88i] A JOURNEY IN THE HEjAZ 543 



feet are altogether lost. The arms, however, are drawn 

 with considerable vigour ; and in general one is led to 

 conclude that a well-skilled draughtsman was followed by 

 a clumsy stone-cutter. The characters which accompany 

 the figure are written like all the other inscriptions of 

 the same class which I have seen in vertical columns : 

 two columns in front of the sceptre to the right of the 

 stone, and a single word, probably the name of the king, 

 obliquely over the head. Some of the letters are similar 

 to known South Semitic writing, and I hope that all may 

 be made out by skilled paleographists, but I am not able 

 to interpret them, or even guess at their origin. There is 

 some tradition preserved by Arabic authors of a peculiar 

 writing proper to the Gorhom in Mecca, and Fakihy in 

 his History of Mecca gives a facsimile of an inscription 

 distantly analogous to that of Ree e ez Zelale, which stood 

 at the Maqam Ibrahim. It is, however, to be observed 

 that all the inscriptions which I found were in the upper 

 granite country four at Taif, and one on the lofty 

 plateau of Kara. Below Mount Kara, in the vicinity of 

 Mecca, there is little granite, and I saw no writing other 

 than Cufic, and comparatively little of that. Except 

 that of Zelale, all my inscriptions are from the country 

 of the Thageef . But the Zelale inscription is by far the 

 most striking, because accompanied by an attempt at 

 sculpture which displays a certain amount of artistic skill. 

 At Numoora, on Mount Kara, the inscription is associated 

 with the figure of a beast of prey, but the drawing is a 

 mere child s scrawl, and the work is in outline ; whereas 

 in Zelale the whole surface of the figure is hammered out 

 so as to be clearly visible from the road below. As the 

 letters at Numoora are at least as well formed and cut as 

 those at Zelale, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the 

 seated figure in the latter place must have been designed 

 by a foreign draughtsman. This would account for the 

 markedly Egyptian type of the design ; but if the draughts 

 man was an Egyptian, working in the style of old Egyptian 



