VI IT. 
RUINS OF TELMESSUS. 3 15 
surmounted by ornamented rail-work over the chajp. 
front and sides. A small rectangular openino-, 
scarcely large enough to pass through, admitted 
us to the interior of some of them ; where we 
found a square chamber, with one or more 
receptacles for dead bodies, shaped like baths, 
upon the sides of the apartment, and neatly 
chiselled in the body of the rock. The mouths 
of these sepulchres had been originally closed 
by square slabs of stone, exactly adapted to 
grooves cut for their reception ; and so nicely 
adjusted, that, when the work was finished, 
the place of entrance might not be observed. 
Of similar construction, although not exactly 
of the same form, were the sepulchres of the 
Jeivs in Pal.estine; and particularly that in 
w^hich our Saviour was buried, as will be more 
fully shewn in the sequel '. Inscriptions appeared 
upon several of them, but written in so many 
different characters, and with such various 
marks of time, that it is impossible to assign 
any precise period for the age of their common 
origin. Upon some of them were letters of no 
remote date, as may be proved from the names 
they served to express, and the manner in 
which they were written ; and, close to these. 
(1) " And laid him in a sepulchre which wa? hewn out of a rock, and 
rolled a stoue unto the door of the sepulchre." Mark xv. 46. 
