344 THE HOLY LAND. 
<^^P' sepulchres containing them are similar to those 
which were described at the end of the pre- 
ceding Chapter ; and inscriptions appeared, as 
before, upon the outside. None of these in- 
scriptions are now in a state to be interpreted ; 
but we endeavoured to copy two of them, 
where the characters were sufficiently perfect 
to allow of our making a transcript. 
tions 
inscrip. In the first, perhaps, the words THNZOPON- 
E0HKAN might form the end of the first 
line, and the beginning of the second. The last 
line seems to terminate with the word CI W N. 
-f- W NHNAAI A .... 
PON0G KAN W .... 
A<t)OYrOPM^HIKI 
C . .N 
In the second, the mixture of letters usually 
called Etruscan, and properly Phoenician, with 
the characters of the Greek alphabet, added to 
the imperfect state of the inscription, seems to 
render illustration hopeless : 
burial; and its appearance maintains the truth of the tradition, which 
points it out as the Jceldama of Scripture. It has ever been famous 
on account of the sarcophagous virtue possessed by the earth about it, 
in hastening the decay of dead bodies. Ship-loads of it were carried to 
the Canipo Sanio in Pisa. See Pococke's Obs. on the East, vcl. W.p, 25. 
Land. 1745. 
