VII. 
CATACOMBS OF NECROPOLIS. 381 
of gardens'. Enough remains, also, in the severe ^^,^^* 
simplicity of their structure, and in the few 
Egyptian symbols found within them, to shew 
that they are of earlier antiquity than the founda- 
tion of Alexandria by the Macedonians, even if we 
had not the most decisive evidence to prove that 
the regal sepulchres of the Alexandrian monarchs 
were within the city. As repositories of the 
(3) "And be was buried in his Sepulchre, in the Garden of Uzza," 
(^Kings xxi. :2G.) In the same chapter, ver. 18, it is said oi Manasseh, 
that " he slept with his fathers, and was buried iu the garden of his own 
house, in the Garden oi Uzza:" that is to say, in the garden of the 
sepulchre of his own house, or famili/; tlie coemeteries of the Jews e\- 
htbiting always a series of gardens, each of which belonged to some 
particular family. Among the Heathens such gardens were places of 
religious worship. Thus in Isaiah, [c. Ixv. 3.) " A people that provoketh 
me to anger continually to my face, that sacrificeih in gaj-dens." An 
illustration is hereby suggested of a remarkable passage in Ezekielf 
(c.xiii. 19, 20.) " And will ye pollute me among my people ... to 
slay the souls that should not die .... Behold I am against your pillows, 
wherewith j e there hunt the souls into gardens." The Garden to 
which our Saviour " oftimes resorted with his Disciples," at^the foot of 
the Mount of Olives, "over the Brook Cedron," {John xviii. 1, 2.) was, 
hi all probability, a place for pious meditation, i?i the midst of Tombs; 
for the antient Jewish sepulchres extend over all the base of the moun- 
tain opposite to Jerusalem. Hither he retired to pray, the night before 
bis crucifixion. And when his body was buried, " as the manner of 
t\\z Jews is to bury," (t/oAw xix.40, 41.) the sepulchre wherein they 
laid him was in "a Garden." The same custom of adorning coemeteries 
with gardens, and resorting to them for meditation and prayer, still 
exists among all the Eastern Jews, who write upon the tomb of a de- 
ceased person, " L«t his soul be in the garden of Eden ;" also among 
the Moslems over all the Turkish Empire. It is said also of theMexicans 
(See Purchas's Pilgrim, p. 804. Lond. 1614.) "The places where they 
buried them were their Gardens." 
