JERUSALEM, 
383 - 
pr/ar on any of the lower stories, and those above are latticed, 
the passage seems to be between blank walls. We visited the 
bazars, or shops, which are in a most unwholesome situation, 
being covered over, and, to all appearance, a nursery for eve¬ 
ry species of contagion. Hardly any thing was exposed for 
sale ; the various articles of commerce were secreted, through 
fear of Turkish rapacity. Our inquiry after medals was not 
attended with any success ; but an Armenian produced a very 
fine antique gem, a carnelian. deeply intag}iated,;representing 
■a beautiful female head decorated with a laurel chaplet. He 
asked Vi piastre for it, smiling at the same time, as if he thought 
it not worth a para. Upon being paid his demand, he threw 
down the gem, eagerly seizing the money, and burst into an 
Immoderate fit of laughter* 
On the following morning, July the eleventh, we left Jeru¬ 
salem by the gate of Damascus, on the northwest side, to view 
the extraordinary burial place erroneously called the tc sepal- 
chres of Ike kings of Judah” distant about a mile from the 
walls. This place does not exhibit a single sepulchral cham¬ 
ber, as in the instances so lately described, but a series of sub 
terraneous chambers, extending in different directions, so as to 
form a sort of labyrinth, resembling the still more wonderful 
example lying westward of Alexandria in Egpyt, by some call¬ 
ed the “ sepulchres of the Ptolemies.” Each chamber con¬ 
tains a certain number of receptacles for dead bodies, not be 
irig much larger than our coffins, but having the more regular 
form of oblong parallelograms; thereby differing from the or 
dinary appearance presented io the sepulchral crypts of this* 
country, where the soros, although of the same form, is gene- 
rally of very considerable size, and resembles a large cistern. 
The taste manifested in the interior of these chambers seems 
also to denote a later period in the history of the arts : the 
skill and neatness visible in the carving-is.-admirable, and. 
there is much of ornament displayed in several parts of the 
work.* We observed also slabs of marble, exquisitely sculp¬ 
tured : these we had never seen in the burial places before 
mentioned. The entrance is by an open court, excavated in 
a stratum of white limestone, like a quarry. It is a square of 
thirty yards. Upon the western side of this area appears the 
* “ Opus ver$ singulare, magna indusfcrio, admirabile vis.u, digmimque Regiis sepuie, 
cbris. Neque vero crediderim huicf simiie, aut vetustius toto orbe terrarum repe- 
riri posse.” Joannes Zuallardus, anud J. B. Villalnaadutn. Vid. 0.uaresm, Elueitb. 
T. S. UK vh c, 3. JS39. 
