Identifier: sacredgeographya00barr (find matches)
Title: Sacred geography, and antiquities
Year: 1872 (1870s)
Authors: Barrows, E. P. (Elijah Porter), 1807-1888
Subjects: Bible
Publisher: New York : American Tract Society
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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s may be lined with these niches. The most remarkable of these are the so-called Tombs of the Prophets,which may with probability be assigned to the age of the Jewish kings.The entrance to them is through a hole in the rock leading down to a cir-cular apartment about ten feet high and twenty-one feet in diameter ; withthis is connected a system of galleries, for the plan of which see the ac-companying engraving. ^ f J 1 \ - 1 ^ i TOMBS OF THE PKOPHETS. Far more magnificent and of later architecture are the so-called Tombsof the Kings. They consist of interior subterranean chambers lined withcrypts, which are reached by rock-hewn passages from an outer sunkencourt about 90 feet square. The court itself is reached from another ex-cavation having at its western end a sloping descent. Robinson refersthis splendid mausoleum to Helena queen of Adiabene. See the accom-panying engraving. Very similar are the arrangements of the so-calledTombs of the Judges. 9»c. Oeog, 5 98 kSaceed geography.
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TOMBS OP THE KINGS. The ancients took great delight in splendid tombs. The soft lime-stonerock offered a ready means by which the higher classes among the Israel-ites might gratify their taste in that direction. To these magnificent mau-soleums—if not to the Egyptian pyramids above ground—there is an un-doubted reference in the words of Job (chap. 3 :13, 14): For now shouldI have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept; then had I been atrest, with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate placesfor themselves. It was the vanity of Sliebna in constructing such a tombwhich the prophet Isaiah was directed to rebuke : What hast thou here,and whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchrehere, as he that heweth him out a sepulchre on high, and that graveth ahabitation for himself in a rock ? Isa. 22 : 16. It was in the ancient un-tenanted sepulchres of Galilee, that the lunatics mentioned by the evange-lists (Matt. 8 : 28 ; Mark 5:2-5; Luke 8 : 27

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