IN the examination which I desired to make of the ruins at Ezra, during our short stay there, I was assisted by a person well acquainted with the town, who accompanied me in my ramble, merely to direct me through the streets, and point out such large buildings as the place contained. The first edifice to which I was taken by my guide was what at first seemed to be a very old work, from the style of its architecture, but which proved to be the southern front of a Greek church, now called Mar Elias. The principal face of this building was towards the west; but the place for the altar was no doubt on the east, where the end of the building was of a semi-circular form. The masonry of the southern face had its stones singularly inlaid and locked together, no cement

being used. The interior was divided into a central nave, with two side aisles, separated by arches; and the roof, with its massy beams, were of solid stone; but there were no pillars in any part of it. Over the large door in the southern front, in which were circular and square windows, with stones curiously interlocked with each other, was the following inscription:

ΟΙ ΑΠΟΖΟΡΕΞΙΔΙΒ . . ΜΑΟΗΛΙΟ ΠΡΟΦ
CПOAHIWAMOYEMLOUAIAKENETIYIZ
ЄKICANЄПIOUAPOUѲЄОФЅЄПІСКОПОҮ

ШЕПІГАКО СПОТYONRONBWNACSMAAH

On a low door way to the right of this was a singular mixture of emblems, exhibiting the cross and the vine, as if the worship of Bacchus and Christ had been at one time united, or the latter engrafted on the ruins of the former. The cross appeared in the centre, with vine leaves and clusters of grapes suspended from its arms; and on each side of the circle enclosing the cross, a stem of the vine extended, in a wavy form, with the fruit on it.

On a side door on the left the following appeared on the architrave :

One of the inner divisions of this building is now used as the Greek church of Ezra. It has a few paltry pictures, and a rude altar formed of several stones piled together, which stands in the centre of the whole. The other parts of the building have been partitioned off into small dwellings, by heaping up the fallen stones, and forming out of them loose and miserable walls.

From a stone over a square window, exactly in the centre of the eastern or semi-circular end, I copied the following inscription, by climbing on the wall of an arch since built from it across the street, and sitting in a space left vacant by some of the stones having fallen away:

+ΠΙΣΤΙΔΙΕΔΡΑΜΕΝ +0ΕΟΔΟΜΟΣΠΡΟΤΕ

ΣΠΟΥΔΗΚΕΡΤΟΙΓΙΝΕΙΣ ΑΓΑΘΨΙΝ ΑΝΑΠΟΔΟΓΚ

ΠΡΟΦΗΙΟ ΠΛΙΑΕΥΝΑ ΠΕΛΟΙΕΟUPANOILI

And from a broken block of stone now used in a causeway, on the north side of a street to the north of the church, I copied the following:

ΑΤΛΗΡΗ NIKON . . . . . ΛΓ3ΟΧΙΑΠΡΑΣΙ

ΔΥΕΝΙΕΝΤΕΣΓΑΡωΝΘΗΚΩΝΤΟΙΣΚΛΗΑ
ΔΕΝΑΘΟΥΛΝΙΝΑΓΟΓTICOITIHCΕΔΗΛΟΙ

ΡΕΕΝΤ ΥΠΕΡΘΥΡΩΤΗEΑΝΑΤΟΛΙΑΜΑ

ΤΨΤΕΡΑΕΘΗΚΜΕΜ ΑΔΙΑΦΕΡΟ

ΗΡΕΙΛΧΑΝ ΚΑΓΙΑΝΟΥΣΕΜΕΡΟ

ΙΛΙΑΔΟΧΟΙΑΥΓΧΕΣΑΝΜΟΓΟΥΨΤ

In the end of the wall, a few paces to the west of this, on the north side of the street, is a large sarcophagus built in with the ordinary masonry. In its cover, which is flat and plain, is a circular hole, about a span in diameter, and above this is an arch cut in the stone, evidently for the purpose of leaving access to this hole, as if it were intended to admit of the dropping alms, or any other thing, into the sarcophagus below. On the side of the sarcophagus is a central ornament, something like a sheaf of wheat, but much injured, and on each side of this is an inscription, as follows:

ΚΑΚΛΑΥΔΙ
ANOCOгЄT

ΟΠΟΦΑΝΟΥ

LEGIPEXLEGIII

ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕΝ
THKICTHAHN
ΙΔΙΑΙ ΛΥΓΟΥ
ΔΑΠΑΝΑΙ . .

The pannels are raised from the surface of the stone, and the letters are cut deep into the black porous material, with a line drawn between each separate line of the characters.

Close by this sarcophagus is a curious old mosque, with a large open centre and colonnades, or wings of three arcades each, on each side. Some of the arches rest on square pillars of masonry, and others on small circular columns of basalt. One of these pillars is formed wholly of one piece of stone, including pedestal, shaft, and capital; and near it is a curious double column, the pedestals of which are in one piece, the shafts each composed of two pieces, and the two capitals with their plinths all formed out of one block. These pillars are not large, and are only distant from each other, as they stand, about a human span. They are right opposite to the door of entrance into the mosque, and we were assured that it was a general belief among the Mohammedans here, that whoever could pass through these pillars unhurt, was destined for heaven, and whoever could not, might prepare either to reduce his bulk, or expect a worse fate in hell *; the pieces forming the shafts are united by a layer of melted lead used as a cement, and now visible. There are two niches for prayer in the southern wall of this mosque, facing towards the Kaaba at Mecca; one of these might be taken for a Roman arch, as it has the semicircular form, and is built of bricks, of a flat kind and bright red colour, of the description commonly called Roman tiles, and united by a cement of fine lime almost as thick as the bricks themselves; the other is as characteristic of Saracen work and taste, being composed of alternate layers of black and white stone, like the niches in the bath at Bozra, and many other specimens of Saracen work still seen in the great Mohammedan cities of the

east.

*This is another instance to add to the several others already enumerated in the "Travels in Palestine," of the prevalence of a notion, probably founded on a literal interpretation of what must have been meant in a figurative sense by Christ, who says, "Straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be "that find it." Matt. vii. 14. But the notion is not exclusively Christian: it appears to be common to all religions.

Over the west door of entrance to the south wing of this mosque is a curious block, with a star cut in relief, and several holes made at stated intervals through the stone. Above this is sculptured the Greek cross, and below it is an inscription deeply cut in Arabic. On the outer western front, which is ascended to by a wide flight of four steps, are three square doors, and above and on each side of the central one are three blocks of stone, with pannels raised on them in high relief, and each containing a long Greek inscription, now illegible. These blocks do not appear to me, however, to have been sculptured since they were used in the building, but being found when this mosque was constructed out of the ruins of former edifices, were selected because of their containing such inscriptions, to be placed in their present positions as ornaments, or, possibly, for the purpose of thus recording the fact that Mohammedan places of worship had been raised on the ruins of Christian temples. This, at least, was my impression on the spot, though it might have been a conclusion too hastily drawn.

At the north-west angle of the mosque is a high sloping square tower, near the top of which are seen two Roman arched windows in each face of the building; and below is a bastard Ionic column. I had long entertained a belief, from the various instances in which I had seen the Roman and the Saracen, or the round and the pointed arch united in the same building, that there must have been a period when these distinctive marks of two opposite orders of architecture were confounded together, and often used by the same builder as well as in the same edifice. I was here confirmed in this belief by seeing, in the interior of this tower, the round and the pointed form of arch used in the same arcade, and necessarily contemporary with each other; so that the same may have been the case in the larger edifices, as at the castles before described, where this mixture of styles has been already observed, and accounted for by supposing the one to have been occasioned by

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