Church is an entire floor, extending over the whole of the side-aisles, and was, on its first completion, accessible from one end to the other, and, indeed, all round the Church; but was subsequently obstructed by party walls, erected for the accommodation of some of the various sects who have divided the Church amongst them.

The circular nave or Rotunda was wholly erected with circular arches, but the Eastern part of the Church with pointed arches; having, however, round arches in the windows, according to the usual practice at the early period of the pointed style. In the centre of the Rotunda is placed the principal object, for the protection and veneration of which the entire structure was planned; and before I proceed to the detailed description of that structure, I must investigate the arrangement and history of the Sepulchral Cavern, which had so vast an influence upon it.

III.

ON THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, AND ROCK-TOMBS

IN GENERAL.

In the centre of the Rotunda, as I have already said, there stands a small Chapel or edicula, twenty-six feet in length, and eighteen in breadth, having its interior divided into two small apartments, the inner one of which is said to be the actual Sepulchral Chamber “hewn out of a rock," in which the body of our Lord was deposited. Its present appearance, which is, at first sight, that of an artificial construction of masonry, is explained by saying that the architects of Constantine levelled the ground all round the Cave, leaving that

portion of rock, within which the chamber had been excavated, to stand up as an isolated block, and that the exterior and interior of this block has been cased with ornamental architecture, so as to give it its present artificial appearance.

To enable my readers to judge of the probability of this account, I must digress into a short examination of the arrangement and form of the Jewish and Roman Sepulchres; for it must be remembered, that the Sepulchre in question, originally formed for a wealthy Jew, "his own new tomb," "wherein never man before was laid," was altered into its present condition by a Roman emperor, more than three centuries afterwards.

Every traveller bears witness to the innumerable rock-sepulchres which exist in the valleys round about Jerusalem. The general mode of construction is, in the words of Robinson, that "a door in the perpendicular face of the Rock, usually small and without ornament, leads to one or more small chambers excavated from the rock, and commonly upon the same level with the door. Very rarely are the chambers lower than the door, the walls in general are plainly hewn; and there are occasionally, though not always, niches or restingplaces for the dead bodies. To obtain a perpendicular face for the door, advantage was sometimes taken of a former quarry; or an angle was cut in the rock with a tomb in each face; or a square niche or area was hewn out in a ledge, and then tombs excavated in all three of its sides. All these expedients are seen particularly in the northern part of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and near the Tombs of the Judges. Many of the doors and fronts of the tombs along this valley

are now broken away, leaving the whole of the interior exposed1."

But the interior arrangements are minutely described by the accurate Schultz, as follows. "Amongst the Sepulchres of Jerusalem we find two modes of arrangement, which, however, resemble each other in one respect, that they are both divided into two parts. A low door gives admission to a small vestibule, within which a similar door, opposite to the first, leads to the sepulchral chamber. Thus far the two kinds are alike; but their difference is that in one, the niches (or loculi2) are cut out of the rock with their longest dimension perpendicular to the sides of the apartment, as in the plan fig. A. Thus a moderately sized chamber is sufficient to afford room for ten or twelve bodies.

In the second, narrower niches (or loculi) are hewn out of the two sides of the cavern, on either side one, having the long dimension parallel to the side of the apartment, (as in fig. B.), and in these either the body was laid or a sarcophagus placed. The side of the room opposite to the door has very frequently a little niche that would receive the body of a child, and often a place for a lamp. This latter mode of arrangement,

522.

1 Robinson, Bib. Res. Vol. 1. p.

2 I employ this word loculus as a convenient general term for the receptacle of the body in a sepulchral

structure, whether that receptacle be a grave, a chest, a cavity in the rock, or any other of the forms that are to be found.

which occurs amongst others in the Tombs of the Kings, was, in my opinion, reserved for the sepulchres of rich and distinguished persons'."

It appears, from this description, that the dead were always deposited in a cavity hewn out of the sides of the chamber, but that in one case they were laid at right angles to the side of the room in a long deep loculus, and in the other case, parallel to the side of the room in a shallow loculus.

These two classes of receptacles are to be found in the rock-sepulchres of other nations. The first kind, however, is by no means so common as the second. The Egyptians appear to have occasionally employed such cavities for the deposit of their mummies, and they occur in the tombs of Petra. Later, in the Christian catacombs of Rome, the discovery of a few loculi of this form in the cemetery of St Ciriaca, is mentioned as a most unusual arrangement2.

But the second position of the body, which is by far the most usual amongst all the nations of antiquity who employed the sepulchral chamber, is the one which interests us the most, as it was undoubtedly the form of the so-called Holy Sepulchre3.

It is scarcely necessary for me to remind my readers that the Jews simply laid their dead in the tomb, swathed up in linen, with aromatics, but without employing either the elaborate embalmment of the Egyptians, or their complex coffins. Those Romans who did

1 Schultz, Jerusalem, p. 97.

2 Monumenti primitivi delle Arti Christiani, Rome, 1844, pp. 110, 225.

3 Throughout this dissertation I employ the term "Holy Sepulchre" to

designate that which is exhibited under that title in the church in question, without necessarily assuming it to be the genuine sepulchre of the gospels.

not burn the corpse, deposited it in a coffin, or stone sarcophagus, which was closed with a lid; and this was the practice of the Greeks. But it is also known that the early Greeks, Etrurians, and other nations, deposited their dead, dressed in the armour or robes of state which they wore when living, and simply laid them thus upon a stone or bronze couch, protecting them, like the Jews, from spoliation or from wild beasts only by securing, and sometimes concealing, the doors of the sepulchral chambers.

It is evident that the form and arrangement of these sepulchral chambers must have been designed with especial reference to the manner in which the bodies of their future tenants were intended to be deposited within them. In many instances the sarcophagus, couch, or other resting-place, is hewn out of the solid rock, and thus must have been left standing out from the floor, or projecting from the sides, when this apartment was first excavated. When the stone couch was employed, its surface was either level, or merely hollowed out an inch or two in depth, to afford a resting-place; and a raised part is often left at the head, to serve as a pillow, or a round cavity cut for the same purpose. Such couches are found in the Etruscan rock-tombs, and in those of Greece and Asia Minor. I am not now speaking of the stone benches in such tombs, which served as resting-places, or shelves, for the cinerary urns, &c. In the Jewish tombs of Syria, however, the recess in the side of the chambers appears to have been always employed. But even this admits of great variety. In

4 Many of the rock sepulchres around Jerusalem belonged to Romans or Greeks, Pagan or Christian, the

inhabitants of the city after its occupation by the Romans, and it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish the