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the effluvia of the enveloped body and of the surrounding earth, would be unable to keep the burial-cloths in a proper position, would decay, would loose their hold, would crumble to dust-Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, for the grave is thy long home, and all the magnificence of sepulchral habits, on which thou mayest vainly set thy mind, as some softening to the horrors of that abode, will fade, will vanish away; it is the resemblance of the power, the goodness, the faithfulness of thy Creator, that gave life at first, and who can raise the dead, that only can give comfort to the wise man, when, he thinks of that state through which he must pass.

If this explanation be admitted, the second clause will not be difficult, being in course to be understood of the diadem-the fillet or cap of honour which the Eastern princes wore upon their heads, and in one of which the head of Herod was inclosed, when he was carried to burial, according to Josephus.?

A diadem, into whose texture gold thread was wrought, was equally liable to be rotted with silver bandages that held the vestments of the head in proper order.

An apocryphal writer seems to have had a thought of this kind in view, when he compares an idol "to a dead body that is cast into the dark. And you shall know them to be no gods by the bright purple that rotteth upon them," &c. Baruch vi. 71, 72.

Who tells us the crown of solid gold was placed higher than his head; the diadem, another royal ornament wrapped about it,

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Our translators render the Hebrew word gullath, bowl" or the golden bowl be broken;" but as the word is derived from a root which signifies to roll round, and from which is derived the word that signifies a book in the form of a roll, it may be understood of what was worn upon, or rolled about the head, by people of high distinction.

But it may appear more difficult to make out what connexion there can be supposed to be between a sepulchre, or the state of a body decaying in it, and a broken pitcher or fractured water-wheel. It must be allowed to be a difficulty. But when it is remembered, that pitchers and wheels were made use of for watering gardens, on the one hand; and on the other, that the Eastern sepulchres are frequently adorned with sweet-smelling herbs and flowers, as well as rendered less disgustful to the senses by perfumes, and being anointed with fragrant oils, and anciently by large quantities of spices and odoriferous substances deposited in them: the representing the disappearing of these matters in a long neglected sépulchral edifice or cave, where the body is nearly reduced to dust, by the image of a broken pitcher, or water-wheel, may not appear to be so remote from Oriental managements, as to be more unnatural than some other expositions which have been proposed, or patronized, by the learned.

But this, which I would propose as what may be a probable solution of these words of

this enigmatical paragraph, requires to be set forth more distinctly.

Many authors have given an account of the covering the graves of the dead, among the Greeks and Romans of former times, with fragrant leaves and flowers; and some have observed that it obtains in more Eastern and Southern countries. The Turks sometimes practise it, as I have elsewhere shewn, the room of Ali Dey, in Barbary, being decorated, for forty days successively, with flowers, and surrounded with people praying for him; but what is more, Dr. Shaw has remarked,' that their burial-places are adorned with flowers planted in them and growing as in a garden, as I had occasion to remark under a preceding Observation. I have met with similar accounts elsewhere.'

We shall not after this account, wonder at some articles in d'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orientale, in which he tells us, that the place in which is the tomb of the Iman Riza, is called the odoriferous Garden; that the place in which Mohammed the great Prophet lies interred is called, by way of eminence, the Flowery Meadow, or the Garden; to which is to be added what he says under the article racudhah, in which he tells us, that this word, which signifies in Arabic a garden, or meadow full of flowers, is often used by Mussulmen for See Rauwolff, in particular, p. 46.

P. 219.

Art. Ali ben Moussa al Kadhem.

Art. Medinah.

the sepulchre of some person celebrated for his learning or piety: for in fact such burialplaces are often a sort of gardens.

If they are gardens, they must in that dry country frequently want watering. Accordingly, the Prophet Isaiah compares the state of a people given up to destruction and desolation, to that of an oak whose leaf faded, and that of a garden that had no water. A sepulchre garden then must want watering, as well as others and accordingly, I well remember to have read an account of the carrying water to water those flowers, &c. that were planted in the burial-places, though I cannot at this time recollect the author; as well of others that carry fresh flowers and leaves, from time to time, to the tombs of their dead relations and friends, to replace those they had before left there, which having been separated from the roots on which they grew, of course soon fade and decay.

The Jews, in like manner, in ancient times were fond of making their burial-places smell agreeably. It was their manner, St. John tells us, to bury their dead with perfumes, John xix. 40; and for the same reason, in places planted with flowers and sweet smelling herbs, or gardens. So we find Joseph of Arimathea had prepared a tomb for himself in a garden,' in which our LORD was buried; so we find king Manasseh was buried in a garden the

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garden of his own house, which the author of the 2d book of Chronicles expresses by the phrase of burying him in his own house. According to this, Joab was buried too in a garden, for he is said to have been buried in his own house in the wilderness, 1 Kings ii. 34. But whether the place in which Joab was buried was a garden or not, it is certain that of King Amon was, 2 Kings xxi. 26, as well as where King Menasseh was laid.

Agreeably to this we find, in Dean Addison's account of the Jews of Barbary, that they there adorn the graves of their dead in much the same manner as do their Mohammedan neighbours, of which I was giving an account from Dr. Shaw, in a preceding page; for though he could find no inscriptions or epitaphs in their burial-place, which he supposed arose from the poverty of the Jews of Barbary yet he found boughs set about their graves

The breaking then of the pitcher at the fountain, and the fracturing of the water wheel, which sort of machine was in such general use for the keeping up the verdure and the fragrancy of their gardens, may naturally enough express the neglect into which a sepulchre in a long series of years must be expected to fall, when, instead of flowers, nothing perhaps but barren sand would be found there, and even the scent of those rich perfumes, in a bed of which the body might be laid, be lost, the spices becoming rotten, and crumbled to dust, the P. 220, 221.

a Ch. xxxiii. 20.

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