THE next day Aunt Edith told Charley and May that she would like to have a little more talk with them about the funeral customs of the East; and she, asked them whether they could remember the first mention in the Bible of a sepulcher and a burial.
“I know that Abel's was the first death we read of," said May, "but there is nothing said about where he or Adam or Eve were buried-is there?”
“You are right, May," replied her aunt; "there is no mention of a funeral, nor any means by which we can know what the treatment of the dead was before the Flood-not until the time of Abraham.”
“Oh, now I know," said Charley, quickly; "the first funeral mentioned is the funeral of Sarah.”
“We will find the account of it," said his aunt, turning to the twenty-third chapter of Genesis. "You remember, May," she continued, "that when Sarah died Abraham was a stranger in a strange land; he had ‘no inheritance there, not so much as to set his foot on,’ but yet he had the pledge of the sure word of God that the land should belong to him, and that his children should have it for possession. He showed his faith in God's promise, and also how entirely he had left the land of his fathers behind by his anxiety to secure possession, even at a costly price, of a spot in that land of promise, which might be his own by right of purchase, and where he might bury his dead out of his sight.”
“He need not have paid anything," said Charley, "for the men of the country asked him to bury his dead in the choicest of their sepulchers. But who were the sons of Heth, Aunt Edith?”
“They were a family of the race of Ham, the ancestors of the Hittites, one of the seven nations in the Land of Canaan who were afterward destroyed. Abraham, who had been called out from his own country and kindred by God, could not join himself to the idolatrous people of Canaan, and he refused the offer of the children of Heth, and would only take the cave of Machpelah at the price which Ephron asked for it. This cave, with the parcel of ground which Jacob bought at Shechem, where Joseph's bones were laid, was the only bit of the promised land held by Abraham's descendants before it was conquered in the time of Joshua. Will you read a few verses, Charley, from Genesis 23:1717And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure (Genesis 23:17) to the end of the chapter," continued his aunt, "that we may know what Abraham's possession was?”
“‘And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre, the same is Hebron in the Land of Canaan. And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of Heth.’”
“Was that the same Hebron where David afterward was made king? And is that cave there now?" asked May, when Charley had finished reading.
“The place is the same," replied her aunt; "and a very interesting spot it is. We are told in the Book of Numbers that it was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt, and it must have been a well-known place when Abraham came into the Land of Canaan nearly four thousand years ago.”
“It was called Kirjath-arba at that time," said Charley, "for it says, ‘Sarah died in Kirjath-arba, the same is Hebron.’ But I think it is called Hebron upon the map. Yes, here it is, not so very far south of Jerusalem:" and he pointed to the little map of Palestine in his Bible.
“It took its old name, ‘City of Arba,’ Charley, from Arba, the father of Anak, of the race of the giants.”
“Oh, I remember," said Charley, quickly, "how Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak.”
“You may remember, too," continued his aunt, "that when the land was being portioned out among the tribes the city of ‘Arba, which is Hebron,’ was given to the Kohathites, of the family of Aaron.”
“I do not remember that, Aunt Edith, but I know that Hebron was one of the cities of refuge," said Charley.
“I think," said Aunt Edith, while she turned over a portfolio of drawings, "that you will like to hear the modern name of Hebron; the Mahomedans call Abraham El-Khulil, ‘the Friend,’ and the town is called by this name.”
“How wonderful," exclaimed May, "it does seem, Auntie-as if they must have learned in some way that Abraham really was called ‘Friend of God’! Oh, is that a picture of Hebron? What is that building with a high wall all around it?”
“It is the mosque which has been built over the cave of Machpelah, above the very spot where not only Sarah, but Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, and Jacob are buried.”
“Oh, yes, Jacob was buried there too, for though he died in Egypt his body was embalmed and carried to Canaan," said Charley. "But is it certain, Aunt Edith, that that mosque covers the very cave? Has anyone explored it?”
“So carefully and jealously is it guarded by the Mahomedans," replied his aunt, "that it is quite impossible for any traveler to explore the cave itself. He may enter the enclosure where the sepulchers of the patriarchs, as they are called, are shown, covered with beautiful silken veils, but the cave beneath the floor, where their true sepulchers are believed to be, has never been entered by any European. An Italian named Pierotti was allowed to go with the Pasha and look in at the iron grating which closes the entrance, and he saw a deep cavern; but when the Prince of Wales asked permission to explore it, he was not allowed to see even so far.”
“Well, God knows where Abraham's body is," said May; "the Mahomedans cannot hide it from Him; after having been buried out of sight for such thousands of years, when the resurrection day comes and Christ calls, it will be raised in glory. It does seem such a wonderful thing to think of, Aunt Edith; if there were no resurrection, we couldn't bear to speak of death or of the grave at all.”
“It is indeed a wonderful thing, my child. You remind me of a beautiful thought which I met with the other day. After speaking of the way in which Christ has 'abolished death' for those who are His, making the very king of terrors himself but the messenger sent by the Lord of Life to lead them ‘through the tomb where he hath no Power to hold him,’ as through an open portal, ‘to the glory of the never fading day,’ the writer adds—'Even as of old the captives were compelled to tell out the great deeds of their conquerors, so should this vanquished and stingless death forever proclaim aloud the victory of the resurrection.' You remember," she continued, "how the patriarchs are spoken of in the eleventh of Hebrews?”
“It says, ‘These all died in faith,’" said Charley; "and it says, too, that Abraham looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. I was thinking, Aunt Edith, of Rachel's sepulcher. She was not buried in the cave at Hebron, for she died just as Jacob was coming to Bethlehem, and Jacob set a pillar upon her grave. Is there any pillar to be seen now?”
“A building called ‘Rachel's Sepulcher’ is shown, Charley, but no one believes it to be the true tomb.”
“That must have been a grand procession," said May, who had been turning over the leaves of her Bible for some time, "when Jacob's body was carried back to Canaan. I have found all about it in the last chapter of Genesis.”
“Do read it aloud, dear," said Aunt Edith.
Little May read several verses. "‘Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the Land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house.... And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company. And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days. And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond Jordan. And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them: for his sons carried him into the Land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.’ You see," said she, as she finished reading, "the very place was called ‘Mourning of the Egyptians’; for the margin says that is the meaning of that long name; and yet before they started on the journey they had mourned for Jacob threescore and ten days.”
“Herodotus, the great Greek historian, tells us," said her aunt, "that the usual time of mourning was while the body remained with the embalmers, seventy days, and so long did the Egyptians mourn for Jacob: then, when the journey was nearly ended, came the ‘very grievous mourning’ and sore lamentation, lasting for a week, which so much impressed the people of the land ‘beyond Jordan.’ I suppose we, who try to hide our grief rather than to make a show of it, can have little idea of the way in which Eastern nations mourn in public, as they beat their breasts, screaming, weeping aloud, and uttering wild songs of lamentation.”
“I should not like to have heard that great cry in the Land of Egypt," said May, "on the night when they rose up and found that the first-born was dead in every house; it must have been a dreadful sound.”
“Dreadful, indeed," replied her aunt. "We may, perhaps, form some idea of the wail which sounded from house to house upon that terrible night of judgment from an account given by Lane, in his ‘Modem Egyptians,’ of the lamenting over the dead which takes place at the present day. ‘After death,’ he says, the women of the family raise cries of lamentation, uttering the most piercing shrieks and calling upon the name of the deceased, "O, my master! O, my resource! O, my misfortune! O, my glory!" All the women of the neighborhood come to join, and two or more public wailing women are hired, who beat their tambourines, exclaiming, "Alas for him!" and all the relatives, servants, and friends sometimes, with their clothes rent, beat their breasts and cry in like manner, "Alas for him!"' I remember, too," she continued, "once reading that a traveler in Ispahan was much startled by hearing a sudden and terrible cry. Running out quickly to see what could be the matter, he found that a woman had died in the house next to him. The cry continued a long time, then ceased as suddenly as it had began, but only to begin again next morning at daybreak. Many voices joined in concert, and this wailing went on for four days, growing less by degrees.”
“I daresay the ‘minstrels and people making a noise’ were crying aloud, like that in Jairus's house, when the Lord turned them all out of the room where the little girl was lying dead," said May. "It would have frightened her very much, I should think, to see such people when she came back to life; but as it was, she only saw Jesus, and Peter, and James, and John, and her own father and mother.”
“The minstrels were, no doubt, hired mourners, May-women whose business it was to lament over the dead, and who were all ready to begin their funeral music, and cry, ‘Alas for her!’”
“I know that one way of showing sorrow was by wearing sackcloth," said Charley; "even the kings did that; the king of Nineveh covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes, and said ‘Let man and beast be clothed’ with sackcloth.”
“Yes," added May; "and King Ahab, when he repented at the words of Elijah, lay in sackcloth. It says he ‘went softly,’ too, Auntie; what does that mean?”
“It was a slow and solemn manner of walking, expressive of sorrowful humiliation; sorrow for the dead almost always showed itself publicly: we find Jeremiah lamenting for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women speaking of the king in their lamentations; and you remember David's beautiful lament over Saul and Jonathan.”
“I don't remember anything in the Bible," said Charley, "about carvings or paintings upon tombs; and yet I suppose the tombs in Palestine were ornamented, for I have seen a beautiful photograph of one called ‘Tombs of the Kings,’ and that was carved with bunches of grapes. I thought the kings of Judah might have been buried there, or, perhaps, the kings of Israel.”
“It is indeed a beautiful monument, though much defaced by time; but it is quite certain, from its very ornamentation, that it is of much later date than the time of the kings. It is believed that all the architectural tombs near Jerusalem belong to the time when Judea was in the power of the Romans. This monument is often called the Tombs of Herod.”
“Then where were the kings buried, Aunt Edith?
“The kings of Judah were buried ‘with their fathers in the city of David,’ but we are expressly told of some who had done evil in the sight of the Lord that they were not allowed to come into the sepulchers of the kings. If you look carefully, you will find that the feeling of the people about wicked and oppressive monarchs found its expression in the place of burial assigned to them; of Jehoram we are told not only that he was not buried in the sepulchers of the kings, but that ‘his people made no burning for him, like the burning of his fathers,’ which shows us that the eastern custom of burning spices and perfumes at royal funerals was practiced by the Jews, who, perhaps, learned it from the Egyptians. Of King Asa, on the contrary, we read that they laid him in the bed (or bier), which was filled with sweet odors, and they made a very great burning for him.”
“But you have not told us yet, Aunt Edith," said Charley, "whether these sepulchers of the kings can be seen now, nor where the kings of Israel were buried.”
“It is believed," replied his aunt, "that the sepulcher of the eleven kings and the good priest Jehoiada was on Zion, close to the Temple, but no traces of it are to be found, which is not wonderful when we remember how that place has been altered by Romans, Christians, and Moslems. The apostle Peter could point to David's sepulcher, as well-known in his day, but the whole face of the country has been changed since then. With regard to your other question, Charley," she continued, "we read that several of the kings of Israel were buried in Samaria, their capital city, but I am not aware that any trace of their place of burial has been found.”
“Then are there no really old tombs remaining in Palestine?" asked May.
“The most ancient," replied Aunt Edith, "have been rebuilt and altered to such a degree that it is difficult to come to any definite conclusion as to their age. Scattered about in the Valley of Jehoshaphat are numbers of tombs, cut in the flat rock and covered by oblong slabs of stone, which may be very ancient; there are many such upon Mount Hor, near the spot pointed out as the burial-place of Aaron; but the common tombs at Jerusalem are so like these that no date can be fixed. The most remarkable remains of the more costly kind of sepulcher, containing excavated chambers approached by galleries, are those on the Mount of Olives, called the ‘Tombs of the Prophets,’ which are thought by many to have been built in the time of the kings, and possibly to have been some of the royal sepulchers.”
“Are the Jews buried now in sepulchers cut in the rock like that new tomb in the garden in which they laid the Lord?" asked May.
“I believe not," replied her aunt; "but I know that the people long clung to their old cemeteries in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and that after they were scattered it was the great desire of all Jews to be buried in the land which had been their own. ‘He who rests in Palestine,’ they used to say, ‘is as if he were buried under the altar.’ I have heard that they call their burial-place Beth-Hachaim, or House of the Living.”
“I think that is a beautiful name," said Charley. "It reminds me of how Jesus once said, ‘God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him.’ I should like to know," he continued, "the meaning of the words, ‘as the manner of the Jews is to bury.’”
“They allude to the custom of wrapping around the body folds of linen covered with thick layers of spices and ointments," said Aunt Edith. “You know the first part of the verse you quoted is, ‘Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices.’”
“Oh, yes," he replied, “I might have known what it meant if I had only thought of the whole verse.”
“You remember, Charley," said May, "that hymn which begins
'Sweet spices they brought on their star-lighted way,
And came to the tomb at the dawning of day.'
That was when the women came to the sepulcher very early, and found the great stone rolled away.”
“I have heard,” said Aunt Edith, "that the words ‘rolled away’ may be translated ‘taken or lifted out.’ It is true that the rock-hewn tombs were sometimes closed by stone doors, which could be rolled along a ledge to the opening into which they were fitted; but this was a very difficult sort of stone door to arrange, and very seldom used.”
“It says in the chapter about the raising of Lazarus, that his grave was a 'cave, and a stone lay upon it,'" said Charley.
“Yes, the slab closing the end of his rock-cut grave lay upon or against it, until the Lord said, ‘Take ye away the stone’; and at His mighty ‘Lazarus, come forth,’ the dead man, clothed in the wrappings of the grave, left his rocky bed, and came forth into the light of day.”
“How happy poor Martha and Mary must have been when they had Lazarus at home with them again," said May; "there was no need for any people to come then to comfort them concerning their brother: But what sort of place is Bethany now, Aunt Edith?”
“It is only a poor Arab village, May, upon the road to Jericho. The Arabs call it El Azirezeh, in memory of Lazarus; and they pretend to show his house and his tomb; but the tomb is a sort of cellar in the middle of the village, and not at all like the ancient sepulchers.”
“When the Jews saw Mary rise up quickly and go out, they said, ‘She goeth to the grave to weep there,’" said Charley.
“It is no wonder," replied his aunt, "that they thought so, for it was, and still is, the custom for women to visit the grave three days after the funeral; they sometimes carry with them a palm-branch, which they break in pieces and leave upon it, or they strew flowers there.”
“I have just thought, Aunt Edith," said Charley, eagerly, "that the man who had his dwelling among the tombs, and was so wild and terrible that no one dared to pass that way, must have lived in some old excavated sepulchers.”
“It is very likely indeed, Charley, and seems more probable still when we remember that there are many such sepulchers in the country beyond the Lake of Tiberias, near where Gadara once stood, and also that as the strict Jews avoided a sepulcher as unclean, the poor man might make his dwelling there without fear of being molested. It is said that the little buildings which it was thought a mark of pious reverence to place over the graves of holy men, are still the refuge of poor sufferers who have lost their reason. Warburton tells us that he found in a Moslem cemetery a naked maniac, 'exceeding fierce,' fighting with a dog for a bone.”
“How dreadful," exclaimed May; "certainly travelers see very sad sights sometimes, as they go on their travels.”
“There is one thing I should like to tell you of before you say goodnight, my little May," said her aunt, "and that is the custom among the Jews of writing upon the head of those who had died, Le-hovah, ‘I am the Lord's’—this was their way of expressing the desire that the person might be among those who are written unto Life."
"Thank you, Auntie,—that is very interesting to hear; but I hope before I go to bed you will tell me one thing more. Is there such a place as Nain, where the ‘widowed mother who lost her son’ used to live, now?”
“It is only mentioned once in the Bible, May, but seems to have been recognized as a well-known place by the Crusaders."
“The Bible Dictionary says, ‘The site of the village is certainly known, and there can be no doubt as to the approach by which our Savior was coming when He met the funeral; the entrance must probably always have been up the steep ascent from the plain, and here on the west side of the village the rock is full of sepulchral caves.’ Here is a picture of a funeral procession winding up the road leading to Bethlehem.”
“What a number of people there are!" said May. "I wonder whether any of them are screaming, and if there is any funeral music playing?”
“I will read you the account which Miss Rogers, the lady who has told us so much about the customs in Palestine at the present day, gives of a Moslem funeral.
“She says,—‘One morning, very early, I looked from the window and saw a bier close to the door of a neighboring house. It was a painted wooden stand, two strong poles projected at each end from the corners, and above it a canopy was raised, made of freshly gathered elastic palm branches: they were bent like half hoops, and then interlaced and secured lengthways, with straight fronds. I sketched it, and presently I saw the dead body of a man, handsomely dressed, brought out and placed upon it; his face was covered with a shawl. Four men lifted the bier from the ground, and resting the poles on their shoulders, bore it to the mosque. After a little while it was carried slowly along on its way to the Moslem burial ground, preceded by about forty men, solemnly silent, and followed by at least fifty women and children, shrieking wildly, singing, and screaming.
“‘Between the palm fronds I could plainly see the figure of the dead man; the head was foremost: and I could not help thinking, that if a voice endued with power to awaken the dead would tell the mother and the widow not to weep, and order the bearers of the bier to stand still, and say to the dead man, "Arise," it would be in his fête-day dress that he would sit up under the canopy of palms, and begin to speak.'
“This, you must remember," said Aunt Edith, as she laid down the book, "is a description of a Moslem funeral; but as a funeral in Galilee in the time of our Lord passed along, there would probably have been a procession very like this; the hired mourners following the open bier upon which the body lay, uttering their wild lament, while trumpets and flutes, tambourines and timbrels, made the funeral music, and those who met the procession often turned out of their way and joined it—for to show respect for the dead was counted an act of piety.”