The Lost Ruins of Quraiya J.B. Philby The Geographical Journal, Vol. 117, No. 4 (Dec., 1951), 448-458, Stable URL hitp:/Mlinks.jstor-org/sicisici=0016-7398% 281951 12%29117%3A4%3C448%3ATLROQ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F The Geographical Journal is currently published by The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hutp:/wwwwjstor.org/journals/rgs.htm] ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Wed Mar 9 05:46:13 2005,THE LOST RUINS OF QURAIYA H, StJ. B. PHILBY HE EXISTENCE OF ancient ruins at Quraiya (“the little village"), about 45 miles north-west of Tabuk on the Saudi Arabian section of the Hijaz railway, has been known to the world for just over a century. ‘The locality ‘was first mentioned in 1848 by the Swedish traveller, G. A. Wallin, described by Dr. D. G. Hogarth as “one of the very ablest Europeans who has ever set foot in Arabia.” Yet, in spite of his ability to pass “so easily to and fro across Arabia”, to quote the tibute of one of his successors in this area, Douglas Carruthers, we have his own record of disappointment on arrival at Tabu at finding its inhabitants “so apprehensive . . . that during the whole of the twenty days I stayed there, I could never persuade one of them to accompany ‘me as a guide to Al Karaya or even to the old ruin of Al Kosei.” ‘The next European to hear of the ruins was Charles Doughty, a stowaway in the pilgrim caravan of November 1876, on his way to Madatn Salih, where hhe was soon to make archaeological history with the discovery and description of its Nabatacan ruins. ‘The long, long trail of the pilgrim camel-paths still survives on a mileswide front to recall the days when there was no railway along its flank, much less the modern motor route which has replaced the Jatter since it was destroyed by Laweence and his commandos in the First World War. And it must have been when passing down the stretch of the later, and now derelict, railway between the stations of Hazm and Mabtab, north of Tabuk, that Doughty's companions told him of the ancient settle~ zment tothe west. “Ten miles westward upon our right hand,” he wrote later, “Ss a ruined site Gereyh, of which the country Bedovins recount strange fables, but I hear of trustworthy persons itis inconsiderable. We came soon after to the canvas ceilings of our tents, stretched without the skirt, in an ‘open plain, el-Ké.” And ina later passage he tells us:““The poor merrymaker {a poet of the Bani ‘Atya tribe] reported to me the fable of Geryeh, which is a journey to the north from Teblik: there is but the ruined ground ofa walled village, lying in such heaps as Khreyby {the ancient Egra}. Great treasures ae fabled to be there buried, and that every Friday the money pieces roll out of the ground, and run of themselves over the desert plain tll sunset. Beduins have asked me with a grave curiosity, ‘Could this be sooth?” Beduins are clear-ighted in their short natural horizon, and they easly incline in worldly things to incredulity. Another B. Atich man added, ‘In the neighbourhood is a sandstone cliff (he had not visited it, and therein a gateway, and beyond tata gallery hewn in the rock, in whose walls are side-chambers, well, as the shops in a bazaar, and a great treasure ies behind a door impenetrable, which (where all i enchantment) is kept by a black man with his drawn sword. ... Come thou! said the Beduwy, and take up the treasures, and they shall be freely thine, so thou wilt show us the hidden water.” ‘That Badawi certainly knew the secret ofthe ancients better than he wotted.’ [Less than two years later, on 24 February 1878, Richard Burton, coming‘THE LOST RUINS OF QURAIYA “9 from the Red Sea coast, reached the head of the Khuraita pass at the western cddge ofthe Hisma plateau for a brief glance at the promised land, from whose threshold he was forced to tum back by the rapacity and lawlessness of its Badawin denizens. “Too bad,” he wrote in his subsequent record of his great journey in the land of Midian, “to be thwarted in such a project by the exorbitant demands of a handful of thieves! ‘The disappointment was aggra- vated by other considerations. From all that I had heard, the Hisma is a region full of archaeological interest. Already we were almost in sight of the ruins of Rudfé, lying to the north between the two white dots El-Rakhama- tayn. Farther eastward, and north of the pilgrim-station Zat-Hajj, are the remains of Kariyy4, still unvisited by Europeans. Finally, I had been shown, when too late to inspect the place, a fragment of a Nabataean inscription, finely cut in soft white sandstone: it had been barbarously broken, and two other pieces were en route. The stone i sad to be ten feet long (2), all covered with ‘writings,’ from which annalistic information might be expected: it les, or is said to ie about two hours’ ride north of our camp, and beyond the Jils cl-Rawiyan. . . .” Incidentally it is interesting to note that in his earlier book, “The gold mines of Midian,” published in 1878, Burton was still un- aware of Doughty's discovery of Madain Salih, of which he said that “as yet zo traveller has visited it.”450 THE LOST RUINS OF QURAIYA In 1884 Tabuk was visited by the famous French and German travellers, ‘Charles Huber and Julius Euting, on their way tothe discovery ofthe great Stele of Taima, now in the Louvre; but I am not aware of any reference by either of them’to the ruins of Quraiya, of which they must certainly have heard. ‘The Tabuk region seems thereafter to have remained in eclipse for about a quarter of a century, though in x910 it sprang into the limelight again 4s the result of visits by no fewer than four European explorers of the highest competence. The rediscovery of Quraiya ‘The first of these was Douglas Carruthers, whose main objective was the Arabian orys, then plentiful in the northerm desert but now extinct in this area, though itis still to be found in and on the fringes of the Empty Quarter. ‘The ostrich too, then extinet inthe south for a generation or more, still graced the north in considerable numbers, though it has completely isappeared within the past decade as the result of motorized hunting. Carruthers’ account of his experiences, which also embraced Tima, was not published till 1935, and only contains a casual reference to ““Guraya— a reported ruined site in the Hisma Hills north of Tabuk, a site not yet disproved.” Soon after him the then new railway brought down to Tabuk the Péres Jaussen and Savignac, of the Ecole Biblique at Jerusalem. ‘They were able to visit Qusair Tamra (Wallin’s Al Koseir) and its immediate neighbourhood in search of ‘Thamudie inscriptions, of which, here and at Madain Sali, ALAla and Taima, they made a collection of some 700 items; to double, or nearly double, the total of such records previously known’ mainly through the exertions of Charles Huber and Julius Euting in the ‘eighties. ‘Their wander~ ings in the Tabuk area were limited, and they visited neither Rawafa nor Qursiya, nor any of the other ancient sites in the neighbourhood except Quesir Tamra, [have not been able to gain access to their published work, and do not know what they had to say about Quraiva. ‘Tt was in the summer of the same year that the Austrian explorer, Alois Musil, already well known in and familiar with northern Arabia, travelled ‘down from ‘Aqaba to the Midian territory, and the west: to become the frst serious explorer of its southern half, which he crossed from the Siq pass to Tabuk, recrossed in a south-westerly direction to discover the desert temple of Rawafa (with its long Greco-Nabataean inscription in honour of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Verus), and quitted southward to pass across the great lava-feld of Harrat al Raha to the railway, and so back to Ma’an. His voyage, achieved in spite of the unabated lawlessness of the Bani ‘Atiya, culminating in a scrap in which the Badawin women played a prominent part, produced the first reasonable imap of the area traversed by him, ax well a avery fair idea ofthe topography of the northern Hisma, based on native information. But he was unable to visit Quraiya which, inthe text of his voluminous travel-book published in ‘America sixteen years later, he mentions only casually, while in an appendix hhe says: “I locate Ostama in the ruins of al-Kraje, in the river basin of az-Zejte. The postion of al-Kraje [which he locsted with surprising‘THE Lost RUINS OF QURAIYA 4st accuracy] does not tally with the position of Ptolemy’s Ostama, but very frequently the particulars he gives do not tally, even when the identity is absolutely certain... . From Tebik (Thapaua) by way of al-Kraje (Ostama) and Ramm (Aramaua) led the shortest and most convenient trans- port route from southern Arabia to Petra, the Nabataean capital.” With the departure of Musil, the curtain rang down once more on the mysteries of the Hiama, which seems to have been by-passed by the advancing army of the Amir Faisal. In very recent years Tabuk has been visited by the now ubiquitous, though generally anonymous and uncommunicatve, ‘Americans who penetrated as far westward as the Khuraita pass, to examine the possibility of a motor route through it to link Tabuk with its sea-port of Dhiba. ‘They appear to have covered no new ground, and did not even visit Rawafa, much less the still inviolate Quraiy, whose charms remained for me to unveil in February 1951. Explorations in Tabuk For the whole month of my sojourn in what is now known as the province of the northern territories, until I descended from its bracing highlands into the coastal plain of Midian proper, I was free to roam at will. The lawless Badawin of yore were but a pale shadow of their former selves: tamed out of all recognition by the great Wahhabi, who has fought down their proud and ancient privilege of rapine and found more useful work for their idle mis chievous hands. A century ago Wallin saw Tabuk as a village of sixty houses. Doughty found but forty households, “only defended by the kella from the tyranny of the Beduins.” In 1884 Huber found the place deserted, and the old fort manned by only five gendarmes. Carruthers reckoned the populat at 200 souls in the early days of the railway, while today it stands at 2000, living in complete security as citizens of a’ provincial capital, already an important trade and communications centre with excellent prospects of developing its long neglected agricultural resources. All this is the measure of Ibn Sa'ud’s achievement in a field where, in turn, Turk, Egypti Sharif were openly and successfully defied by Badawin anarchy. Under his aegis T was able to see as much of this fase the limited time at my disposal allowed : collecting over 700 new inscriptions to swell the previously recorded total of 2000; visiting Qusair Tamra and Rawafa (already seen by others), a8 well as the necropolis of Rujum Shaubar, south of Tabuk, and Quraiya, with its satellite settlement of Kharif DI and Umm 'Awadhir; climbing to within 200 feet of the inaccessible sums ‘of “the Pulpit,” where, as Doughty noted, “Mohammed passing by Tebtk stood, they say; upon that loft of the black-looking mountain, and preached to the peoples of Arabia”; and exploring the whole of the Hisma region, In all these activities T had the guidance of Za’l ibn Marzuq, a young man of about thirty, whose father died in 1950 at the age of ro4, having come from ‘Khartum to Tabuk at the age of ten with his father. The latter and his son ‘were apparently victims ofa slaving gang, from whose possession they passed into that of the paramount Bani ’Atiya shaikh of the time: earning manu- mission in due course and taking service with the Turks in the rebuilding of the great fortress of Tabuk, over whose entrance is a plaque recording earlier452 ‘THE Lost RUINS OF QURAIYA repairs in 1654 on the orders of the Ottoman Sultan Muhammad Khan, son of Ibrahim Khan. ‘The Turkish-built mosque at Tabuk dates from 1907, ‘when the Hija railway had reached the district. “Musi, travelling down Wadi al Abyadh on the westside of the mountain- range of Midian, wrongly supposed that the latter forms the watershed between the Red Sea and the low-lying tract slong the Hijaz railway. In range, fom the neighbourhood of Ma'an right down to beyond Taf, finds its way back into Red Sea through a number of gaps and channels of which the most important are Wadi al Abyadh from the north and the ‘Agiq- Hamdh artery formed at Madina by two streams rising respectively south of, ‘Taif and at the eastern edge of the Khaibar lava-field. Much of the Hisma upland drains into Wadi al Abyadh and other ravines which cut through the mountain westward. Such eastward drainage as there is (and there is plenty of it, for Wadi al Dhamm, for instance, is reputed to collec the floods of no less than ninety-nine streams) finds no outlet from the vast basin, sur- rounded by uplands, which contains a series of subterranean lakes on which ‘human populations have been settled, with varying density, for agricultural ‘purposes from time immemorial. ‘Umm al 'Awadhir, a rather primitive settlement to judge from its barren stoney ruins distributed over three low flat-opped sandstone bergs in the basin of Wadi Zaita, where its floods are held up by a natural barrage of sand~ dunes, provides one type of such human occupation. Dhat Haj, with its palm-groves nourished by bountiful springs on the railway, is of the same type, which is exemplified on a larger scale by Tabuk and Taima where an -xhaustible but badly neglected supply of water is forced to the surface, or near it, for want of any other outlet. ‘These centres of agricultural activity have, as it were, been provided by nature, and have called for but a minimum of intelligent cooperation on the part of man to make them prosperous, as they have been at various times in varying degrees. There is however another type of settlement, which has ‘emerged entirely through the efforts of man, and which is today in ruins for no other reaton than that man has ceased to be intelligent or industrious, as he certainly must have been in times of yore. ‘This type emerged through the ‘efforts of man to intercept the floods pouring down towards the basins: at convenient points by means of barrages and canals, which in each case served to irrigate considerable areas, as we know from casual references in the literature and legends of the Arabs, as also from the surface evidences of the sites themselves which had hitherto never been visited by any European. "There are four of them in the general area of Tabuk: Rujum Shauhar, to the south, with nothing to recall the days of its ancient prosperity in an extensive area of basin irrigation except a hundred or so well-constructed family tombs, reminiscent of the Sabaean graves of southern Arabia, on high ground fringing the scene of former agricultural activity; "Uwainid, lying west of Tabuk on high ground at a bend of the wadi of the same name above a narrow rock- bound strait, which must have been dammed to head up the flood waters for the irrigation of a considerable basin; Quraiya itself, of which more hereafter; and Kharif Dhiba, whose tumbled ruins of roughly built stone dvwellings are‘rap fo wou 2 po fio Peon? mu dvoid opens ay fo yoo wins90 OH,THE LOST RUINS OF QURATYA 453 perched on an eminence at the junction of two wadis, formerly dammed to serve a considerable delta, The Quraiya ruins “The strange fables heard by Doughty about the ruins of Quraiya do not seem to be current in the neighbourhood today, when primitive ignorance sriouly blended with a sophistication which tends to direct all thoughts ina single channel, The love of filthy Iucre isa passion which excludes all other considerations; cultural, intellectual or spiritual. The soul is dead, however active the mind and body may bein the dreary strugale for exis ence. Be that as it may, the fables of yore would sem to have been nearer the truth about Quraiya than the evidence of the “trustworthy persons” who ‘wrote it off as “‘inconsiderable.”” It is very far from being that. (uraiya consists of three main feature, with » numberof subsidiaries; the tovin itself the citadel on a high isolated ridge on the west, and the cultivated area to the north, with two groups of buildings outside the towa on the north and south-east respectively, which my fancy labelled the "Nymphacum’ and the “Palace.” Teis situated in a tract called Linh, ying along the astern edge of the Hinma plateau and hills, where the counties steams of the upland begin to splay out towards the’*marshes” along the railway. Duc east at a distance of some 6o kilometres rises the “Prophet's Pulpit” in the Sharaura upland, curiously disphanous in the desert haze and dwarfed to fsiry-ike proportions forall ts thousand feet of sheer and solid rock, To the east-north- ast, 30 kilometres vray, neatles the invisible station of Bir bm Harmas on the railway, while farther down the line lies Tabuk, 70 kilometres from Quraiya to the eat-south-east. And finally the western horizon, extending far to north and south, is formed by the mytiad sandstone bergs and ridges of the Hisma, "The town itelf is today a mass of tumbled masonry in which itis im- possible to distinguish the outine of a single building. But the line of the walls stands out clearly enough from its surroundings; = hendecagon which, Jf minor bends are ignored, may be regarded as a lopsided pentagon with is apex pointing northward and its base facing south. ‘The area enclosed ‘within them is roughly 50,000 square metres or 12% acres; some 270 metres from the apex to the mid-point ofthe south wall, and 255 and 300 metres respectively along the lines joining the other points ofthe figure, south-west to north-east and south-east to north-west. ‘The area enclosed between the two eastward sides ofthe pentagon and a line joining the apex andthe south- east corer is a low-lying tract, which would seem to have been a lake or reservoir. The higher ground to its west i covered by the ruins of the resi dential area, whose main entrance pierces the southern wall atthe s ‘west comer of the town, while there seems also to have been a subsidiary entrance in the middle of the western wall, facing the ctadel ‘The ruins of the south wall, and ofthe southern ends ofthe east and west walls, would seem to have ‘been higher and of more solid constriction than the rest; probably for protection from floods whose impact would have been on that Side, ‘The town indeed occupied a stip of relatively higher ground separating two channels descending from the Hisma; Wadi Abu Dursige (sometimes454 ‘THE Lost RUINS OF QURAIYA called al Taraf), which flows down on a broad front between the eastern wall and the cliff of a broad ridge called Magati’ al Khadhras and the narrower stream of Sha’ib Quraiya which washes the town on its eastern side before swinging round its northern extremities, through a grove of tamarisks, to join Abu Buraiga about a kilometre farther down. On the western side of this channel, overlooking the town, rise the sheer cliffa of the citadel ri extending for about a kilometre westwards and averaging along its summit some 500 feet or more above the level ofthe plain. ‘The cliffs on either side of the valley were linked with the south-western and south-eastern corners of the town respectively by dams of masonry and rubble, which still survive with an occasional flood breach. That on the ‘astern side is 7r5 metres in length, while the western dam is rather less than 200 metres. Both were presumably provided with sluices to regulate the flow ‘of water into the vast basin below the town, perhaps 2000 acres in extent, in which the stone-lined fields of former times are stil distinguishable. ‘To east and west this area is enclosed by shallow arcs of higher ground, whose northern horns are joined by another dam, o40 metres in length and intact today except for a breach in the centre, below which there are evidences of fields, also stone-bordered, which were probably brought under cultivation in seasons of exceptionally good floods. ‘The ends of this barrage are firmly based on the rock of the ridges on each side while, on the more vulnerable eastern side liable to looding from the higher ridges beyond, a protective dyke nearly 2 kilometres in length follows the contour of the higher ground to link ‘the eastern end of the barrage with a rock buttress, on which also rests the eastern end of the town dam across Wadi Abu Buraiga. Occasional breaches dyke may be accidental and due to floods, but suggest that water may Ihave been let in from them to reinforce the main supply. The western edge of the cultivated area needed no such protection, as it is separated from the ‘next wadi westward by a raised sandy plain continued northward by a sand= stone ridge, ‘The tamarisk grove already mentioned must have been a significant feature of the Quraiya settlement, and itis quite likely to have been a palm-grove in ancient times. At any rate, in addition to the water passing through it from ‘the Quraiya sha’, it appears to have been carefully fed by the drainage from part of the northern flank of the citadel ridge, which was diverted by an earthen dyke into an artificial canal leading into the grove. There even seems to have been a spring at the head of the canal, while there are a number of well-pts, now dry, in the grove itself. It was evidently a carefully tended area, while on its northern side there still survive the solid foundations of a temple or palace, with various subsidiary buildings. Provisionally I take this group of buildings to be the local “Nymphacumm” as there is plenty of evidence, at any rate in the South Arabian inscriptions, of the importance ‘of the Mandhahat (or water-nymphs) as the divine, or semi-divine patrons of agriculture. The main building is a rectangle of 21 x27 metres (the long axis roughly north and south), of which the eastern section, 8 metres wide, vided up into three or four chambers of varying length, with a 2-metre passage between the two southward rooins leading into a spacious courtyard, some 18 metres square. The remainder of the building, in the north-western‘THE Lost RUINS OF QURALYA 455 ‘corner, appears to have been the actual temple with a dais, 23 4 metres, at the northern end. The northern axis is continued beyond a 2-metre passage by another structure, divided into two chambers, respectively 6x15 and 12X15 ‘metres, while at the south-western corner, lush with the south wall is another building measuring 16X13 metres. It should be noted that nothing but the foundations of these structures survive today, though the various divisions above noted are clearly marked. A few flint implements and flakes, a small {quantity of bluish glass, a number of sea-shells, and a small quantity of rather ordinary potsherds (contrasting strongly with the more elaborate pottery to be ‘mentioned below) were all I could find in the way of occupational indications. ‘The “Palace” and associated buildings, outside the south-eastern corner of the town and immediately down-stream of the eastern dam, are much better preserved and may be of later date. ‘The trimmed masonry of the main build- ing, surviving in places to a height of 15 feet (10 courses), recalls the neat appearance of the Nabataean desert temple of Rawafa. From north to south it measures 2g metres, with an east-west width of 15, and it seems to have ‘comprised a small courtyard and two or three rooms. A passage of about 10 metres separates it from the town wall, while half-a-dozen smaller heaps of ruins near by to the north-east were probably servants’ quarters and the like. ‘The location and size of this group of structures suggests that they may have been the headquarters of the irrigation administration rather than @ palace, while another smaller building outside the south-western gate may have been for a similar purpose in connection with the western dam, if it was not for the accommodation of a gate-guard. ‘So much for the town area, whose ruins yielded amass of potsherds, mostly of rather ordinary types though some of it was more elaborate, as well asa few beads, fints, bits of metal, plenty of sea-shells and other remnants of a vanished population. It nestles between its two rivers under the towering cliffs ofthe citadel ridge, which is about a kilometre long and some 300 metres wide on the average. The eastern half of this sandstone mass is girt about by completely inaccessible cliffs, varying from 300 to 400 feet in height, while from both sides the ground slopes up steeply from the cliff-tops toa thin ridge averaging 500 feet above the plain level. The western end bulges out from the ‘waist of the summit, falling on either side to the plain in a series of broad ledges, which provide access to the top from north and south by rough routes suitable only for pedestrian, equestrian and camel trafic. Towards the west however the inaccessible clifls resume their protective réle. There is no of any occupation of this western half of the rock, while at the eastern end there are three heaps of ruins which may have been watch towers, and a more or less intact, well-constructed turret of trimmed masonry near the extreme edge of the cliff overlooking the town. ‘The space intervening between these two parts of the citadel ridge forms the citadel itself, occupying roughly 120 acres equally distributed between the northern and southern flanks of the hill, and on both sides descending sharply from the central ridge to the cliff-tops below. The precipitous nature of the latter made walls unnecessary on those sides; and the citadel precincts are -merely separated from the rest of the hilltop by east and west walls, descend ing steeply to the clff-edges on either side, averaging about 20 feet in height456 THE LOST RUINS OF QURAIYA and still more or less intact. The eastern wall forms a shallow arc, about 150 metres in length, passing through a bastion or gateway on the summnit and lightly buttressed at intervals; while the western wall runs up steeply from the northern cliff to a square bastion on the summit (120 metres), whence it runs westward for 60 metres along the summit, to descend again sharply for about 150 metres to the southern cliff. The main, if not the only, entrance to the citadel isin the angle formed by the two sections of this western wall and the low natural cliff of the summit joining them. This latter seems to have hhad a low masonry parapet of which little remains, The normal approach to the citadel was by a relatively easy route from the south to this gateway, which also served to admit pedestrians coming up the more difficult track from a break in the northern cliff. The riddle of Quraiva Within the area so elaborately walled on two sides and protected by inaccessible cliffs on the others there does not, strangely enough, appear to have been any buildings whatsoever! A possible exception to this general statement is a substantial rounded eminence at the middle point of the summit ridge within the citadel precincts; this may well have carried a building, of which there are slight evidences on the surface ofthe bare rock. Otherwise there is no sign of human habitation, except fragments of pottery and the like. The possibility that such buildings as there may have been on these slopes have since been washed away is discounted by the fact that no masonry remains are to be found at the foot ofthe cliffs on either side, though here again there are plenty of potsherds at the bottom of numerous runnels and gullies to show that men formerly made use of the summit for some purpose. What that purpose was is the riddle of Quraiya, to which for the moment there does not seem to be any satisfying answer. Was the “citadel” a walled area for the safe camping of the loeal price and his eavaleade under canvas? Or was it a “high place” occupied or visited by pilgrims on religious occasions? If neither, what other purpose could it have served? tis unlikely that the two-score or So of inscriptions, almost all Thamudic (ith one or two short Nabataean scribbles), recorded by me from the clifs and monstrous boulders fallen to the plain from the higher levels, will provide 2 clue to the mystery. Some of them, incidentally have the appearanceof great age, but this may be due to the weathering of the rock. A Nabataean period seems tobe indicated by two burial eaves at the foot ofthe cliff at the north- fast end near the town area. The fist of these, 4% metres wide at the fentrance and narrowing to 3 metres at the inner end (Some 15 metres from the entrance) and about 4" metre high, has been carved out of the soft clay and marl which forms the base of the citadel ridge under a thick stratum of very hard sandstone, which in tis eave forms the roof. ‘The cave ends in two shallow alcoves but is without grave-pits or the loculi in side-walls familiar in other Nabataean ruins, while the floor i thickly strewn with human and animal (mostly camel) bones and skull The entrance was closed by a strong wal of sandstone slabs mortared together, whose remnants le strewn about Inside and outside the entrance, asthe tomb-robbers of a later age left them. Tes worth noting tha, though T was encamped within a few hundred yards