[p.126]Rieha, on the S. side of a narrow valley watered by a rivulet; it
contains forty or fifty houses, all well built of square stones, which
have been taken from the buildings of a town of the lower empire, which
occupied the same site. The remains deserve notice, on account of the
vast quantity of stone coffins and sepulchres. The mountain is a barren
calcareous rock, of no great hardness. In some places are a few spots of
arable ground, where the inhabitants of the village grow barley and
Dhourra. On the side of the rivulet are some fruit trees. We were
occupied the whole morning in visiting the neighbourhood of the village,
which must have been anciently the burying place of all the great
families of this district; the number of tombs being too considerable
for so small a town as Kefr Lata appears to have been; no such
sepulchres, or at least very few, are met with among the ruins of the
large cities which we saw afterwards in the same mountain. Beginning on
the west side of the village, I counted sixteen coffins and seven caves;
the coffins are all excavated in the rock; the largest are nine feet
long, and three feet and a half in breadth; the smaller seven feet long,
and three feet broad; their depth is generally about five feet. In the
greater part of them there is on one side a curved recess, cut in the
rock, about four feet in length, and two feet in breadth. All these
coffins had originally stone lids of a single block of stone, exactly
covering the aperture of the coffin. Only a small proportion of these
now remain entire, but there are some quite uninjured. I saw only two or
three in which a sculptured frieze or cornice was carried along the
whole length of the cover; the generality have only a few ornaments on
the two ends; they are all of the annexed shape.
The apertures of the coffins are invariably even with the surface of the
ground, and the lids only are seen from without, as if lying upon the
surface.
[p.127]The sepulchral caves vary in their sizes and construction; the
entrance is generally through a low door, sometimes ornamented by short
pilasters, into a vaulted room cut in the rock, the size of which varies
from six to fifteen feet in length, and from four to ten feet in
breadth; the height of the vault is about six feet; but sometimes the
cave terminates in a flat roof. They all contain coffins, or receptacles
for the dead; in the smaller chambers there is a coffin in each of the
three sides: the larger contain four or six coffins, two opposite the
entrance, and one on each side, or two on each of the three sides: the
coffins in general are very rudely formed. Some of the natural caverns
contain also artificial receptacles for the dead, similar to those
already described; I have seen many of these caverns in different parts
of Syria. The south side of the village being less rocky, there are
neither caves nor coffins on that side. On the east side I counted
twenty-one coffins, and five sepulchral caves; of the former, fourteen
are within a very small space; the greater part of them are single, but
in same places they have been formed in pairs, upon the same level, and
almost touching each other.
Crossing to the N. side of the valley of Kefr Lata, I met with a long
wall built with large blocks of stone; to the north of it is an oblong
square, thirty-seven paces in length, and twenty-seven in breadth, cut
out of the rock; in its walls are several niches. In the middle of it is
a large coffin, with the remains of a wall which had enclosed it. To the
E. of this is a similar square, but of smaller dimensions. I counted in
this neighbourhood twenty coffins and four sepulchral caves, besides
several open niches very neatly wrought in the side of the mountain,
containing recesses for the dead.
Returning towards the village I passed the source of the rivulet which
waters the valley. Over it stands an ancient building, which consists of
a vaulted roof supported by four short columns, in a very bad heavy
style; it is about thirieen feet in height. A