it may be called, although it never could have been employed for
military purposes, are the remains of a subterranean storehouse
for grain, the roof of which is raised about a foot from the ground
above it and composed of cement : between this and the tower there
is a sort of well, which appears to be the entrance to the storehouse,
but which was too much encumbered with rubbish to allow of our
descending into it. Some traces of walls attached to the roof of the
storehouse may be seen in the ground-plan annexed, but we could
not determine whether either these, or the souterrain itself, were
originally attached to the building.
No architectural remains could be perceived among the fallen
ruins of the tower by which we might have been enabled to fix the
time of its erection with more precision; and the base of the pilaster
which we have mentioned at the angle of the building, is the only
evidence of this nature which we could obtain.
To us this structure appears to be Saracenic; but if others should
be disposed to think differently, and to adopt it as the tower of
Euphrantas, the circumstance of its having (at least in our opinion)
been built as an object merely without any other apparent use,
might perhaps be considered by some persons, to favour the idea;
and we are a little surprised that Signor Della Celia did not adopt
it in preference to the building which he has pointed out.
With regard to the columns with the illegible inscriptions, which
the Doctor supposes to have been boundaries ; we know of no other
objects which will at all answer to his description but those at
Hamed Garoosh; and our guides, as well as the Arabs of the place,
were obstinate in persisting that there were no others of any kind.
The. columns at this place are “ tolerably high,” and they are also
quadrangular, and have the advantage of a pedestal, as the Doctor
has remarked of his boundary stones. But \ then they are not of
sandstone, nor of any stone at all, that is, not of any blocks
of stone, but merely of small irregular fragments of stone, put
together with cement, with which they are cased, and which gives
them the appearance at a little distance of being formed of a single
piece. Then, instead of one, there are two upon one pedestal, and
unless we suppose that the Doctor saw them in one direction only,
when the two were in one, it is not easy to account for this difference
between his description and the reality. The characters
which are upon them do certainly coincide with those mentioned by
Signor Della Celia, so far as the circumstance of their being wholly
illegible is concerned; for they consist altogether of unmeaning
scrawls, and of some of those marks which are used by the Arabs
to distinguish their particular tribes *, and have been scratched for
* We subjoin a few of these characteristic marks, with the names of the tribe, to
which they belong, attached. • Some of them, it will'be seen, resemble Greek letters, and
when they are well cut, have a very knowing appearance.
Mogharbd, Ouarghir, W£led Suliman, ' Orfilli, Wtied Ben-Miriam,
J j T V y o A p x i
VV61ed Abou-Saif, Geddd’fa, Hem&mla, Zoazi, - Zoeia,
u \ • '• o il ° r " x
Hassoun, Gebshia, Name forgotten.
NU A <£.
Y