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Updated: July 28, 2025
We soon exchange the dewy freshness of evening in the country for the heavy air, thick with dust, that hangs over the coast road, and in a few moments more find ourselves at the foot of the rock-cut staircase that leads to our convent inn.
And there is the short account in the rock-cut conduit of Siloam, of the success of the workmen in the time of Hezekiah, who, beginning at the two ends, did the fine engineering feat of having their tunnels meet correctly in the solid rock.
The Mysteries of antiquity were for the most part solemnized in caves, or rock-cut temples. The Epoptae deemed such caverns as symbols both of the physical world and Hades or the Unseen World, which surrounds every child of man. Into such a cave, in the middle of the Ocean, Cronus shut his children, as Porphyry tells us.
Figs. 21 and 22 show a plan and section of the largest of the rock-cut temples at Ipsamboul, which consists of two extensive courts, with smaller chambers beyond, all connected by galleries.
Nowhere was this crude conception of the secrecy and magical virtue of the divine name more firmly held or more fully developed than in ancient Egypt, where the superstitions of a dateless past were embalmed in the hearts of the people hardly less effectually than the bodies of cats and crocodiles and the rest of the divine menagerie in their rock-cut tombs.
In the evening we walked westward to the hills that bound the slope; and came upon a rock-cut road leading to an atalier, where "Maru" has been spalled from the stone in situ. The filons and filets cut the granite in all directions; and the fiery action of frequent trap-dykes had torn the ground-rock to tatters. The western side of El-Kutayyifah also showed modern ruins.
One enters, and from deeps below deeps hears the voices of dragomans booming through the names and titles of the illustrious and thrice-puissant dead. Rock-cut steps go down into hot, still darkness, passages-twist and are led over blind pits which, men say, the wise builders childishly hoped would be taken for the real tombs by thieves to come.
More than one English traveller has been permitted to enter the mosque, and we are now well acquainted with the details of its architecture. But the rock-cut tomb in which the bodies of the patriarchs are supposed to have lain has never been examined by the explorer. It is probable, however, that were he to penetrate into it he would find nothing to reward his pains.
When I saw it, no less than six persons were drawing water with ropes and leather buckets. The location of Aceldama, the field of blood, has been disputed, but some consider that it was on the hill above the valley of Hinnom. There are several rock-cut tombs along the slope of the hill facing the valley of Hinnom, and some of them are being used as dwelling places.
In order to reach the diorite and grey granite quarries of the Hammamat Valley, the Pharaohs caused a series of rock-cut cisterns to be constructed along the line of route. Some few insignificant springs, skilfully conducted into these reservoirs, made it possible to plant workmen's villages in the neighbourhood of the quarries, and also near the emerald mines on the borders of the Red Sea.
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