WADY  MOUSA.
426
From  this  place,  as  I  before  observed,  the  Syk  widens,  and  the
road  continues  for  a  few  hundred  paces  lower  down  through  a  spacious ¬
  passage  between  the  two  cliffs.  Several  very  large  sepulchres
are  excavated  in  the  rocks  on  both  sides  ;  they  consist  generally  of  a
single  lofty  apartment  with  a  flat  roof;  some  of  them  are  larger  than
the  principal  chamber  in  the  Kaszr  Faraoun.  Of  those  which  I
entered,  the  walls  were  quite  plain  and  unornamented;  in  some  of
them  are  small  side  rooms,  with  excavations  and  recesses  in  the
rock  for  the  reception  of  the  dead  ;  in  others  I  found  the  floor
itself  irregularly  excavated  for  the  same  purpose,  in  compartments
six  to  eight  feet  deep,  and  of  the  shape  of  a  coffin  ;  in  the  floor  of
one  sepulchre  I  counted  as  many  as  twelve  cavities  of  this  kind,
besides  a  deep  niche  in  the  wall,  where  the  bodies  of  the  principal
members  of  the  family,  to  whom  the  sepulchre  belonged,  were  probably -
  deposited.
On  the  outside  of  these  sepulchres,  the  rock  is  cut  away  perpendicularly ¬
  above  and  on  both  sides  of  the  door,  so  as  to  make
the  exterior  facade  larger  in  general  than  the  interior  apartment.
Their  most  common  form  is  that  of  a  truncated  pyramid,  and  as
they  are  made  to  project  one  or  two  feet  from  the  body  of  the  rock
they  have  the  appearance,  when  seen  at  a  distance,  of  insulated
structures.  On  each  side  of  the  front  is  generally  a  pilaster,  and
the  door  is  seldom  without  some  elegant  ornaments.
These  fronts  resemble  those  of  several  of  the  tombs  of  Palmyra,