Near the grave stood a group of women, swinging their arms, striking their breasts, and howling in the most frantic manner. They were the hired mourners so frequently alluded to in the Bible. When a Moslem dies these mourning women are sent for, who recount, in an extempore chant, the virtues of the dead. They are persons past the pride and beauty of womanhood, and are held in high esteem by the community. Weeping being their profession, tears are at their command at the shortest notice. Their wail is the harshest sound that ever fell on mortal ear, and the habitual contortions of the face render them the impersonation of ugliness. As in all other vocations, the woman who weeps the freest, howls the loudest, and contorts the ugliest, is the chief mourner, and has the most extensive and lucrative practice. To these persons Solomon alludes in his description of death――“and the mourners go about the streets;”[143] and St. Matthew refers to them in his account of our Lord’s visit to the ruler’s house, “Who, when he saw the minstrels and the people making a noise, he said unto them, Give place, for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.”[144]
This cemetery is a place of frequent resort, where, at all hours of the day, groups of females may be seen lamenting some departed friend. As of old, they carry a tear bottle, consisting of two small vials incased in a cushion, and so adjusted that the necks of the vials touch the eyes to catch the falling tear. Though as extensively used by the Mohammedans as they were by the Greeks, yet they are not so graceful as the tapering lachrymaries of the latter. The material is coarser, and the manufacture cruder, indicating a lower civilization. To these lachrymaries David alludes in those tender words of his, “Thou tellest my wanderings; put thou my tears into thy bottle.”[145]
Descending the dry and stony bed of the Kidron, the path soon diverged, leading to the wretched town of Siloam, clinging to the rocky sides of the Mount of Offense. In the hill are natural and artificial caves, used in former times for sepulchres, but now inhabited by 200 Troglodytes, who dwell in poverty, filth, and crime. As a befitting background to such homes of woe, the Hill of Scandal rises up behind them. It is long and high, rocky and barren. On its summit Solomon reared altars to Chemosh and Moloch, and burnt incense and offered sacrifices to strange gods.[146] From an offense so abominable the hill takes its name. Unable to express their detestation for the idolatrous acts here performed, topographers call it “Mount of Corruption,” “Mount of Offense,” and “Hill of Scandal;” and, as if to typify the moral desolation of that great man’s heart, Nature has planted neither shrub, nor flower, nor grass thereon, but on all its sides, and over all its summit, her sterile hand has scattered fragments of flint.