AN EARLY CHRISTIAN CEMETERY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5961, 23 June 1887, Page 3

AN EARLY CHRISTIAN CEMETERY.

There is an account in the Times of the discovery of an early Christian cemetery near Alexandria. It is underlying the sandhilk and rubbish-heaps which lie to right and left of the Ramleh line, about half way between Alexandria and Muatapha Pasha station. Somewhere hereabouts stood the city and camp of Nicopolis, so called in memory of the victory which Augustus here achieved over Antony and his adherents ; and not far from the same spot stands, or till lately stood, the little cupola-topped building in which Sir Ralph Abercromby breathed his last. The mounds are full of fragments of sculpture, broken stones, pottery, and the like, and the Arabs are constantly digging them in search of limestone, which they burn in extemporized kilns all over the ground. In the course of these diggings the abovementioned cemetery was discovered early n the past month.

Following the course of the Eamleli line, at a little distance beyond Chat Bay station, one comes to a rising ground, on the summit of which is a Roman wall running parallel with the railway .towards the east, and turning northward at right angles towards the sea-shore. A breach ia this wall gives access to a place in which the natives have excavated two or three great pits, distant about one hundred yard 3 from each other, and about fifty yards or so from the shore. In the furthest of these a well was discovered, and close against the well a' doorway cut in the solid rock which here underlies the mounds. Entering by this doorway, one stands in a kind of irregular subterraneous crypt, aurrrounded by rock-cut locnli. These loculi measure about 9ft in length by from 4ft to Gfb in width, and are ranged cne above another, in two and sometimes three tiers, fifteen to the right and twenty-three to the left of the central passage. In each recess, strange to say, were found ten skeletons, all apparently skeletons of men, the bones being very large. One of the skulls, taken up at random, was found to measure 24in in circumference. In all the teeth are sound and white, and firmly fixed in their sockets, In another pit, a little further to the eastward, a long gallery, with a similar series of loculi on one side only, has also been found. At the end of this gallery was a large doorway filled up with stone slabs set in cement. Count d'Hulst, from whom we have these particulars, caused this doorway to be broken through, and found a transverse gallery, with more loculi of the same kind, beyond. Terra -cotta lamps have been found with a few of the skeletons, some impressed with, an eightpointed cro?s, some with a priestly figure in the attitude of benediction, and some with I.H.S. Over one niche is painted a palm-branch ornament, and other half obliterated Christian ornamen'ca are here and there painted on the ceilings of the galleries. About a hundred yards to the westward of the first of these pits, another excavation has disclosed yefc more of these interments, in loculi of two and three tiers deep. Hence it seems probable that the whole area enclosed by the Roman wall is in fact one vast cemetery. Soino shattered torra-cotta coffins, without' inscriptions and without any traces of human remains, have been found irregularly buried in parts of the super-impo3ed rubbish mounds. These are evidently of later date. The Arab lime-burners are actively continuing these excavations ; and it is to be hoped that some inscription throwing light upon the circumstances which caused the death and burial of so large a body of tall men in the prime of life may before long be discovered.