Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

The stone of Dousares

bearing inscriptions (fig. 77 r)1. He adds a sketch of the Black
Stone, which is now built into the south-east corner of the Ka'bah
near the door and forms part of the sharp external angle at a height
of four feet nine inches above the ground (fig. 772). He endorses
the words of Burckhardt, who says2:

' It is an irregular oval, about seven inches in diameter, with an undulating
surface, composed of about a dozen smaller stones of different sizes and shapes,
well joined together with a small quantity of cement, and perfectly well
smoothed: it looks as if the whole had been broken into many pieces by
a violent blow, and then united again3.... It appeared to me like a lava, con-
taining several small particles of a whitish and of a yellowish substance. Its

b

Fig- 773-

color is now a deep reddish-brown, approaching to black. It is surrounded on
all sides by a border composed of a substance which I took to be a close cement
°f pitch and gravel of a similar, but not quite the same, brownish color. This
border serves to support its detached pieces ; it is two or three inches in
breadth, and rises a little above the surface of the stone4. Both the border and

1 R. F. Burton Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Meccah and Medinah3 London—Belfast
l879 P- 436 ff. with p. 437 plan of Ka'ba, p. 439 view of Ka'ba ( = my fig. 771).

2 lb3 p. 494 f. quoting J. L. Burckhardt, with sundry notes of his own by way of
corrections or additions. My fig. 772 reproduces the sketch of the Black Stone given by
Burton on p. 494.

1 On the injuries suffered by the stone at various times see D. S. Margoliouth in
J- Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Edinburgh 1915 viii. 5i3a_b.

4 FiS- 773, a and b, are reduced (scale %) from the half-size section and elevation of
the Black Stone and its border given by Sir William Muir The Life of Mahomet from
original sources3 London 1894 p. 27. Muir says: 'This stone, which is semi-circular,
measures some six inches in height and eight in breadth; it is of a reddish-black colour,
^rid notwithstanding the polish imparted by myriads of kisses, bears to the present day
lts undulating surface marks of a volcanic origin.' But see L. Beck Die Geschichle des
«M«M in technischer und kulturgeschichtlicher Bcziehung Braunschweig 1884 i. 18: