Butler, Howard Crosby; Princeton University [Editor]: Syria: publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904 - 5 and 1909 (Div. 2, Sect. B ; 2) (1908)

6o

II. B. 2.

angle of the church, where it probably received water from the gutters of the roofs.
In drawing a longitudinal section (Ill. 55) there were few details that had to be supplied.
The piers of the apse, the piers of the arches of the nave, the compound piers of the
west end, and the small arches, the side walls with their portals and windows are all
represented in the ruins in a state which makes restoration simple. In fact, only the
clearstory and the west wall are conjectured.
The four deep arches of the tomb beside the church are intact. They vary in


Ill. 55-

depth (.96 m. 1.23 m., 1.40 m. and
and the spandrils are built up to the


1.44 m.) but they form a rectangle, 2.80 x2.56 m.,
level of the crowns of the arches, and then a
tunnel vault, parallel with the longer axis, was
placed over the rectangular space (Ill. 56).
The great enclosing wall, as I have said
above, has square towers at its angles and
gate towers consisting, in the ground story,
of an arch on the interior and a rectangular
doorway on the exterior. It will be seen that
the buttresses, which are about .95 cm. wide
and a meter or a little less in depth, are
from 2.30 m. to 2.50 m. apart. It is evident
from the ruins that they were connected by
arches. The fact that these arches are about
the dimensions of arcosolia caused me to look
for evidences of tombs, and I found exactly
what I sought in two sarcophagus covers be-
lt would appear then that this

111. 56.
tween buttresses on the south side, near the east end.
was not a fortified monastery, but a great burial church on the outskirts of the city.