cap-stone was nearly 12 feet square, and the side-stones vary from 5 to 6 feet in height. On approaching Sûf, a great number of dolmens were observed on either side of the road for a distance of from three to four miles. Some of these seemed quite perfect, others were broken down; but the travellers had unfortunately no time to count or examine them with care.
This is a very meagre account of a great subject—so meagre, indeed, that it is impossible to found any argument upon it that will be worth anything; but it is interesting to observe that all the dolmens as yet noticed in Syria are situated in Gilead, the country of the Amorites, and of Og, king of Bashan. If it should prove eventually that there are none except in this district, it would give rise to several interesting ethnographical determinations. At present all we can feel confident about is that there are no dolmens west of the Jordan; but the Amorites were originally settled in Hebron,[1] and there are certainly no dolmens there. So unless they migrated eastward before the dolmen period, they can scarcely lay claim to them. Then these dolmens may belong to the Rephaim, the Emim, the Anakim, the Zuzim, and all those giant tribes that dwelt beyond Jordan at the time of Chedorlaomer, the dreaded king of Elam, who smote the kings of this district at the dawn of the Bible history of these regions.[2] The speculation is a tempting one, and if it should eventually be proved that they are confined to this one district, it will no doubt find favour in some quarters. There seems, however, nothing to support it beyond the fact that the people in the region beyond the Jordan seem all and always to have been of Hamite or Turanian blood, and therefore likely to adopt this mode of burial whenever it may have been introduced, in spite of the colonization of two tribes and a half of Israelites, who could do but little to leaven the mass. I am afraid that, like the theory which identified the Roman cities of the Hauran with the giant cities of Og, king of Bashan, and his tall contemporaries, this hypothesis will not bear examination. Every stone of these cities, it is now known, was placed where we now find it, after the time when Pompey extended Roman influence to these regions; and nothing would surprise me less than to find that these dolmens
