40 cm. broad. South of the aqueduct there stretches a lowland which could be transformed into fields. The remains of old field and garden walls extend as far as the ruins of al-Ḥomejma, which we reached at 12.42 P. M. (temperature: 29.8° C).
Fig. 17—From al-Ḥomejma looking south.
These ruins cover the eastern and southern foot of the elevation of Umm al-ʻAẓâm as well as the surrounding lowland for several square kilometers; but not a single building has been preserved (Figs. 16, 17). The soft limestone of which they were constructed has collapsed, so that the isolated buildings are now reduced to whitish-yellow heaps of soft powdery lime. If these heaps were excavated, apartments would certainly be found intact beneath the crumbling limestone, and in them possibly various monuments as well. There are numerous capacious artificial reservoirs for rain water that are not more than half covered. In every building were installed pyriform cisterns, where the ʻAlâwîn conceal chaff and corn. Inasmuch as some of the buildings are constructed in a style which resembles that of the ruined houses at Wâdi Mûsa, it may be inferred with certainty that al-Ḥomejma was also built by the Nabataeans, and for this reason I locate here the Nabataean city of Auara.[1]
- ↑ Al-Ḥomejma obtained its name from the white color of the rocks and soil which prevail in its environs. In Aramaic and Arabic this white color is designated also by the word ḥawwâra, which the natives often interchange with Ḥomejma, and I conjecture that these ruins were originally called Ḥawwâra.According to Uranius, Arabica (Müller, Fragmenta, Vol. 4), p. 523 (Stephen of Byzantium, Ethnica [Meineke]. Vol. 1, p. 144) the Arabic city of Auara obtained its name from a prophecy which was communicated to the Nabataean king Obodas (about 93 B. C.) by his son Aretas. The latter was to seek a place which was white, or auara, as white is called in Syriac and Arabic. While occupied with this task, there appeared to him a white man on a white camel who thereafter suddenly disappeared. The searcher then perceived the
