Identifier: cradleofmankindl00wigrrich (find matches)
Title: The cradle of mankind; life in eastern Kurdistan
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Wigram, W. A. (William Ainger), 1872-1953 Wigram, Edgar Thomas Ainger, Sir, 1864-1935
Subjects: Kurds Kurdistan -- Description and travel
Publisher: London, A. & C. Black, ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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eads down into a little sunken quadrangle ;and the opposite side of this is occupied by the fagade ofthe temple—a plain square wall of ashlar, unpierced byany window, but having a small arched doorway placednear the corner on the left. Many of the stones in thisfagade have queer cabalistic patterns, rudely incised in thesurface so as to leave the device in low relief. The priestsinsist that these are all meaningless—mere bits of fancifulornament introduced by the Christian builders : * but ♦ The Yezidis all agree that their temple was built by Christian work-men, and the monks at Rabban Hormizd even went so far as to say thatit was once a Christian church. The former statement is possibly true ;but the latter highly improbable. Sheikh Adi must have been a holyplace long before the days either of Christians or Yezidis ; and thatChristian monks may have occupied it for a time in the days of the RomanEmpire is about the utmost that we can reasonably concede. WHERE SATANS SEAT IS 95
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96 THE TEMPLE OF THE DEVIL though it is Hkely enough that the original meaning ofthem is forgotten, it is manifestly absurd to pretend eitherthat they never had any, or that none is attributed to themnow. There are no Christian symbols among them ; andthe devices which recur most frequently represent a hatchetand a comb : * but the most ominous and the most prominentof all is the famous Snake, which is carved in relief on thedoor jamb, and which receives the peculiar attention ofbeing kept carefully blacked. Three or four Yezidi worshippers were making their roundof the quadrangle, prostrating themselves before certainniches and at several other recognized points. They de-voutly kissed the threshold of the door, and several of thestones in the walls (by no means always the carved ones),but we did not see any of them pay particular homage tothe snake. The priests were prepared for our visit, and were waitingat the door to receive us. They at once admitted us to thetemple, first begging

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