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THE NORTHERN ḤEǦÂZ
crumbled and vanished. But the walls of several tombs had received a fairly thick coating of firm mortar, and in about five tombs I came upon insignificant traces of Nabataean inscriptions written in black upon this coating of roughcast.
Fig. 42—The robber Slîmân. Even of these, however, not a single letter had been completely preserved. After a vain search I photographed several tombs and then went on with Tûmân and Sâlem to the ridge of al-Mṣalla, where we sketched the surrounding district. It was not easy to reach this ridge, as its sides had broken away at a height of about ten meters, so we were compelled to make a detour of more than two kilometers in order to ascend it from the north. On the ridge we found about fifty
