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(5) that the western end is often distinguished by headings, one on each corner of the top slab; and (6) that they vary in size from 7 to 13 feet in length. He finds it difficult to avoid the conclusion that these dolmens were built originally as burial places. The covered chamber, elevated above the ground, and shut in by slabs, was the first beginning of a sarcophagus; and the body was laid facing the rising sun, with its head in the west. On the other hand Major Conder, who finds in Moab many rude stone monuments of a different kind, bids us remember that stones may be placed on end for more than one purpose. After examining seven hundred examples in Moab and Gilead, he has come to the conclusion that the sepulchral theory is often quite untenable, though we cannot deny that bodies were buried in such stone chambers sometimes. In many cases in Moab it was certain that no mound of earth had ever covered the stones; there was nothing but hard rock to be found, and sometimes the structure was not large enough to cover even the body of a child. We must turn to local superstitions in order fully to understand the use of trilithons and dolmens. Wild as are the legends, they preserve, in Conder's opinion, what was once the religion of the dolmen-building tribes. After making measured drawings of about a hundred and fifty dolmens in Moab, it seemed to him that the purpose of the builders was to produce a flat table-like surface, which they perhaps used as an altar. True that the dolmens are often more numerous in a confined area than we should expect altars to be, but we must not forget the story of Balaam and Balak, in which seven altars are built on the same mountain top, and again seven more on a neighbouring mountain top. Then, as to the absence of such monuments in Judea and Samaria, Conder suggests that they may very probably have once existed, and may have been purposely destroyed. Israel was commanded to "smash" the menhirs of the