oman cross is a crucifix.

But these are deeper matters; I am only trying to suggest a sort
of silhouette of the crowd like the similar silhouette of the city,
a profile or outline of the heads and hats, like the profile of
the towers and spires. The tower that makes the Greek priest look
like a walking catafalque is by no means alone among the horns thus
fantastically exalted. There is the peaked hood of the Armenian priest,
for instance; the stately survival of that strange Monophysite
heresy which perpetuated itself in pomp and pride mainly through
the sublime accident of the Crusades. That black cone also rises
above the crowd with something of the immemorial majesty of a pyramid;
and rightly so, for it is typical of the prehistoric poetry
by which these places live that some say it is a surviving memory
of Ararat and the Ark.

Again the high white headgear of the Bethlehem women,
or to speak more strictly of the Bethlehem wives, has already
been noted in another connection; but it is well to remark it
again among the colours of the crowd, because this at least has
a significance essential to all criticism of such a crowd.
Most travellers from the West regard such an Eastern city far too
much as a Moslem city, like the lady whom Mr. Maurice Baring met who
travelled all over Russia, and thought all the churches were mosques.
But in truth it is very hard to generalise about Jerusalem, precisely
because it contains everything, and its contrasts are real contrasts.
And anybody who doubts that its Christianity is Christian, a thing
fighting for our own culture and morals on the borders of Asia,
need only consider the concrete fact of these women of Bethlehem
and their costume. There is no need to sneer in any unsympathetic
fashion at all the domestic institutions of Islam; the sexes are
never quite so stupid as some feminists represent; and I dare say
a woman often has her own way in a harem as well as in a household.
But the broad difference does remain. And if there be one thing,
I think, that can safely be said about all Asia and all oriental tribes,
it is this; that if a married woman wears any distinctive mark,
it is always meant to prevent her from receiving the admiration or even
the notice of strange men. Often it is only made to disguise her;
sometimes it is made to disfigure her. It may be the masking
of the face as among the Moslems; it may be the shaving of the head
as among the Jews; it may, I beli