Word: catacomb
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...last of the invaders were finally routed from the mosque's catacomb-like basement last week, but not before the incident had shaken the House of Saud to its sandy foundations. Most authorities are now convinced that the group, which numbered between 200 and 300, was trained and armed in Marxist South Yemen, and that the tab for the venture was picked up by Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi. The Saudis also claimed that the young leader of the group, Mohammed al-Quraishi, a theology student who called himself the Muslim Mahdi (Messiah), had been killed in the fighting...
...mainly they kept returning because Celtics basketball is an organized religion, with 13 green-and-white icons hanging from the Garden roof and a list of saints, identified only by the kelly-green number that they once wore, dangling from the skylights. And in this dimlylit, age-crusted catacomb, the faithful wait for the NCAA to part with a titanic saviour, someone with arms long enough and stats big enough to rescue the team. After all, except for the last few years the Celtics have always been basketball's chosen people: you can forgive their fans for hoping...
Peering through the lace curtains at the elegant hallway inside, I knock timidly at the glass door. I hope only that my brother will be the only person awake in the house and that all of the dogs are safely locked away in some distant catacomb. On both points I am to be disappointed. After a few taps I hear a single distant barker, soon joined by another and then another. Suddenly I see that the whole hallway is a swelling mess of howling, leaping, nadly salivating dogs. All of them seem to be at least three feet tall...
Cleared Rubble. Working by the light of gas lamps, Vatican laborers have finally cleared the centuries' accumulation of rubble from blocked passages and dusted off the marble commemorative stones. In the course of this work, they have discovered elaborate decorations in the catacomb located on the Via Appia Pignatelli, off the Appian Way south of the city. A burial place for rich Roman Jews, the catacomb has a small mosaic-paved courtyard aboveground, leading downward to a main passageway six feet wide, branching off into narrower tunnels. One leads to a pair of burial vaults covered with frescoes, their...
...entrance to the second catacomb is hidden behind a mass of shrubbery on the Villa Torlonia, a 13-acre estate in the center of Rome that was once the residence of Mussolini. Slippery, moss-covered steps lead into an airy passageway lined with crude burial slots -probably designed for poorer Jews -about 1 ft. deep, 2 ft. wide and varying in length for children and adults. Both catacombs feature memorial stones carved with Greek or Latin inscriptions (Hebrew was apparently reserved for religious rites). Reads one: "Here lies Pe-gaianos, the scribe and lover of the Law." Both catacombs...