24.
Hence they turned aside to that sycamore which is now called Matarea, 1 and the Lord Jesus brought forth in Matarea a fountain in which the Lady Mary washed His shirt. And from the sweat of the Lord Jesus which she sprinkled there, balsam was produced in that region.
-
Matarea, or Matariyeh, the site of Heliopolis or On, is a little way to the N.E. of Cairo. Ismail Pasha is said to have presented, on his visit to the Paris Exhibition of 1867, the tree and the ground surrounding it to the Empress of the French. For some interesting particulars about the tree, see a paragraph, by B.H.C. (i.e., Mr. B. Harris Cowper, who has translated the Apocryphal Gospels), in the Leisure Hour for 2d November, 1867. ↩
