EXCAVATING OLD JERICHO
To-day I have walked through streets which were probably thronged when
Moses and the Israelites were wandering in the Wilderness, and have
tramped up and down staircases of clay built hundreds of years before
Christ was born. I have been in the ruins of old Jericho, the city Joshua
captured over three thousand years ago, now brought to light again by
modern excavations.
The place is only about fourteen miles from Jerusalem as the crow flies.
It lies on a little plateau, just under the mountain upon which it is
said our Lord was tempted by the devil and promised the world. It is
about three miles from the present town of Jericho, where I am stopping,
and within easy access of it.
The excavations at Jericho are the work of the Austrian Ministry of
Education. When they dug into what seemed only mounds of earth the
remains of a great fortified city were found. This city was undoubtedly
the Jericho of Canaan. It lies on a height surrounded by great walls some
of which are of stone. It has inner walls and a citadel and was flanked
with strong towers. The heart of the city is about twelve hundred feet
long and five hundred and twenty-five feet wide.
Many of the houses have been unearthed. In one of them, which is supposed
to have been built twenty-seven hundred years ago, there was found an
uncovered courtyard. The house seems to have been abandoned during a
fire, and for some reason or other is better preserved than most of the
others. It contained a red sandstone mill for grinding meal and water
vessels of various shapes. It had plates and jugs as well as lamps and
iron vessels with handles of deer horn.
In going through the ruins I crunched over bushels of pottery broken in
pieces. I saw water jars chipped and cracked. Each had a clay stopper as
big as a tomato with a hole through the centre. There are hundreds of
these stoppers lying on the ground. There are also stone mortars which
were used for grinding grain, and the remains of amphoræ, or huge jars
with necks and side handles, which were buried in the earth and used to
hold wine or grain. Most of the pottery is covered with a white glaze,
and some of it has vertical stripes of yellow painted upon it.
In the buildings the stone walls are constructed without angles, the
cracks being filled in with smaller stones. I am told that the work was
done with tools of bronze, and that some of it dates back before history.
The centre of the city is on an egg-shaped plateau just above the plain
of the Jordan.
It is difficult in wandering through these ruins of mud, brick, and rough
stone to realize that here was once a magnificent city. The Jericho of
Joshua’s day was not magnificent in our sense of the word, although it
covered a large area and had a great many people. There are no remnants
of great marble columns, and it is said that Jericho had disappeared long
before Christ came and that another city had taken its place situated in
this same Jordan Valley. The Jericho of Christ had a theatre, a circus,
and a university. It ranked with Jerusalem as one of the important places
in Palestine. Surrounded by irrigated gardens, it was known as the City
of Palms. It had grown up in Roman times, and Mark Antony thought so much
of it that he gave it as a present to Cleopatra, who collected quite
a revenue from the balsam groves near by, which furnished the gum of
commerce. Cotton was raised here at that time, and this region was then a
winter resort for Jerusalem. Herod the Great had palaces in Jericho. It
is said that he died here, although he was buried near Hebron. We know
that our Saviour came to Jericho, and here He healed the blind. He did
not stay in the city, but dwelt outside in the house of Zaccheus, who was
a collector of taxes for the Roman Government and therefore not popular
with the Jews. I refer to Zaccheus the dwarf. He was so short that he
feared he would not be able to see the Christ over the heads of the crowd
and, as you remember from the verse in the old primer:
Zaccheus he did climb a tree
His Lord to see.
The ruins I have been exploring represent not the city of Christ’s time,
but that of the day of Joshua and Rahab. You remember Rahab, the fair
lady, not so good as she should have been, who lived upon the walls of
Jericho, and who hid Joshua’s spies under the stalks of flax she had
stored up on her roof. She told them of the terror which prevailed in
the city over the expected attack of Joshua, and made them promise to
save her when Jericho was taken. The spies arranged with her that she
should tie some red thread to the bars of her window so that her house
might be spared. She then let them down by a cord through the window,
and they escaped and reported to Joshua. That was a good day’s work
for Rahab. The promise of the spies was carried out by the Israelites.
Moreover, she married one of the princes of Judah, a man named Salmon,
and thereby became one of the most famous women of the ancestral tree of
the Israelites. She was the mother of Boaz, the husband of Ruth, and King
David was one of her great-great-grandchildren. On the next step of her
genealogical ladder we find King Solomon, while away down the centuries
later comes the name of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and of the family of
Christ. In the first chapter of Matthew are given the generations from
Abraham to the birth of our Saviour, in which are mentioned the names of
only four women: Thamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, who had been the
wife of Uriah and became the mother of Solomon.
Right under old Jericho is the fountain of Elisha which the prophet made
sweet by throwing salt into it. It is not far from the spot where he was
mocked by the children who cried after him: “Go up, thou bald head.”
Thereupon, say the Scriptures, the prophet turned and “cursed them in the
name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the woods and
tare forty and two children of them.”
It is said that the place where Elijah was carried up in a whirlwind to
heaven was not far from Jericho, and on my way down here from Jerusalem I
saw the cave in which the prophet is supposed to have been fed by ravens.
It is in the Wady Kelt, a great dry rocky canyon with high walls. The
cave is half way up the side of the gorge and partly hidden by the
monastery which the Greeks have built there.
But let me tell you how I came down to Jericho. The way from Jerusalem is
through the wilderness of Judea, over one of the roughest and stoniest
lands of the world. There is but little green to be seen and the glare
is intense. The dust of the limestone and chalk road is so thick that
it gets into eyes, mouth, and nostrils. This road, which is the chief
highway from the Jordan to the Holy City, is travelled by thousands. The
traffic was even greater in the time of Christ, for the Jordan Valley was
then covered with irrigated farms and the rich men of Jerusalem had their
winter homes there.
I left Jerusalem in a carriage, going out through the Damascus Gate,
crossing the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and skirting the Garden of Gethsemane
at the foot of the Mount of Olives.
My carriage was an easy victoria drawn by three Arabian horses, and the
coachman was a Syrian Jehu with hair as red and a face as fair as my own.
I had a soldier with me to keep off the robbers. He was furnished by the
government of Jerusalem at a cost of three dollars and was under the
direct command of the sheik here at Jericho. This soldier carried a gun
and sword, and went ahead, nominally to clear the road. Every party I met
on the way, including a company of hunters from Jerusalem on their way
for game in the lands beyond the Jordan, had an escort of soldiers.
I stopped at Bethany to look at Lazarus’s tomb, and was reminded of how
Mark Twain said that he would “rather sleep in the tomb than in any other
house in the place.” The Bethany of to-day is a dirty, ragged village of
forty or fifty stone huts inhabited by perhaps three hundred people. The
houses stand on the side of a hill, rising one over the other. The people
are small farmers who cultivate patches of stony land and little orchards
of olives and figs. They have cows and make butter for Jerusalem. They
are all Mohammedans, and their children call out for _baksheesh_.
Entering the town, I took a look at the tomb. It is a sort of cavern cut
out of limestone and entered by steep steps. It belongs to the Franciscan
monks, who often say mass there.
The house of Mary and Martha, where Christ stopped, is said to have
been in an inclosure now full of brambles and wild cactus. There is no
building left, although the guides point out a pile of stones which they
say was once a part of the wall.
On the way to Bethany I was shown the site of the fig tree which was
cursed by the Saviour and thereafter never bore fruit. There are many
fig trees about, and orchards of them are to be found in most parts of
the Holy Land. It was on the road to Bethany that Christ is said to have
mounted the colt which carried him on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem
on Palm Sunday.
Shortly after I left Bethany I saw a curious sight by the roadside. This
was a man leaning backward over a great gray boulder and rubbing himself
violently upon it. There were some stones on top of the rock and I
observed that the man added another stone to the pile and that he kissed
the rock as he left. I asked my guide the secret of his actions. He
replied: “That stone is called the Father of Rocks, and it is said to be
a sure cure for backache. The people here think that any one so afflicted
will be cured if he can rub his sore back against it.”
[Illustration: Tradition says that by a miracle the prophet Elisha
purified the waters of this fountain. Excavations on the hillside above
have uncovered the foundations of the old city walls of Jericho, over
which Rahab let down the two spies of Joshua]
[Illustration: At the Tomb of Lazarus there are always natives waiting to
be photographed—for _backsheesh_]
[Illustration: His back hurts him, and he is rubbing it against the
healing stone on the way to Jordan, believing this will work a cure]
A little farther on I stopped for a bottle of ginger pop and a cracker
at the Good Samaritan Inn, which stands on the traditional site where
lay the man who fell among thieves when the priest and the Levite passed
him by on the other side. It is right on the road about half way between
Jerusalem and Jericho. There was a crowd in the inn while I waited, among
them a Syrian peasant who had been robbed by a party of Bedouins. The man
was covered with wounds, and was crying and sobbing as he told how he had
been attacked and robbed of the money which he had just received from the
sale of some sheep. Much of this country is unsafe, and no one who has
money dares travel alone. All the way to the Jordan I met little caravans
on their way to Jerusalem. In every party there were some men with guns
on their backs. The guns were often old-fashioned flintlock muskets. I
passed some donkey trains taking bags of charcoal from beyond the Jordan,
and a caravan of camels each of which bore two great bags of wheat slung
over his back. The drivers of both donkeys and camels were armed. They
had come from the land of Moab, and were now going up through Judea.
Before starting on my way to the Jordan I spent several hours on the
Mount of Olives. This mountain is two hundred feet higher than the hills
upon which Jerusalem stands. It is directly opposite the city, being
separated from it by the Valley of Jehoshaphat or Kedron, and it can be
easily reached. There are good roads up the Mount of Olives, and one can
now ride to most of the holy places.
With the prosperity which is coming to Palestine the Mount of Olives is
rapidly changing. Its slopes are cultivated, the rocks are being picked
up and laid in stone fences, and the cleared spots planted to crops and
to orchards. There were many olive orchards on this mount in the days
of the Saviour, who came here frequently to get away from the crowds of
the city. The soil seems fertile, and the crops upon the mountain grow
luxuriantly. There are green patches of wheat, barley, and oats, while
here and there are carob trees, with pods like those which furnished the
food for the prodigal son when he ate with the swine.
The Mount of Olives is now spotted with churches and chapels. It has
monasteries and convents, a great Russian church, and several hospices,
including the huge sanitarium built in honour of Augusta, Empress of
Germany. One of the most interesting of these institutions is a Carmelite
nunnery, which has been erected over the spot where tradition says Christ
taught the Lord’s Prayer to His disciples. The church here is called “The
Church of the Lord’s Prayer,” and has in its court tablets inscribed
with the prayer in thirty-two different languages. I visited the chapel
of the nunnery, where prayers go up every day and night and every hour
of the day all the year through. The nuns so divide their time that one
is always praying. They kneel behind a screen and are not to be seen by
visitors. This church is one of the quietest and most solemn of all in
the Holy Land. After the noisy scenes which take place about the Holy
Sepulchre it is a relief.
The Carmelite nuns are devout. They do not go out of the nunnery except
it be absolutely necessary. Even when they walk in its garden they wear
such heavy veils that they have to hold them out from their faces to
see where they are going. My guide tells me that each nun digs her own
grave, and that when she is about to die she is dressed in her shroud and
carried into the church in order that she may pass away there.
In the floor of the Chapel of the Ascension near the nunnery is a spot
which looks like a footprint, and is said to be the place where the foot
of the Saviour rested before He ascended to heaven. The chapel belongs
to the Mohammedans and is let out at times to the Christians. But to me
the Garden of Gethsemane was more interesting. It lies at the foot of the
Mount of Olives, just off the Jericho road. It is surrounded by a wall
of yellow limestone twelve feet high and about four feet thick. On the
outside of it, in the shade of the wall, sat a score of lepers who held
out their hands for alms as we passed. They were dirty and filthy and
their disease had made them repulsive sights. Some had no fingers, some
no noses, and one held out a tin can tied to the stump of her wrist from
which the hand had dropped off.
The garden goes up the side of the mountain. It is almost square and does
not cover two acres. It is cut up into flower beds bordered by inverted
beer and wine bottles. There are eight old olive trees, pansies of all
shades of the rainbow, and many beautiful flowers, as well as dark
cypress trees. The garden belongs to the Franciscan monks who opened the
gate at our knock. The gate is a mere hole in the wall, so low that all
who enter must stoop. It is closed by an iron door, with a round black
bar of iron, ten inches long, as a knocker.
Just back of the entrance to the garden is a ledge of limestone where
the disciples are said to have slept during the night of the agony, and
perhaps one hundred feet farther away stands a column which tradition
says marks the spot where Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss. Both of
these places have been worn smooth by the lips of thousands of pilgrims.
[Illustration: The source of the Jordan at Banias is one of the largest
springs in the world. The Jordan is rightly named the “down-comer,” for
in its winding course of two hundred and forty miles it drops from the
mountains to the Dead Sea, nearly thirteen hundred feet below sea-level]
[Illustration: We need an escort for the trip over the barren wastes to
the River Jordan, for Bedouin brigands still occasionally relieve the
unwary tourist of his valuables]