Haifa, Feb. 2.—I narrated in my last letter the disappointment I
experienced when, after making a pilgrimage to the north end of the Lake
of Tiberias for the express purpose of seeing some stones covered with
inscriptions and pictorial representations, said to be in the possession
of the agent of a rich Arab proprietor, I found their owner gone and the
relics locked up in a building of which he had taken the key, and all
ingress to which was impossible. The Bedouin sheik whom I had picked up
as a guide at a neighboring encampment, seeing my chagrin, comforted me
by the assurance that if I would only follow him he would take me to a
place where I could find others which were quite as good. I mounted my
horse, therefore, in somewhat better spirits, as from his description of
the locality I knew it must have escaped the attention of all former
travellers, and consoled myself by the reflection that a discovery of
some importance might still be in store for me.
Our way took us due north across the fertile plain of the Butêha, an
alluvial expanse about two miles in length by one in breadth, formed by
the detritus which, in the course of ages, has been washed down the
Jordan, and the winter torrents which rush into the plain down the wadys
that descend from the elevated plateau of Jaulan.
The Butêha is not unlike the plain of Genesareth. Both are well watered
and extremely fertile. Butêha has the largest and most prominent brooks,
Genesareth the most numerous and abundant springs. The old traveller,
Burckhardt, says that the Arabs of the Butêha have the earliest
cucumbers and melons in all this region. It was on this plain, at the
foot of the hill or “tell” we were now approaching, that Josephus fought
the Romans under Sylla, concerning which battle he says: “I would have
performed great things that day if a certain fate had not been my
hinderance, for the horse on which I rode and upon whose back I fought
fell into a quagmire and threw me to the ground, and I was bruised on my
wrist and was carried into a certain village called Cuphernome or
Capernaum.”
The tell which rises from this plain, about a mile and a half from the
lake, is thickly strewn with ruins, consisting of hewn blocks of black
basalt, with which, in the ancient times, all the houses in this region
were constructed; but as yet no traces of any large building have been
discovered. It has, indeed, been very rarely visited, but it is
considered by many to be the site of Bethsaida-Julias and the scene of
the miracle of the loaves and fishes. At present all we know for certain
is that one of the Bethsaidas was somewhere in the Butêha; that Josephus
in his descriptions advanced it to the dignity of a city, both by reason
of the number of inhabitants it contained and its other grandeur; and
that inasmuch as the plain of the Butêha contains many heaps of ruins,
none of any very great extent, any of them may be Bethsaida, while if it
were a large city in our modern acceptation of the term, the whole plain
would not be large enough to contain it.
Indeed, one is much struck in exploring the ruins of the country by the
limited areas which they cover. I am afraid to say how many sites of
ruined towns I have visited in Palestine, certainly not less than forty;
and I think one could crowd them all into the area occupied by the ruins
of one large ancient Egyptian city—Arsinoë in the Fayoum, for instance;
but then the ruins of an Egyptian city are composed mainly of mounds of
potsherds, while these consist of large blocks of building stone, either
limestone or basalt, measuring generally two feet or two feet six one
way, and a foot or eighteen inches the other. Then they are usually
comparatively near together; all around the Lake of Tiberias, and in the
country in its vicinity, they are generally not more than from one to
three miles apart; so that this section of country must have been very
thickly peopled. The ruins of Et-Tell are now built over by the Arabs,
who live in a squalid village among the basalt blocks which formed the
mansions inhabited by the more highly civilized race which occupied the
country in the days when all this region was the favourite haunt of
Christ and his disciples.
Leaving Et-Tell on our left, we followed the east bank of the Jordan for
more than a mile. This river is here very rapid, and, splitting into
numerous streams, whirls past the small islets they form. It is the very
ideal of a trout stream, on which on some more propitious occasion I
propose to cast a fly. Meantime, even had I been provided with the
requisite tackle, I should have been obliged to forego the temptation.
It was on the steep rise of a hill, about a hundred yards from the
river, that my guide suddenly stopped. Here was a small collection of
Arab hovels, recently constructed, and it was in their search for stone,
last summer, that the natives had for the first time uncovered the ruin
which now met my delighted gaze.
I found myself in the presence of a building the character of which I
had yet to determine, the walls of which were still standing to a height
of eight feet. The area they enclosed was thickly strewn with
building-stones, fragments of columns, pedestals, capitals, and
cornices. Two at least of the columns were _in situ_, while the bases of
others were too much concealed by piles of stone to enable me to
determine their original positions. My first impression, from the
character of the architecture which was strewn about, was that this was
formerly a Roman temple; but a further and more careful examination
convinced me that it had originally been a Jewish synagogue, which at a
later period had been converted to another use; probably it had been
appropriated by the Byzantines as a basilica, or Christian church. This
was the more probable, as the existing walls had evidently been built
upon the foundations of a former structure. The massive stones were set
in mortar, which is not the case with the synagogues hitherto
discovered; and I should doubtless have been completely at fault in
classing this building had my attention not been already directed to the
remains of the synagogues brought to light recently by the exertions of
the Palestine Exploration Fund.
I was now fortunately in a position to compare the dimensions,
ground-plan, and architectural fragments which were strewn about, with
those which distinguish the synagogues already discovered, in regard to
whose original character there can be no doubt, as the Hebrew
inscriptions and sacred Jewish symbols carved on the lintels prove it.
The building measured forty-five feet by thirty-three, which is exactly
the measurement of the small synagogue at Kefr-Birim. The columns were
exactly of the same diameter. The floor was depressed, and reached by a
descent of two steps, which were carried around the building in benches
or seats each a foot high, the face of the upper one ornamented by a
thin scroll of floral tracery. These features occur in the synagogue at
Irbid. There was a single large stone cut into the shape of an arch,
which had evidently been placed on the lintel of the principal entrance,
like the one which stands to this day over the doorway of the great
synagogue at Kefr-Birim. The niches, with the great scallop-shell
pattern which distinguishes them, almost exactly resemble those of the
synagogue of Kerazeh or Chorazin; while the cornice, which was extremely
florid, and not unlike what in modern parlance is called “the
egg-and-dart pattern,” though differing in some respects from the
cornices hitherto observed, was evidently of the same school of design.
The capitals were two feet three inches high, and Corinthian, in the
same style and of the same dimensions as those of the small synagogue of
Kefr-Birim, and there was the upper fragment of two semi-attached fluted
columns, with Doric capitals, the ditto of which is to be found at
Irbid. The two columns in situ exactly answer in position those of
several of the synagogues, and though the position of the door, which
was in the centre of the western wall, was somewhat unusual, this was
accounted for by the fact that the building had been excavated from the
hillside, so that the top of the east wall, nine feet of which was still
standing, was level with the surface of the slope of the hill.
The only convenient entrance was in the wall of the side immediately
opposite to it. The name of this most interesting locality was
ed-Dikkeh, a spot hitherto unvisited by any traveller. Indeed, if it had
been visited, it would have been passed unnoticed, for its antiquarian
treasures have only been revealed for the first time a few months ago.
The word ed-Dikkeh means “platform,” a name, considering its position,
not inappropriate; but I have not been able to identify it with any
Biblical site.
The area of ruins apart from those of the synagogue itself was not very
large, but the situation was highly picturesque. Half a mile to the
north of where we stood the Jordan forces its way through a gorge which
I hope some day to explore, while immediately below us it rushed between
numerous small islets. Opposite the hills swelled gently back from its
western bank, behind us they rose more abruptly to the high table-land
of Jaulan, while to the southward stretched the plain of Butêha, with
the Lake of Tiberias in the distance.
Meantime the few wild-looking natives who inhabit this remote locality
clustered around me, as they watched me measuring and sketching, with no
little suspicion and alarm. “See,” said one to another, “our country is
being taken from us.” My request for old coins only frightened them the
more. They vehemently protested that not one had been found, an
assertion which, under the circumstances, I felt sure was untrue; nor
did the most gentle and reassuring language, with tenders of
backshish—which was nevertheless greedily accepted—tend to allay their
fears. I have forgotten to mention what was perhaps the most interesting
object of all, and this was the carved figure of a winged female waving
what seemed to be a sheaf in one hand, while her legs were doubled
backward in a most uncomfortable and ungraceful position. It was on an
isolated slab about six inches thick, and two feet one way by eighteen
inches the other.
The area of the hillside all around was strewn with the blocks of
building-stone of which the town had been built. It had apparently not
been a very large place, but as the villagers will probably continue
their excavations for their own purposes next summer, it is not at all
unlikely that they may bring some more interesting remains to light. I
earnestly impressed upon them the necessity of preserving these,
promising another visit next year, when I would reward them in
proportion to the carvings, coins, or other antiquities they could
provide for me; but they listened to my exhortation with such a stupid
and suspicions expression of countenance that I did not derive much
encouragement from their reluctant consent.