Haifa, August 10.—There is probably no city in the dominions of the
sultan which has undergone more change during the last few years than
Jerusalem, and as any change which implies progress, implies also the
increase of foreign influence, and is always viewed with suspicion by
the Porte, the march of events in Palestine is watched by Turkish
statesmen with a jealousy which finds its expression in a persistent
effort to oppose it. As, however, the basis of the movement to which
Jerusalem owes its increase during recent years is a religious one, and
is founded upon a sentiment which proverbially thrives by opposition,
all efforts to retard the influx of population and capital into the Holy
City have proved unavailing. Owing to increased facilities of travel,
the pilgrimages both of the Greek and Latin churches have been more
numerous. A new feature is that some of the richer pilgrims from time to
time establish themselves here. This is especially the case with the
Russian members of the Greek Church. The influx of Jews has also been
increasing to a remarkable extent. The Protestant sects are constantly
enlarging the field of their operations, and new charitable and
educational establishments are springing up from year to year. An
American society of Second Adventists has been resident here for some
years, while isolated religious cranks find in the Holy City an
appropriate dwelling-place, for reasons known only to themselves.
The result of all this is that whereas when I was last here, six years
ago, only a very few houses had been built on the Jaffa road outside the
walls of the town, now there is an extensive and constantly increasing
Frank suburb. The price of land has risen fifty per cent., and is still
constantly rising. New hotels and shops have been opened to meet the
increasing demand. Within the last twenty years the population of the
Holy City has certainly doubled, the increase consisting entirely of
Jews and Christians. Apart from its sacred associations the city has no
attractions as a residence of any kind, but quite the reverse. This fact
possesses a highly important political significance, because it is
evident that in the degree in which the vested interests of rival sects
and religions accumulate upon this spot it is destined some day to
become a bone of contention between them. It is probably the only city
in the world where the same amount of capital and enterprise is expended
on objects which are in no sense remunerative, while in proportion to
its size there is none where a larger sum is annually given away, either
in the form of charitable or religious donations. Nothing strikes one
more than the proportion of buildings having some sort of public
character or other to private dwellings, and these buildings are
constantly increasing. This year the estimated expenditure of the Greek
and Latin churches will be over $600,000 for building purposes alone.
The number of Russian pilgrims who visit Jerusalem annually is about
five thousand, and it is constantly increasing. They are all
accommodated in the extensive premises belonging to the Russian
government, in the centre of which the Russian consulate is situated,
and which forms a sort of Russian suburb to the Holy City. Here one
feels transported for the time to the dominions of the czar, as he hears
on all sides the Slav tongue, and finds himself jostled by men and women
in the peasant costume of their own country, chaffering over wares which
the more enterprising of their number have imported to sell to their own
country people, while they squat in stalls and booths which they have
roughly extemporized for the purpose.
When you consider the amount of foreign money which is annually expended
in Jerusalem by these hosts of pilgrims—those of the Latin Church,
however, do not equal in number those of the Greek—by the tourists and
general influx of sightseers who flock here during Easter week, and by
the churches and societies in building operations, you cannot wonder
that many persons have of late years become wealthy, and that many
natives of Syria and the Levant are attracted to the town in the hope of
becoming so. The tide having thus set in, it goes on increasing, and the
rivalry of the Latin and Greek churches imparts, as it were, a stimulus
to the whole jumble of creeds and nationalities which cluster round the
sacred shrines.
Among the latest and most interesting arrivals are a number of Jews from
Yemen. Hitherto these little-known people had only been heard of, or at
most seen, by one or two enterprising travellers who have penetrated
from Aden into the southern deserts of Arabia Felix. I was told that
they consider themselves as belonging to the tribe of Dan. They have
lately arrived as refugees in Jerusalem from Yemen, where they have
suffered great misery during the recent wars between the Arab tribes
which inhabit that province and the Turkish troops. Finding themselves
ultimately reduced to starvation by the plunder of which they were the
victims from both sides, they determined to seek shelter in the Holy
City, where they arrived in rags in a starving and destitute condition.
They have since been provided for by subscriptions among their
co-religionists raised in Europe. I met some of them one afternoon, down
at the Place of Wailing, and was much struck by the mild and gentle
expression of their countenances. They are reputed to be well versed in
their own religious lore, and to be devout without being hypocritical,
which is more than can be said for Palestinian Jews generally. Although
they were themselves engaged in sedentary and commercial pursuits in
Sana and other towns in the fertile oases of southern Arabia, they
report that among the nomads of these deserts are wandering tribes in no
wise, so far as their external appearance goes, to be distinguished from
Arabs, but who are nevertheless purely Jewish.
I also met while in Jerusalem a black Jew from Cochin in India, where
Jews have been established from time immemorial, but he seemed somewhat
vague as to his ancestry.
Among all these different nationalities and sects, which as a rule hold
each other in holy abhorrence, it is singular that they all have one
view in common, or rather, perhaps, it should be said that they all seem
to labour under one impression, or presentiment, and that is that before
very long the Holy City will undergo a change of some sort. The nature
of this change naturally takes the form peculiar to the national or
religious tendency of thought. With the Russians and French it is
reduced to a very simple political expression, which may be summed up in
the word annexation. This idea is more firmly fixed among the Russians
than the French. Indeed, the Holy City plays a greater part in the Greek
religion than it does in the Latin, and the affections of the orthodox
are centred on these shrines to a degree unknown among Christians of any
other denomination. There is hardly a village in Russia in which there
is not to be found a bottle of Jordan water, and the devotional
instincts of the peasantry, which are very strong, are directed by the
Church, which is in Russia synonymous with the government, upon the holy
places in Palestine, as shrines which have a spiritual value not
recognized by other churches to the same extent, and which, therefore,
when the day comes, should entitle it to their temporal and territorial
proprietorship. In other words, there is not a Russian pilgrim who
visits Jerusalem who does not hope that he may live to see the day when
it will become a Russian city, and who does not long for the call to a
holy war, the object of which should be the exclusive possession by
Russia of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and of the city in which it
stands.^[5]
In France there is no such religious enthusiasm, except with a section
of society, and, although the conquest of Syria and Palestine enters
into the programme of the government, and their religious protectorate
over the Latin Church and its interests gives them a strong point of
departure, it is weakened by the fact that the government is professedly
anti-Catholic, and that, even were it not so, the sentiment for the holy
places is not so strong among the Latins as among the Greeks. With the
Protestants there is a large class who base their belief in an
immediately pending alteration in the political conditions under which
Jerusalem now exists, upon their interpretation of prophecy. They
profess to find it clearly indicated in Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelations,
and elsewhere in the Bible, that the protectorate of Palestine is to be
vested in England. Among the Jews there are many also, though they
interpret the prophetic writings in a totally different sense, who
believe that the fulfilment of the prophecy which is to restore to them
their ancient country, with its sacred city, is at hand, and all Moslem
tradition points to the present time as one critical to the fortunes of
Islam, with which the fate of Jerusalem, which is to them also a holy
city, is inextricably interwoven.
Whether we have any sympathy with any of these views or not, the mere
fact that so many nations and races of diverse religions, from one point
of view or another, centre their political and religious aspirations
upon this spot, makes it the most interesting city upon the earth's
surface, because there is none other which, when its possession comes to
be disputed, will excite such powerful or such conflicting ambitions,
superstitions, and passions. These considerations become doubly
interesting when we connect them with the events which are now
transpiring in the East.
One day while I was in Jerusalem the huge bell which I had seen dragged
by Russian pilgrims along the road from Jaffa arrived. It was destined
for a new Russian church which has lately been built upon the Mount of
Olives. Anxious to witness the ceremony of its reception, I set out for
the Mount and reached the summit just in time to see the bronze monster,
which I calculated weighed about eight tons, arrive at its destination.
A large crowd of Russian men and women, headed by two priests of the
Greek Church in full canonicals, and chanting sacred songs, were
dragging it to the platform from which it was to be finally elevated
into the belfry prepared for it. When, after much pulling and hauling,
it was at last placed upon the platform, a solemn religious service took
place. Every individual man and woman in the crowd pressed forward to
kiss the uplifted crucifix which the priest presented for their
adoration, crossing and prostrating themselves, and crowding also around
the bell to kiss the various sacred groups of figures represented upon
it in _basso-rilievo_. At last, after a final melodious chant in which
all joined with great earnestness, the officiating priest gave the
signal for three cheers, which was responded to with heartiness, and the
ceremony was over.
I now went to examine the interior of the new church which it was
intended to decorate, and was glad to find that the accident which had
led me to come here to witness the arrival of the bell was the means of
introducing me to a new and interesting discovery of recent date. The
Russians, in excavating for the foundations of their new church, came
upon the pavement and other remains of an ancient building, which they
have been careful to preserve. Many of the most interesting objects
found are placed in a cabinet. In the hall of the priest's house
adjoining the church is a beautiful tessellated pavement, representing
animals, fish, apples, and geometrical patterns, with an inscription in
Armenian formed of colored tesseræ. East of the gate into the garden,
and close to the house, is a rock-cut chamber, with a vault of modern
masonry. It measures about twenty-four feet by fourteen, and contains
sixteen sarcophagi, arranged in groups of four, with a passage between.
These were closed by slabs, and on three inscriptions were dimly
discernible. North of this were the foundations of a building,
apparently a chapel, with a tessellated floor and a row of piers about
two feet square. Near by is a cave with a modern vaulted chamber, and an
iron door which has apparently been placed there to protect a long
inscription in old Armenian characters, formed also of colored tesseræ,
but I have no means of knowing what it signifies. Beneath the floor of
the house are said to be other tombs, which can be reached through a
masonry trap-door. It is not unlikely that all these remains belong to
an Armenian mediæval monastery. The site, which has recently been
acquired by the Russians, is some hundreds of yards distant from the
highest part of Olivet, where the Latin chapel stands, usually visited
by tourists who go there to see Christ's footprint. It commands a
magnificent view, and the new Russian edifice will make an important
addition to their rapidly growing collection of sacred buildings.
Nothing is more aggravating to the members of either the Greek or Latin
churches than to find the rival sect in solitary possession of a holy
place. It is the immediate signal for the purchase of another site as
near as possible to the one already occupied, and the erection upon it
of an opposition building. No greater piece of luck can befall the owner
of a piece of land than to stumble upon remains which show that it had
been in the occupation of the early Christians. He can then name his own
price, and, like the fortunate proprietor of the land on which St.
Stephen's Church is now about to be built by the French, may get a
thousand napoleons for what he had a very short while before only paid
fifty.
Before bidding adieu to Jerusalem, it may be interesting to my readers
that I should notice some of the more important discoveries that have
been made there within the last year or two, and which are not,
therefore, to be found in any guide-book. For many of the details I am
indebted to the Palestine Exploration Fund publications. Among these
have been many tombs, some of them of much interest, but none equal to
that to which I have already alluded, as being the most likely of any
which have yet been discovered, to be the tomb of Christ. I have given
at length the reasons in a former letter in support of this presumption.
It is approached by a court cut in the rock seven feet square, and two
stones in this are so placed as to give the idea that they may have held
in place a rolling stone before the door. On the right is a side
entrance leading into a chamber with a single loculus, and thence into a
cave eight feet by ten. If, instead of turning into this, we go straight
on, we descend two steps into a chamber six feet by nine; from either
side wall, and in the back wall of this chamber, are three low passages;
they lead into three other small chambers, each about seven feet long by
six wide, and on each side of each are stone benches on which bodies
could be placed, with a narrow passage between them; so that, in fact,
the whole tomb could contain six bodies. Whether it be the real Holy
Sepulchre or not, it is interesting from the fact that it is the only
Jewish tomb that has ever been found so close to the ramparts of the
modern city on the north, and to the spot which may, with comparative
certainty, be identified with Calvary. It stands not very far distant
from a piece of land which a man bought a year or so ago for fifty
napoleons. On beginning to excavate for the foundations of his house he
came upon some tessellated pavement, carvings, and all the evidences of
remains of some importance. He lost no time in making his discovery
known, and, finding that it stood upon what must have been the site of
the early Christian Church of St. Stephen, to commemorate the spot of
his martyrdom, the Roman Catholics gave the man a thousand napoleons for
his land, and have laid bare the remains with a view to building another
church over them. I examined them with some interest, as it was such a
recent discovery, though the historical interest only dates back to the
year A.D. 460, when it was built by the Empress Eudoxia. The crusaders
found it in ruins, since which time it had become buried, and its site
lost. The whole plan of the church can now be distinctly traced, its
pavements in many places remaining perfect, with the foundations of its
side walls, fragments of columns, etc. The two most interesting features
in connection with it, however, are a slab of fine limestone on which
are the figures of the twelve apostles, each surrounded by a sort of
canopy. They stand six each side of a central figure of a throned
Christ. The figures are rather stiffly drawn and have long robes;
although they were very distinct when first discovered, instead of
moving the slab under shelter, it has been left exposed to the storms of
winter; the result is that the outlines, which were in colour, can now
scarcely be distinguished, and another year will completely efface them;
besides this there is an inscription which has so far puzzled experts,
though it is in Greek characters, but a good deal of it is effaced.
There are also tombs in the vicinity, but though rock-cut they are
evidently Christian.
Recent excavations within the city have also exposed a vast area,
depressed considerably below the present level of the surface, which
once formed the extensive establishment of the Knights Hospitallers, or
Knights of St. John. It was given some time ago by the Turkish
government to the Crown-Prince of Germany; since then the whole place
has been cleared out with a view to its restoration on a grand scale,
and it will doubtless form, when completed, one of the finest
architectural monuments of modern date in Jerusalem. Several very deep
and finely-vaulted cisterns, with arches fifty feet high, have been
brought to light, besides cloisters, corridors, and vaulted chambers
hitherto unknown. Some idea of the scale of the establishment which
these celebrated knights possessed in Jerusalem may be gathered from the
character and extent of the ruins, which cover an area of one hundred
and seventy square yards, of which only half, unfortunately, belongs to
the German government.
But the latest discovery, which has excited the greatest interest, is
that of the inscription in the tunnel which connects the Virgin's Fount
with the Pool of Siloam. The exploration of this tunnel, which is about
six hundred yards long, involved great danger and difficulty. Colonel,
now Sir Charles Warren, gives a most graphic picture of the horrors of
his experience. For some distance the passage was only one foot four
inches high, and as there was one foot of water, the explorers, who were
crawling on their stomachs, naked, were submerged to their chins, having
only four inches of breathing-room, with the additional danger of being
drowned by the rising of the waters, which does not take place
regularly. Often their mouths were under water, and a breath of air
could only be obtained by twisting their faces up. To keep a light
burning, to take measurements, and make observations under these
circumstances was a work of no little difficulty; and yet, after
crawling through mud and water for four hours, the honour of finding the
inscription was reserved for a naked urchin of the town, who, some years
after, announced he had seen writing on the wall. Whereupon Professor
Sayce, and Herr Schick, and Doctor Guthe plunge naked into the muddy
tunnel with acid solutions, and blotting-paper, and everything necessary
to make squeezes, and emerge shivering and triumphant with the most
interesting Hebrew inscription that has ever been found in Palestine,
about which pamphlets and articles have been written, and scholars have
wrangled, but which is now admitted to be as old as the time of Solomon,
and it is agreed on all hands that the interpretation thereof is as
follows:
“Behold the excavation. Now this is the history of the Tunnel. While the
excavators were still lifting up the Pick towards each other, and while
there were yet three cubits to be broken through, the voice of one
called to his neighbour, for there was an excess in the rock on the
right. They rose up. They struck on the west of the excavation. They
struck, each to meet the other, pick to pick. And there flowed the
waters from their outlet to the Pool, for a thousand two hundred cubits,
and . . . of a cubit was the height of the rock over the heads of the
excavators.” From this it will appear that there were two
working-parties, working from opposite ends, and the indefatigable
explorers have actually discovered the spot where the “excess” in the
rock occurred and where they probably met. Most people who have not got
Palestine exploration on the brain will, however, be content to take
their word for it without going to see for themselves. Still it cannot
be denied that an engineering work, executed in the time of Solomon, and
an inscription describing it, is of the greatest interest. The date of
the inscription can be determined with tolerable accuracy by a
comparison of the letters with those on the Moabite stone and other of
the most ancient inscriptions known.
[5] RUSSIA IN PALESTINE.—The St. Petersburg correspondent of the _Daily
News_ says, “In Palestine, the orthodox religion and Russian influence
seem to be increasing. Some days ago ‘The Orthodox Palestine Society’
celebrated its anniversary. It was made known on this occasion that the
society—which is protected by the government, and which has one of the
emperor's uncles, the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievitch, as
president—numbers already six hundred and fifteen members, and that its
reserve capital amounts to about 90,000 roubles. The society has
constructed a church at Nazareth, is constructing a church at Mudshile,
and has bought a piece of ground at Jerusalem. The leaders of the
Palestine Society assert that their researches have proved in ‘the most
indubitable’ manner that Christ, on his way to Golgotha, ‘passed just
over the ground which has been bought by the society.’ One of the
society's tasks is to facilitate Russian pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
The emperor has recently given his sanction to the establishment of
branches of this society in all cities of the Russian Empire.”