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The World’s Great Explorers and Explorations.
Edited by J. SCOTT KELTIE, Librarian, Royal Geographical Society;
H. J. MACKINDER, M.A., Reader in Geography at the University of
Oxford; and E. G. RAVENSTEIN, F.R.G.S.
PALESTINE.
[Illustration: A PICTORIAL MAP OF JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY LAND, FOR THE
USE OF PILGRIMS.
(_From a MS. of the 13th Century in the Burgundian Library at
Brussels._)
_Frontispiece._]
PALESTINE.
BY
MAJOR C. R. CONDER, D.C.L., R.E.
LEADER OF THE PALESTINE EXPLORING
EXPEDITION.
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
PREFACE.
The Editors of the present series having done me the honour to ask me
briefly to relate the story of Palestine Exploration, and especially of
the expeditions which I commanded; and having stipulated that the book
should contain not only an account of the more interesting results of
that work, but also something of the personal adventures of those
employed, I have endeavoured to record what seems of most interest in
both respects.
Many things here said will be found at greater length in previous works
which I have written, scattered through several volumes amid more
special subjects. I hope, however, that the reader will discover also a
good deal that is not noticed in those volumes; for the sources of
information concerning ancient Palestine are constantly increasing; and,
among others, I may mention, that the series of Palestine Pilgrim Texts,
edited by Sir Charles Wilson, has added greatly to our knowledge, and
has enabled me to understand many things which were previously doubtful.
The full story of the dangers and difficulties through which the work
was brought to a successful conclusion cannot be given in these pages,
and no one recognises more than I do the imperfections which--as in all
human work--have caused it here and there to fall short of the ideal
which we set before us. What can, however, be claimed for Palestine
exploration is, that the ideal was always as high as modern scientific
demands require. The explorations were conducted without reference to
preconceived theory, or to any consideration other than the discovery of
facts. The conclusions which different minds may draw from the facts
must inevitably differ, but the facts will always remain as a scientific
basis on which the study of Palestine in all ages must be henceforth
founded.
I fear that even now, after so much has been written, the facts are not
always well known--certainly they have often been misrepresented. It is
my desire, as far as possible, in these pages to summarise those facts
which seem most important, while giving a sketch of the mode of research
whereby they were brought to light.
C. R. C.
_Note._--The maps illustrating this volume have been revised by
Major Conder, who is more especially responsible for those of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem and of Modern Palestine. The geological
sketch-map embodies Major Conder’s researches, as also the
important explorations of Dr. K. Diener in the Lebanon.--ED.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 1
I. EXPLORATIONS IN JUDEA 22
II. THE SURVEY OF SAMARIA 59
III. RESEARCHES IN GALILEE 83
IV. THE SURVEY OF MOAB 134
V. EXPLORATIONS IN GILEAD 171
VI. NORTHERN SYRIA 190
VII. THE RESULTS OF EXPLORATION 214
APPENDICES:--
NOTE ON JERUSALEM EXCAVATION 247
INDEX OF OLD TESTAMENT SITES IDENTIFIED IN
PALESTINE 252
INDEX OF NEW TESTAMENT SITES IDENTIFIED IN
PALESTINE 262
INDEX 267
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS.
_FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS._
1. A Pictorial Map of Jerusalem and the Holy Land
for the use of Pilgrims (_from a MS. of the 13th
Century in the Burgundian Library at Brussels_) _Frontispiece_
2. The Plain of Jericho, as seen from Ai _to face page_ 35
3. The Dead Sea (view S.E. of Taiyibeh) " 43
4. Alphabets of Western Asia " 173
5. Jebel Sannin (Lebanon) " 192
_ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT._
Portrait of Dr. Robinson (_from a photograph_) _page_ 16
Portrait of Sir C. Wilson (_from a photograph by Maull & Fox_) " 17
Portrait of Sir C. Warren (_from a photograph_) " 18
Desert of Beersheba " 53
Kurn Sartaba " 68
The Jordan Valley (’Esh el Ghurab) " 73
A Camp in the Jordan Valley " 80
Mount Tabor " 86
Carmel " 88
Nain " 93
The Sea of Galilee " 99
Krak des Chevaliers (Kala’t el Hosn) " 108
Moab Mountains from the Plain of Shittim " 142
A Dolmen west of Heshbon " 144
View of Dead Sea from Mount Nebo " 158
Hittites from Abu Simbel " 198
Hamath Stone, No. 1 " 200
_MAPS (Printed in Colours)._
I. General Map of Palestine _facing page_ 1
II. Physical Map of Palestine _at end_
III. Geological Map of Palestine "
IV. Palestine as divided among the Twelve Tribes "
V. Palestine "
VI. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, showing the Fiefs, about 1187 A.D. "
VII. Modern Palestine, showing the Turkish Provinces "
_MAPS IN TEXT._
Palestine and Syria according to Ptolemy, _c._ 100 A.D. _page_ 2
A Section of Peutinger’s Table " 4
Marin Sanuto’s Map of the Holy Land, 1321 " 12
The Holy Land, from the Atlas of Ortelius, _c._ 1591 " 14
[Illustration: PALESTINE]
PALESTINE.
_INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER._
The long narrow strip of country on the east shore of the Mediterranean,
which in a manner was the centre of the ancient world, has in all ages
been a land of pilgrimage. For five hundred miles it stretches from the
deserts of Sinai to the rugged Taurus, and its width, shut in between
the Syrian deserts and the sea, is rarely more than fifty miles. It can
never be quite the same to us as other lands, bound up as it is with our
earliest memories, with the Bible and the story of the faith; and it is
to the credit of our native land that we have been the first to gather
that complete account of the country, of its ancient remains, and of its
present inhabitants, which (if we except India) does not exist in equal
exactness for any other Eastern land.
The oldest explorer of Palestine--if we do not reckon Abraham--was the
brave King Thothmes III., who marched his armies throughout its whole
length on his way towards Euphrates. Many are the pilgrims and
conquerors who have followed the same great highways along which he
went. When, in the early Christian ages, the land became sacred to
Europe, the patient pilgrims of Italy, and even of Gaul, journeyed along
the shores of Asia Minor, and sometimes were able to reach the Holy
City, and to bring back to their homes some account of the country;
while in later ages the pilgrims came not singly, but in hosts
continually increasing, and finally as crusaders, colonists, and
traders.
[Illustration: PALESTINE AND PART OF SYRIA ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY, _c._
100 A.D.]
The literature of Palestine exploration begins, therefore, with the
establishment of Christianity. Before that date we have very little
outside the Bible except in the works of Josephus, whose descriptions,
though at times unreliable as regards measurement, are invaluable as the
accounts of an eye-witness of the state of the country before the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. We have scattered notes in the
Talmud, in Pliny, in Ptolemy,[1] in Strabo, and in other classic works,
which have been collected by the care of Reland and of later writers;
but it was only when the Holy Land became a land of pilgrimage for
Christians that itineraries and detailed accounts of its towns and holy
places began to be penned.
The Bordeaux pilgrim[2] actually visited Jerusalem while Constantine’s
basilica was being built over the supposed site of the Holy Sepulchre,
and in Palestine his brief record of stations and distances is expanded
into notes on the places which he found most revered by Syrian
Christians. In the same reign, Eusebius, the historian of the Church,
constructed an Onomasticon, which answered roughly to the modern
geographical gazetteer. His aim--and that of Jerome, who rather later
rendered this work from Greek into Latin, adding notes of his own--was
to identify as far as possible the places mentioned in the Old and New
Testaments with places existing in the country as known to themselves.
This work is both scholarly and honest in intention, but the traditions
on which Eusebius and Jerome relied have not in all cases proved to be
reconcilable with the Biblical requirements as studied by modern
science. The Onomasticon is, however, of great importance as regards the
topography of Palestine in the fourth century, and has often led to the
recovery of yet more ancient sites, which might otherwise have been
lost. Jerome had an intimate personal knowledge, not only of the country
round Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where he lived so long, but also of the
whole of Western Palestine. Places east of Jordan are noticed in the
Onomasticon, but that region was less perfectly known to the Christian
co-authors of this work. In the fourth century the Roman roads were
marked by milestones, and thus the distances given by Eusebius and
Jerome are actual, and not computed distances. Measurement on the Survey
map, which shows these milestones whereever they remain by the roadside,
proves that for the most part the Onomasticon distances are very
correct, and the sites of places so described can, as a rule, be
recovered with little difficulty.
[Illustration: A SECTION OF PEUTINGER’S TABLE.]
The Peutinger Tables, representing the Roman map of Palestine about 393
A.D., give us also the distances along these roads; but the knowledge of
the map-maker as to the region east of Jordan was most imperfect, and
the map, which presents no latitudes or longitudes, is much distorted.
To the same century belongs Jerome’s elegant letter on the travels of
his pious friend Paula, which is, however, but a slight sketch, more
remarkable for its eloquence and fanciful illustration of Scripture
than for topographical description.[3]
A short tract--very valuable, however, to the student of Jerusalem
topography--was penned by Eucherius in the fifth century; and in the
sixth we have the account by Theodorus (or Theodosius) of the Holy Land
in the days of Justinian.[4] The eulogistic record by Procopius of the
buildings of Justinian also gives accounts and references to the names
of his monasteries and churches in Palestine, which are of considerable
use.[5] In the same reign also (about 530 A.D.) Antoninus Martyr[6] set
forth from Piacenza, and journeyed to Constantinople, Cyprus, Syria, and
Palestine. He even crossed the Jordan and went through the Sinaitic
desert to Egypt. Like the Bordeaux pilgrim, Antoninus was a firm
believer in the apocryphal Gospels, which already began to be held in
high estimation. The former pilgrim repeats stories from the Gospel of
the Hebrews; the latter, in addition, refers to the Gospel of the
Infancy; but, in spite of the superstitious tone of the narrative of
Antoninus, his itinerary is valuable, because it covers the whole region
west of Jordan, and contains notes of contemporary custom and belief
which are of great antiquarian interest.
The conquest of Palestine by Omar did not by any means lead to the
closing of the country to Christians. One of the best known and most
detailed accounts of the Holy Land written up to that time was taken
down from the lips of the French Bishop Arculphus[7] by Adamnan, Bishop
of Iona, about 680 A.D., in the monastery of Hy. It appears that Arculph
was in Palestine during the reign of Mu’awîyeh, the first independent
Khalif of Syria ruling in Damascus, and the same policy of toleration
and peace which was inaugurated by this ruler enabled St. Willibald in
722 A.D.[8] to journey through the whole length of the land. These
writers are concerned chiefly in description of the holy places, which
increased in number and in celebrity from century to century. Arculphus
constantly interrupts his narrative with pious legends, much resembling
those of the modern Roman Catholic guide-books to Palestine, though some
of the sites which were correctly identified by these early Christian
pilgrims were transferred by the Latin priests of the twelfth century to
impossible localities, where they are still in some cases shown to
Latins, while the older tradition survives among the Greek Christians.
We often encounter an interesting note in these pilgrim diaries, such as
Arculphus’ description of the pine-wood north of Hebron, now represented
by but a few scattered trees. St. Willibald seems to have been regarded
as a harmless hermit, who, when once the object of his journey was
understood, was allowed by the “Commander of the Faithful” to travel in
peace throughout the land.
In the reign of Charlemagne good political relations existed between
that monarch and the Khalif of Baghdad, Harûn er Rashîd. The keys of
Jerusalem were presented to the Western monarch, who founded a hospice
for the Latins in that city. About half a century later, at the time
when Baghdad was at the height of its glory as a centre of literature
and civilisation, Bernard, called the Wise,[9] with two other monks, one
Italian, the other Spanish, visited the Holy Land from Egypt, and they
were able to obtain permits which were respected by the local governors.
The rise of the Fatemites in Egypt altered materially the status of the
Christians in Syria. We have no known Christian account of Palestine
between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Hakem, the mad Khalif of Egypt,
destroyed the Christian churches in Jerusalem in 1010 A.D., and the
country seems to have been then closed to pilgrims.
During this period, however, we have at least two important works,
namely, that of El Mukaddasi (about 985 A.D.), and the journey of Nasir
i Khusrau in 1047 A.D.[10] El Mukaddasi (“the man of Jerusalem”) was so
named from his native town, his real name being Shems ed Dîn. He
describes the whole of Syria, its towns and holy places (or Moslem
sanctuaries), its climate, religion, commerce, manners and customs, and
local marvellous sights. The legends are no less wonderful than those of
his monkish predecessors, but his notes are often of great historical
interest, and he is the earliest writer as yet known who plainly
ascribes the building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to its real
author, the Khalif ’Abd el Melek. It is remarkable that he speaks of
the Syrian Moslems as living in constant terror of the Greek pirates,
who descended on the coasts and made slaves of the inhabitants, whom
they carried off to Constantinople. The Christians were still, he says,
numerous in Jerusalem, and “unmannerly in public places.” The power of
the Khalifs was indeed at this time greatly shaken by the schisms of
Islam, and the Greek galleys invaded the ports, which had to be closed
by iron chains. The Samaritans appear to have flourished at this time as
well as the Jews, and the Samaritan Chronicle, which commences in the
twelfth century, speaks of this sect as very widely spread even earlier,
in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.
Abu Muin Nâsir, son of Khusrau, was born near Balkh, and journeyed
through Media and Armenia by Palestine to Cairo, thence to Mecca and
Basrah, and back through Persia to Merv and Balkh, the whole time spent
being seven years. He gives good general accounts of Jerusalem, Hebron,
and other places, though his description does not materially add to our
information.
The rise of the Seljuks boded little good to Syria. Melek Shah in 1073
A.D. conquered Damascus, and by the end of the century Jerusalem groaned
under the Turkish tyranny. It was at this time--just before the conquest
of the Holy City, which had been wrested from the Turks by the
Egyptians--that Foucher of Chartres began his chronicle of the first
Crusade, which contains useful topographical notes. The great history of
the Latin Kingdom by William of Tyre is full of interesting information
as to the condition of the country under its Norman rulers (1182-85
A.D.), and to this we must add the Chronicles of Raymond d’Agiles and
Albert of Aix, which belong to the time of the first Crusade.[11]
Two other early works of the Crusading period are of special value.
Sæwulf[12] visited the Holy Land in 1102 A.D., before the building of
most of the Norman castles and cathedrals; and the Russian Abbot Daniel,
whose account has only recently been translated into English,[13] is
believed to have arrived as early as 1106 A.D. From Ephesus he went to
Patmos and Cyprus, and thence to Jerusalem and all over Western
Palestine. His account is one of the fullest that we possess for the
earliest Crusading period. In the middle of the twelfth century we have
the topographical account by Fetellus,[14] which refers to places not
generally described; and rather later we have the valuable descriptions
by Theodoricus and John of Wirzburg,[15] while only two years before
Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem, John Phocas[16] wrote a shorter account
in Greek upon silk, which is interesting as the work of a Greek
ecclesiastic at a time when the Latins were the dominant sect. The names
of monasteries in the Jordan Valley, otherwise unnoticed, are
recoverable in his account.
Much interesting topographical information of this period is to be found
in the Cartulary of the Holy Sepulchre,[17] which gives striking
evidence of the rapidly increasing possessions of the Latin Church, due
to the gifts and legacies of kings and barons. The cartularies of the
great orders and the laws contained in the Assizes of Jerusalem are
equally important to an understanding of Palestine under the rule of its
feudal monarchs. It is possible to reconstruct the map of the country at
this period in a very complete manner from such material.[18]
The Jews were not encouraged in Syria by the Normans. Benjamin of
Tudela, however, made his famous journey from Saragossa in 1160, and
returned in 1173 after visiting Palestine, Persia, Sinai, and Egypt; he
was interested in the “lost tribes,” whom the mediæval Jews recognised
in the Jewish kingdom of the Khozars in the Caucasus, and his account of
Palestine is a valuable set-off to those of the Christian visitors.[19]
We have pilgrimages by Rabbis in later centuries, viz., Rabbi Bar Simson
in 1210 A.D., Rabbi Isaac Chelo of Aragon in 1334, and others of the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.[20] These refer chiefly
to the holy cities of the Jews, especially to Tiberias and Safed in
Galilee, and record visits to the tombs of celebrated Rabbis, many of
which are still preserved, and some yet visited by the Jews of
Palestine. Several important points regarding early Christian and
Talmudic topography are cleared up by these works.
One of the favourite accounts of the Holy City and of Palestine at the
time of its conquest by Saladin was written by an unknown author, and
was reproduced in the thirteenth century in the Chronicle of Ernoul.[21]
There are many manuscripts of this, as of earlier works, which were
preserved in the monasteries of Europe, and recopied by students who
seem to have had little idea of the importance of preserving the
original purity of their text. Some of the versions are mere abstracts,
some are supplemented by paraphrases from Scripture. The original work
known as the _Citez de Jherusalem_ was evidently penned by one who had
long lived in the Holy City, and knew every street, church, and
monastery. He gives us the Frankish names for the streets, and the
topography is easily traced in the modern city. There are perhaps few
towns which are better known than Jerusalem in the latter part of the
twelfth century A.D., and the varying manuscripts throw an interesting
light on the way in which errors and variations crept into a popular
work before the invention of printing.
The vivid and spirited chronicle of the campaigns of Richard Lion-Heart
by Geoffrey de Vinsauf (1189-1192 A.D.) informs us of the condition of
the maritime region, and describes a part of Palestine which few have
visited, between Haifa and Jaffa, as well as the region east of Ascalon
and as far south as the border of Egypt. The topography of this
chronicle I studied on the ground with great care in 1873-75. The
charming pages of Joinville, though of great interest as describing the
unfortunate Crusade of St. Louis in 1256 A.D., contain much less of
geographical value than the preceding.[22]
[Illustration: MAP OF MARIN SANUTO.]
In the fourteenth century men’s minds were often occupied with schemes
for the recovery of the Holy Places. Marino Sanuto, a Venetian noble,
who is said to have travelled in the East, wrote an elaborate work on
the subject, which he presented to Pope John in 1321. The greater part
is taken up with his views as to the military steps necessary for an
expedition against the Saracens, but a very full gazetteer of Palestine,
with a map, is also introduced into the work. Some have doubted whether
Marino Sanuto ever visited Palestine. His information is, however, very
correct on the whole, and his account of roads, springs, and other
features appears to be founded on reliable observation.
During the transition period of the struggle between Christendom and
Islam, Palestine had narrowly escaped the horrors of a Mongol invasion.
Mangu Khan, to whom St. Louis had sent the mild and pious William de
Rubruquis at his distant capital of Karakorum (in Mongolia) in 1253, was
defeated by the Egyptian Sultan Kelaun, successor of the terrible
Bibars, in 1280, and had already been defeated in 1276 by Bibars himself
near La Chamelle (now Homs) in Northern Syria. A very interesting letter
has lately been published by Mr. Basevi Sanders from Sir Joseph de Cancy
in Palestine to Edward the First in England,[23] written in 1281, and
describing the later defeat near Le Lagon (the Lake of Homs), which
saved the country from the cruelty from which other lands were then
suffering. The Mameluk Sultans ruled in Palestine down to 1516 A.D.,
when the Turkish Selim overthrew their power at Aleppo, since which time
Palestine has been a Turkish province. During the three centuries of
Mameluk rule there are many descriptions, Christian and Moslem, of the
country, and the well-known Travels of Sir John Mandeville are among the
earliest. He was a contemporary of Marino Sanuto, and although those
portions of the work (with which he consoled his rheumatic old age) that
refer to more distant lands are made up from various sources, going back
to the fables of Pliny and Solinus, still the account of Palestine
itself appears to be original, and contains passages (such as that which
relates to the fair held near Banias) which show special knowledge of
the country. In 1432 Sir Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, with other
knights, made an adventurous journey through the whole length of the
country, and through Northern Syria and Asia Minor to
Constantinople.[24] To the same period belongs John Poloner’s
description, which shows us how tenaciously the Latin monks held to
their possessions in the Holy Land.[25]
[Illustration: THE HOLY LAND, FROM THE ATLAS OF ORTELIUS, _c._ 1591.]
In the fifteenth century we have Moslem accounts by Kemâl ed Dîn and
Mejr ed Dîn, which are of value in tracing the architectural history of
Jerusalem. Mejr ed Dîn was Kady of the city, and his topographical
account, though brief, is minutely detailed.[26] Among other Christian
travellers of this century, Felix Fabri (1483-84), a Dominican monk, has
left one of the best accounts. But how little these later Christian
pilgrims contributed to enlarging our exact knowledge of Palestine may
be judged of from such a map as that contributed by Christian Schrot to
the Atlas of Ortelius, a map very decidedly inferior to that supplied
more than two centuries earlier by Marino Sanuto.
Of travellers who visited Palestine during the early Turkish period, the
first in importance is the shrewd and moderate Maundrell (1697
A.D.).[27] He was chaplain of the English factory at Aleppo, which dated
back to the time of Elizabeth, and the account of his travels shows that
it was more difficult to traverse Palestine in his days than to
penetrate into Eastern Mongolia in the days of Rubruquis and Marco Polo.
Among the tyrannical chiefs of various small districts who robbed and
annoyed him was Sheikh Shibleh near Jenin, whose tomb is now a sacred
shrine on the hill above Kefr Kud. Of this holy man he records that “he
eased us in a very courteous manner of some of our coats, which now (the
heat both of the climate and season increasing upon us) began to grow
not only superfluous but burdensome.”
In these early days travelling was perilous, and, as a rule, only
possible in disguise. In 1803 the journey of Seetzen was specially
valuable, and the travels of the celebrated Burckhardt followed soon
after in 1809-16. Both these explorers died in the East before their
self-allotted tasks were complete. In 1816 Buckingham (still remembered
by the elder generation as a gallant explorer) visited Palestine, and in
1817 Irby and Mangles made an adventurous journey in the country east
of the Jordan. Their account is still valuable for this region. From
that time forward the accounts of personal visits to the country become
too numerous to be here recorded. The names of Bartlett, Wilson, Töbler,
Thomson, Lynch, De Saulcy, Van de Velde, Williams, and Porter are among
the better known of those who preceded or were contemporary with the
celebrated Robinson.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DR. EDWARD ROBINSON (_Born 1794, Died
1863_).]
But it was only in 1838 that really scientific exploration of Palestine
began with the journey of the famous American (Dr. Robinson), whose
works long continued to be the standard authority on Palestine
geography, and whose bold and original researches have been so fully
confirmed by the excavations and explorations of the last twenty years.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF SIR CHARLES WILSON. _From a Photograph by
Maull & Fox, Piccadilly._]
To this same period, preceding actual surveys, belongs the work of De
Vogüé, whose monographs on the Temple, the Dome of the Rock, the
churches of Palestine, and his splendid volume of plates for Northern
Syrian architecture, together with his collection and decipherment of
various early inscriptions in the country, give him the highest rank as
an Orientalist. With his name must be coupled that of Waddington, who
first attempted to form a corpus of Greek texts from inscriptions found
in Palestine, while the standard authority on Phœnician and Hebrew
texts is the recently published corpus of Semitic inscriptions by Renan.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF SIR C. WARREN.]
Sir C. W. Wilson’s survey of Jerusalem and travels in Palestine in
1864-66, and his subsequent exploration of the Sinaitic desert in 1867,
roused public attention to the neglected state of Palestine geography,
leading to the execution for the Palestine Exploration Fund of the
wonderful excavations by Sir C. Warren at Jerusalem. These excavations
round the walls of the old Temple area, carried out in the teeth of
fanatic and political obstruction, have enabled us to replace the weary
controversies of half a century ago by the actual results of measurement
and scientific exploration. Sir Charles Wilson’s already published
survey of the Holy City, his reconnaissances throughout the length of
the Palestine watershed, preceding his Sinai Expedition, his survey of
the Sea of Galilee, and his exact determination of the level of the Dead
Sea, 1292 feet below the Mediterranean, were the first efforts of modern
science to supply really valuable statistics concerning Palestine
itself. The shafts and tunnels of Sir Charles Warren were the first
serious attempts of the engineer to place our knowledge of Jerusalem on
an equal footing with that which had been in like manner attained at
Nineveh and Babylon some twenty years before.
It was by the advice of these experienced explorers that the survey of
Palestine from Dan to Beersheba, and from the Jordan to the Great Sea,
was undertaken, a work which commenced in 1872, was completed in the
field in 1877, but not fully published till 1882. It is with this work
that the present volume is chiefly concerned, since it was my good
fortune to conduct the parties almost from the first, and to carry out
the publication of the maps and memoirs. It had first been intended that
Captain Stewart, R.E., should have commanded the party, but that officer
was unfortunate in falling ill almost at once on reaching the field of
work; and it was through the kindness of the late Major Anderson, R.E.,
the comrade of Sir Charles Wilson in Palestine, that my name was brought
forward as one who had been deeply interested in the work of previous
explorers, and who desired to act as Captain Stewart’s assistant. By the
sudden illness of that officer, the non-commissioned officers were left
in Palestine without a military superior; and as my military education
at Chatham had just been completed, I was fortunate in being selected,
at the age of not quite twenty-four years, to the command of the Survey
Expedition.
Since the completion of the survey of Western Palestine, the survey of
Moab, Gilead, and Bashan has been commenced. In 1881 I set out in charge
of a small party, hoping to finish this new enterprise in about three
years’ time. But alas! I found much change in Syria during the interval
of my absence. The suspicions of the Sultan were aroused; the Turkish
Government refused to believe in the genuineness of our desire to obtain
antiquarian knowledge. Political intrigues were rife, and after
struggling against these difficulties for fifteen months, after
surveying secretly about five hundred square miles of the most
interesting country east of the Dead Sea, and after vainly attempting to
obtain the consent of the Sultan to further work, it became necessary to
recall the party in the same year in which the researches of Mr. Rassam
in Chaldea were suspended and a general veto placed on all systematic
exploration.
Since that year, however, a little work has been done from time to time
by residents in communication with the Home Society. Herr Schumacher, a
young German colonist, has made some excellent maps of parts of Bashan,
and Dr. Hull has explored the geology of the district south of the Dead
Sea, while further discoveries have even been made in Jerusalem by Herr
Konrad Schick, who has recovered part of the second wall and one of the
important pools (the Piscina Interior) in the north-east corner of the
city.
The most interesting result of Herr Schumacher’s journeys have been the
discovery of the sites of Hippos and Kokaba east of the Sea of Galilee,
and of dolmen centres like those which I found in Moab.
The task with which I am charged is, however, to give a general account
of the exploration of Palestine conducted by the parties under my
command; and taking the subject roughly in the order of date of survey,
I hope to show that not only in a geographical sense, but also as a
contribution to the true understanding of the ancient history of the
East, our labours were not in vain, and our method was such as to give
exhaustive results.
In concluding this introductory sketch, I should wish to point out that
the Palestine of 1889 is not the Palestine which I entered in 1872.
Partly on account of the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, partly
because of political changes, the number of travellers has enormously
increased. In 1873 it was possible to visit villages where the face of a
Frank had never been seen, but now even the Arabs beyond Jordan are
often brought in contact with Europeans. Such a chance of studying the
archaic manners of the peasantry and the natural condition of the
nomadic Arabs as we enjoyed cannot now recur. For six years I lived
entirely among the peasantry, but since then war, cruel taxation, and
the rapacity of usurers has broken up and ruined the peasant society as
it existed fifteen years ago. In 1882 I saw only too plainly the change
that had come over the land. The Palestine of the early years of the
Survey hardly now exists. The country is a Levantine land, where Western
fabrics, Western ideas, and even Western languages, meet the traveller
at every point. In the present pages I have attempted to give some idea
of the country as it was in the last years of its truly Oriental
condition, with a peasantry as yet hardly quite tamed by the Turk, and
regions as yet hardly traversed by the European explorer.
CHAPTER I.
_EXPLORATIONS IN JUDEA._
Nearly every tourist in Palestine lands at Jaffa, and thence travels to
Jerusalem. The open roadstead, the yellow dunes, the distant shadowy
mountains, the brown town on its hillock, the palms, the orange-gardens
and the picturesque crowd are familiar to very many of my readers. So
are the paths over the plain, the mud villages and cactus hedges, the
great minaret tower of Ramleh, and the rough mountains, with scattered
copses of mastic and oak, with stone hamlets and terraced olive groves,
through which lies the way to the Holy City.
When first I traversed this road in July 1872, it was less frequented
than it is now. The long rows of Jewish cottages which first meet the
eye on reaching the plateau west of the city were not then built, and
Mr. Cook’s signboard was not fixed to the ancient walls of Jerusalem.
The increase of the population by the arrival of 15,000 European Jews
had not commenced, and what has now been gained in prosperity has been
lost in picturesque antiquity of appearance. Jerusalem was then still an
Oriental, but has now become what is known as a Levantine town.
The winters of 1873, of 1874, and of 1881 I spent within the walls, and
many other visits were necessary from time to time; but our work lay in
the country, and it was only here and there that we were able to add new
details to the exhaustive and scientific records of Sir Charles Wilson
and Sir Charles Warren in Jerusalem itself. My first impression was one
of disappointment. The city is small, the hills are stony, barren, and
shapeless. One seemed always to be traversing bylanes, so narrow were
the steep streets, which afterwards became so familiar. But Jerusalem is
a city which to the student becomes more interesting the longer he
explores the remains of a past stretching back through the proud days of
the Crusading kingdom to the glories of the Arab Khalifate, to the
quaint superstitions of the Byzantines, to the greatness of the
Herodians, to the earlier civilisation of the Hebrews. Relics still
remain of the works of every age, from the time when David first fixed
his throne on Sion; and even after fifteen years of exploration a great
discovery remained to be made in the finding of the only Hebrew
inscription, as yet known in Western Palestine, which dates back to the
times of the kings of Judah.
Space will not allow of a complete account of Jerusalem, which may be
found in the publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund.[28] Few
scenes in the East remain more distinctly printed on the memory than do
those connected with life in Jerusalem. The motley crowd in its lanes,
where every race of Europe and of Western Asia meets; the gloomy
churches; the beauty of the Arab chapel of the Rock; the strange
fanaticism of the Greek festival of the Holy Fire; the dervish
processions issuing from the old Temple area; the pathetic wailing at
the Temple wall; the Jewish Passover; the horns blown at the feast of
Tabernacles; Russian, Armenian, Greek, and Georgian pilgrims; the Christ
crucified by Franciscan monks in the gilded chapel of Calvary; the poor
whose feet are washed by a crowned bishop--all remain in the memory with
the mighty ramparts of the city as seen by Christ and His disciples, and
the blue goggles of the tourist from the West. No other town presents
such an epitome of history, or gathers a crowd so representative of East
and West.
There are only two discoveries to which I propose to refer, as being the
most important since the closing of Sir Charles Warren’s mines. These
are the discovery of the Temple rampart and that of the Siloam
inscription. The extent of the Temple area, as rebuilt by Herod the
Great, was defined by the excavations which Sir Charles Warren carried
down to the rock foundations, in some parts by mines 70 to 100 feet
deep,[29] but in no part did he find the ancient walls rising above the
level of the inner court. The north-west corner of the area is occupied
by barracks, standing on the cliff which was once crowned by the citadel
of Antonia; and outside this cliff is the rock-cut trench, converted
later into a covered double pool, which the Christians of the fourth
century regarded as Bethesda. From this pool a narrow lofty tunnel leads
southwards through the cliff. It is an ancient aqueduct, which was
stopped up by the building of the Temple wall. Sir Charles Warren
explored it with great difficulty on a raft on the sewage with which it
was filled; but in 1873 was cleared out by the city authorities, and I
was able to explore it at leisure. At the very end, through a hole in
the floor, it was possible to reach a chamber over this rocky passage,
built against the Temple wall and lighted by a window which looks into
the north-west part of the Temple court. The east wall of the chamber is
the ancient wall built by Herod, and here I found the same great drafted
stones which occur in the foundations. I also found that the wall was
adorned outside above the ground-level by projecting buttresses, just
like those of the enclosure at Hebron, to be mentioned immediately. We
are thus able to picture the appearance of the great ramparts of
Herod’s Temple enclosure, with such buttresses running round the walls
and capped by a boldly corbelled cornice, presenting the same simple and
massive appearance which may still be seen in the smaller enclosure
round the tombs of the Patriarchs at Hebron.
The discovery of the Siloam inscription was an instance of the
accidental manner in which important monuments are often recovered; yet,
as in other cases, it was due to the education which the native
population receives from the scientific explorer. Had the importance of
such discoveries not been impressed on the minds of natives, it is
possible that the Jewish boy who, falling down in the water of the
narrow aqueduct, first observed the only known relic of the writing of
his ancestors in King Hezekiah’s days, would not have been conscious how
valuable a discovery he had made on a spot visited by more than one
eager explorer who passed unconscious by the silent text.
On the east side of Jerusalem runs the deep Kedron gorge; under the
Temple walls on its western slope a rock chamber contains the one spring
of Jerusalem, known as the Virgin’s Fountain to Christians, and as the
“Mother of Steps” to Moslems, because of the stairs which lead down into
the vault from the present surface of the valley, as raised by the
accumulated rubbish of twenty-five centuries of stormy history. This
spring, with its intermittent rush of waters welling up under the steps,
is the En Rogel of the Old Testament, and I believe the Bethesda or
“House of the Stream,” the troubling of whose waters is mentioned in the
fourth Gospel. From the back of the rock chamber a passage, also
rock-cut, and scarcely large enough in places for a grown man to squeeze
through, runs south under the Ophel hill for about a third of a mile,
to the reservoir which is the undisputed site of the ancient Pool of
Siloam. The course of the channel is serpentine, and the farther end
near the Pool of Siloam enlarges into a passage of considerable height.
Down this channel the waters of the spring rush to the pool whenever the
sudden flow takes place. In autumn there is an interval of several days;
in winter the sudden flow takes place sometimes twice in a day. A
natural syphon from an underground basin accounts for this flow, as also
for that of the “Sabbatic river” in North Syria. When it occurs, the
narrow parts of the passage are filled to the roof with water.
This passage was explored by Dr. Robinson, Sir Charles Wilson, Sir
Charles Warren, and others, but the inscription on the rock close to the
mouth of the tunnel was not seen, being then under water. When it was
found in 1880 by a boy who entered from the Siloam end of the passage,
it was almost obliterated by the deposit of lime crystals on the
letters. Professor Sayce, then in Palestine, made a copy, and was able
to find out the general meaning of the text. In 1881 Dr. Guthe, a German
explorer, cleaned the text with a weak acid solution, and I was then
able, with the aid of Lieutenant Mantell, R.E., to take a proper
“squeeze.” It was a work of labour and requiring patience, for on two
occasions we sat for three or four hours cramped up in the water in
order to obtain a perfect copy of every letter, and afterwards to verify
these copies by examining each letter with the candle placed so as to
throw the light from right, left, top and bottom. Only by such labour
can reliable copies be made. We were rewarded by sending home the first
accurate copy published in Europe, and were able to settle many
disputed points raised by the imperfect copy of the text before it was
cleaned. An excellent cast was afterwards made.
The contents of the text, which now ranks as one of the most valuable
found in the East, are not of historic importance. The six lines of
beautifully chiselled letters record only the making of the tunnel,
which seems to have been regarded as a triumph of Hebrew engineering
skill. It was begun from both ends, and the workmen heard the sound of
the picks of the other party in the bowels of the hill, and called to
their fellows. Thus guided, they advanced and broke through; the two
tunnels proving to be only a few feet out of line. No date, no royal
name, or other means of ascertaining the age of the text exist; yet our
knowledge is enough to fix very closely, from the forms of the letters,
the century in which it must have been written. It is probably to this
tunnel that the Bible refers in noting the water-works of King Hezekiah
(2 Chron. xxxii. 30); and the text shows us that monumental writing was
in use among the Hebrews about 700 B.C. The differences between these
Hebrew letters and those used by the Phœnicians of the same age also
show us that writing must have been familiar to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem for many centuries before the time when this text was
engraved; and it thus becomes the first monumental proof of the early
civilisation of the Hebrews which has been drawn from their own records
on the rock.
Being aware of the contents of the text, we determined to re-explore and
survey the whole length of the tunnel, in order to see if any other
texts could be found, and to discover if possible the exact place where
the two parties of workmen met, on that day 2580 years before, when
they heard each others’ voices through the rock. Followed by Lieutenant
Mantell and Mr. G. Armstrong, I crawled over the mud and sharp pebbles
for the whole distance, dragging with us a chain, and taking compass
angles, which were entered in a wet note-book by the light of a candle
often put out by the water. We also suffered from the bites of the
leeches and from the want of air; but our chief danger was the sudden
rise of the water, which might have caught us in that narrow part of the
passage, where, crawling flat, we were hardly able to squeeze through
and to keep our lights burning. We noted, however, two shafts to which
we might retire if the water rose, and which were perhaps made in order
to allow the workmen to stand upright at times and rest. It is almost
impossible to suppose that the narrowest parts were excavated by grown
men; at all events, they must have been narrower in the shoulders than
the explorers; but I believe that boys were probably employed. In this
narrow part no inscription could have been cut, nor did we find any
tablets on the rock in other parts like that already noticed. On the
first occasion, after five hours, we reached the Virgin’s Pool safely;
but we found a second visit necessary, and in order to make the danger
less, we determined to pass down the tunnel from the spring, where I
stationed a servant to warn us if the water began to rise. Hardly had we
got a hundred yards down the passage when we heard his shouts, and at
once began to canter on all fours to the spring chamber over the pebbles
and mud. We had crossed the pool with the water only up to our knees,
but when we again reached it from the tunnel at the back, it was well up
to the arm-pits; and hardly were we safe on the landing of the steps,
when we heard the water gurgling in the tunnel, and knew that it must
in the narrow part be full to the roof. In a short time the flow
subsided, and we were able to go back safely, knowing that it would not
rise again that day. We were astonished, however, on emerging at Siloam,
to find the stars shining, for we had again spent five hours in the
dark, with the mud, stones, and leeches, and considered ourselves lucky
in escaping an attack of fever, which generally follows such exposure to
wet and cold in Palestine. We were rewarded by finding the place where
the two parties, working from either end of the tunnel, met nearly
half-way.
From the fourth century to the present day the sites of Calvary and of
the Holy Sepulchre have been shown within the precincts of the Crusading
cathedral, standing where Constantine’s basilica was raised. The
discovery of part of the “second wall” in 1886 shows pretty clearly that
the line which--guided by the rock-levels--I drew in 1878, nearly
coinciding with Dr. Robinson’s line, is correct, and that the
traditional site was thus in the time of our Lord within the city walls.
For the last half century this view has been very generally held, but
there was no agreement as to the true site. I was enabled, however,
through the help of Dr. Chaplin, the resident physician, to investigate
the ancient Jewish tradition, still extant among the older resident
Jews, which places the site of the “House of Stoning” or place of
execution at the remarkable knoll just outside the Damascus gate, north
of the city. There are several reasons, which I have detailed in other
publications, for thinking that this hillock is the probable site of
Calvary. When General Gordon was residing at Jerusalem, he adopted this
idea very strongly, and it has thus become familiar to many in
England.[30] The bare and stony swell breaks down on the south side into
a precipice, over which, according to the Talmud, those doomed to be
stoned were thrown, and on the summit they were afterwards crucified,
according to the same account. The hillock stands conspicuous in a sort
of natural amphitheatre, being thus fitted for a spectacle seen by great
multitudes. The neighbourhood has always apparently been regarded as of
evil omen, and a Moslem writer says that men may not pass over the
plateau beside it at night for fear of evil spirits. Close to this same
spot, also, the earliest Christian tradition pointed out the scene of
the stoning of Stephen.
When first I reached Palestine in 1872, the Survey party were at work at
Shechem, thirty miles north of Jerusalem. Sergeant Black and Sergeant
Armstrong, whose names should be specially recorded among those who
worked at the survey, because they were longest employed, and because
their ability was conspicuous in framing a plan of operations suited to
the peculiar requirements, had made good progress, with the aid of Mr.
C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake, left in charge when Captain Stewart came home ill.
They had carried the work from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and thence along the
mountains to Shechem, in six months, and the hill country of Benjamin,
which I afterwards examined, was thus surveyed before I reached
Palestine. This part of Judea, though presenting immense difficulties
to the surveyor, which had been overcome by patience and toil, did not
yield much of great interest beyond Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake’s discovery of a
Jewish tomb-inscription, and the identification of several lost Hebrew
cities. The site of Bethel, famous as it is in Bible history, is only
that of a small village, on a ridge which, even for Judea, is remarkably
barren and rocky. Here truly the wanderer who dreamed of angels could
find nought save a stone for his pillow; but the long vista of the
Jericho plain, seen over the peaks and ridges of the desert of Judah,
might even now, by some modern Lot, be likened to the “garden of the
Lord,” so green do its pastures look in spring, set in the stony ring of
barren hills.
Not far thence we one day crossed the great gorge of Michmash, where was
the fortress of the Philistines that Jonathan assaulted. We were able to
lead our horses down from ledge to ledge, following the strata, to the
bottom of the valley on its south side; but on the north towered the
cliff of Bozez (“the shining”), which the Hebrew hero scaled. Here no
horse could find a footing, and climbing up to visit the hermit’s caves,
I was able to judge the effort which would be necessary to scale the
whole height and then to fight at the top. No doubt the garrison must
have regarded Jonathan’s feat as practically impossible.
The ridge on which Jerusalem stands, 2500 feet above the Mediterranean,
runs southwards, gradually rising to 3000 feet in the neighbourhood of
Hebron, where the open valley of vineyards forms one of the heads of the
great Beersheba watercourse. This difficult region was surveyed in the
autumn of 1874, and many ancient sites and ruins were discovered. We
were not, however, at that time able to enter the Hebron Sanctuary,
which had never been fully explored, and which is one of the most
interesting places in Palestine. In 1882, however, I accompanied the
Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales, who, under the guidance of
Sir Charles Wilson, explored this zealously-guarded mosque, of which I
then made the only complete plan in existence. The Haram (or
“Sanctuary”) at Hebron is an oblong enclosure, repeating that of the
Temple of Jerusalem on a smaller scale. It is not mentioned by early
writers, yet there can be little doubt that it must be the work of Herod
the Great, or of one of his immediate successors. It already existed in
333 A.D., and the walls are so exactly like those of the Jerusalem
Haram, that they cannot be supposed the work of the Byzantine emperors.
The ramparts enclose a mediæval church and a courtyard, built over an
ancient rock-cut cave, which in all ages has been regarded as the
sepulchre purchased by Abraham from the sons of Heth, where Sarah first
is said to have been buried, and afterwards Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
Rebecca and Leah. Six cenotaphs, like Moslem tombs, covered with rich
embroidered cloths, stand in the enclosure--two inside the church (now a
mosque), two in chapels beside the porch of the same, and two in
buildings against the opposite rampart walls. It is not however
supposed, even by Moslems, that these are the real tombs; they only mark
supposed sites of tombs beneath the floor. These lower tombs, which
Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller of the twelfth century, claims
to have seen, are now inaccessible, and it is impossible to say how far
his account can be trusted.[31] In the floor of the mosque there are
two entrances closed by flagstones, which are said to lead down by
steps into the rock-cut cave. No Moslem would dare to enter this sacred
cavern, where, as they say, Isaac would await and slay them, while
Jewish legends tell that Eliezer of Damascus stands at the door to watch
the repose of Abraham asleep in the arms of Sarah. There is, however, a
hole in the floor which pierces the roof of a square chamber, lighted by
a silver lamp suspended from the mouth of the hole.
Into this well-mouth we thrust our heads, and the lamp was lowered
almost to the floor. Here I saw clearly that in one wall of the chamber
a small square door exists, just like those of rock-cut tombs all
through Palestine. There is thus probably a real tomb under the mosque,
and the chamber is apparently an outer porch to this tomb. The floor was
covered to some depth with sheets of paper, evidently the accumulations
of many years. These papers are petitions to Abraham, which the pious
Moslems drop through the hole, and thus leave lying at the door of his
sepulchre.
Another opportunity of so thoroughly exploring this interesting site may
not speedily occur; and so long as the mosque remains a mosque, it is
doubtful if any one will succeed in entering the tomb itself, though it
might perhaps be reached by the stairs said to exist on the south side
of the building, if permission could be obtained to force up the
flagstones.[32]
As regards the identity of this sepulchre with that of the Patriarchs,
all that can be said is that tradition is unvarying on the subject, and
the site nowise improbable; but the Hebrews never appear to have
embalmed the dead, and if any inscriptions existed (inscriptions of
early date on Hebrew tombs being almost unknown), they would probably
belong to a very recent period.
[Illustration: THE PLAIN OF JERICHO, AS SEEN FROM AI.
_To face page 35._]
In an account like the present it is difficult to follow either a
geographical or a chronological order. The geography of Palestine is,
however, very generally understood, and the regions next to each other
are here mentioned in order. The Survey was extended from a central band
along the watershed, the reason being that the plains could only be
visited, with due regard to the health and comfort of the party, in the
spring and early summer, while the mountains were our refuge in the
great heats of August and September, and in the sickly autumn, when the
climate of the lower regions becomes almost pestilential. Only once was
this system disregarded, and the result was an outbreak of virulent
fever in the camp, which threatened for a time to put an end to the
expedition.
East of the Hebron and of the Jerusalem hills stretches the desert of
Judah, a plateau broken by ridges and ravines reaching to the tall
cliffs which rise from the shores of the Dead Sea. Beyond this desert
the plains of Jericho, through which the Jordan flows, stretch along the
north shores of the sea, and are about 1000 feet lower than the surface
of the Mediterranean. On the west of the Judean mountains there are
foot-hills (the region called Shephelah in the Bible), and west of these
again the broad plains of Sharon and of Philistia extend to the
sandhills of the Mediterranean coast, which presents no natural harbour
south of Mount Carmel.
The Judean desert I surveyed with a very small party in the early spring
of 1875. The Jericho plains we unfortunately visited too soon in
December 1873. The Shephelah and the plain of Philistia were completed
in the spring of 1875 without any difficulty, save a small part near
Beersheba, which was finished in 1877. Beersheba itself was visited in
the autumn of 1874. These regions were all more or less wild, and
inhabited by nomadic Arabs, so that the adventures of the party were
more numerous than when our work lay near the civilised centres and
among the settled villagers. The four regions above mentioned may be
briefly mentioned in order.
The Judean desert is without exception the wildest and most desolate
district in Syria. It seems hardly possible that man or beast can find a
living in such a land. Yet, as David found pasture for those “few poor
sheep in the wilderness,” so do the desert Arabs find food for their
goats among the rocks. It is none the less a desert indeed, riven by
narrow ravines leading to deep gorges, and rising between the stony
gullies into narrow ridges of dark brown limestone, capped with gleaming
white chalk, full of cone-like hillocks and fantastic peaks. Here
sitting on the edge of the great cliffs, which drop down a sheer height
of some two thousand feet to the rock-strewn shore, gazing on the
shining waters of that salt blue lake, watching the ibex herds scudding
silently over the plateau, the tawny partridges running in the valley,
hearing the clear note of the black grackle as it soars among the rocks
where the hyrax (or coney) is hiding, I have felt the sense of true
solitude such as is rarely known elsewhere. There is no stirring of the
grass by the breeze, no rustling of leaves, no murmur of water, no sound
of life save the grackle’s note or the jackal’s cry, re-echoed from the
rocks. The sun beats down from a cloudless sky; the white glare of the
chalk, the smooth face of the sea, are broad stretches of colour
unbroken by variety, save where the tamarisk with its feathery leaves
makes a dark line among the boulders of the torrent course. Here really
out of the world the solitary hermits sate in the rocky cells which were
their tombs; here in the awful prison of the Marsaba monastery men are
still buried, as it were, alive, without future, without hope, without
employment, with no comradeship save that of equally embittered lives.
The chance traveller alone connects them with the world. The grackles,
to whom, on the wing, they toss the dried currants, the jackals, who
gather beneath the precipice for the daily dole of bread, these are
almost the only living things they see. Many are monks disgraced by
crime, and what wonder, too, that some are maniacs or idiots? Few sadder
scenes can be witnessed than that of a mass sung in the chapel of
Marsaba, where John of Damascus (once the minister of a Moslem Khalif)
sleeps in the odour of sanctity.
I think it is General Gordon who has somewhere said that for a man to
understand the world he should for a time leave the life of busy cities
and think out his thoughts alone in the wilderness. Often have I thought
that could the critic leave his comfortable study and dwell for a time
in this desert of Judah, under the starry sky at night and the hot glare
of the sun by day, in a land which men once thought to have been burned
by fire, cursed, and sown with salt, and in the great stillness of a
world almost without life, he would be able better to understand what
Hebrew poets, prophets, and historians have written, and we should
perhaps not see Solomon in the garb of a German Grand Duke, or Isaiah in
the robes of an University Don.
The north part of this desert is inhabited by scattered groups of the
Taamireh tribe, the southern part by the Jahalin Arabs. The Taamireh, or
“cultivators,” are not true Arabs, but villagers who have taken to
desert life. They wear turbans, and resemble the villagers in type more
closely than the Bedu. The Jahalin, whose name means “those ignorant of
the Moslem faith,” are a wild and degraded tribe, the poorer being
almost naked, while the chiefs have an evil name. I went into this
desert without either guide or interpreter, and the party depended
throughout on such knowledge of Arabic as I possessed in communicating
with natives. I was not then aware how exact are the border divisions
between nomadic tribes, and was surprised to find the Taamireh chief one
day very unwilling to follow me. As we returned home the reason became
evident. We had crossed the boundary valley into Jahalin country, and a
number of wild half-clad figures sprang up from behind the rocks on the
hillside armed with ancient matchlocks. The Sheikh’s influence was
enough to prevent their robbing me, but they guarded us for some
distance to the border valley, only asking how soon I was going to cover
the land with vineyards. They believe that the Franks control the rain,
and that they once grew vines in the desert. It is perhaps a dim memory
of the days when the Crusaders had sugar-mills at Engedi, on the shores
of the Dead Sea, as mentioned in the chronicles of the twelfth century,
of which mills the ruins are still to be seen.
At Engedi the Taamireh left us, and a few days later I rode with my
scribe to the camp of the Jahalin, where we sat down and made ourselves
guests of the chief. The Arabs were at first surly, but soon came to see
that money was to be earned, and finally asked us to recommend their
country to tourists. To those who choose to venture into this wild
corner, there is an attraction in the wonderful fortress of Masada, on
the shores of the Dead Sea, one of the most remarkable places in
Palestine, and one which has been little visited.
Masada (now called Sebbeh) was the stronghold built by Herod the Great
which held out against the Romans after the terrible destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D. A people less determined than the Romans
might well have been content to leave the surviving Jewish zealots in so
remote and inaccessible a fortress. But not so the Romans. After the
death of Bassus the procurator, his successor, Flavius Silva, in the
spring of 74 A.D., gathered his forces against this last refuge of the
fanatical robbers called Sicarii or Zealots, who were enemies alike of
Jews and Romans. The difficulty of the task was immense. Water had to be
brought by Jewish captives from a distance of eleven miles: the nearest
supplies of corn were twenty miles away; and only in spring could an
army have endured the great heats in the valleys, 1200 feet below
sea-level. The fortress is a lozenge-shaped plateau, with precipices
1500 feet high all round; walls and towers, now in ruins, surrounded it
on all sides; and while on the east a narrow path called the “Serpent”
wound up the cliffs, the only vulnerable point was on the west, where a
chalky undercliff 1000 feet high lies against the rocky walls. Opposite
this undercliff Silva placed his camp on a low hill, and round the
fortress he drew a wall like that which Titus had built round Jerusalem,
with small posts at intervals, and a second larger camp on the east. The
Romans then piled a great mound 300 feet high on the top of the
undercliff, and built a wall on the mound, from the top of which they
fought in a siege-tower plated with iron, and battered the fortress wall
with a ram.
The besieged were not in want of food or water. There were rain-water
tanks, and corn was grown on the plateau. It is even said that the
stores of wine, oil, pulse, and dates laid in by Herod a hundred years
before were still edible, because of the dryness of the desert air.
Within the ramparts was Herod’s old palace, towards the north-west part
of the plateau, and until the walls fell to the battering-ram the
courage of the Zealots was unabated. Even then they made an inner
stockade of beams and earth, and still continued their fierce fight for
freedom when this was in flames.
But when the dawn of the Passover came, the Romans put on their armour
and shot out their bridges from the siege-tower, yet met with no
resistance, and heard no sound save that of the flames in the burning
palace: “A terrible solitude,” says Josephus, “on every side, with a
fire in the place as well as perfect silence.” In the night 960 persons
had been slain; first the women and children by their own husbands and
fathers, then the men each by his neighbour. Only one old woman with
five children hidden in a cavern had escaped.
Such was the wonderful history of the fortress which we explored and
planned. From the plateau one looks down on the Roman wall which crosses
the plain and runs up the hills to south and north. One can see Silva’s
camp and the guard-towers almost as he left them 1800 years ago. The
Roman mound, the wall upon it, the ruins of Herod’s palace and of the
fortress walls, the towers on the cliff-side to the north, the empty
tanks, the narrow “serpent” path, all attest the truth of Josephus’
account (VII. Wars, viii., ix.), and remain as silent witnesses of one
of the most desperate struggles perhaps ever carried to success by Roman
determination, and of one of the most fanatical resistances in history.
On the east is the gleaming Sea of Salt; the dark precipices of Moab
rise beyond, and the strong towers of Crusading Kerak. On all sides are
brown precipices and tawny slopes of marl, torrent beds strewn with
boulders, and utterly barren shores. There has been nothing to efface
the evidence of the tragedy, nor was Masada ever again held as a
fortress. Yet even here the hermits found their way, and built a little
chapel from the stones of Herod’s house; while in a cave--perhaps the
one in which the poor Jewish matron hid--I discovered on the dark walls
a single word, _Kuriakos_, flanked by crosses and written in mediæval
letters--evidence of some peaceful anchorite’s last rest among the
ghosts of the Zealots.
The survey of this wilderness was completed in ten days, and the party,
having no food for beast or man, were forced to march to Hebron in one
of the great spring storms. Sleet and hail, a biting wind, and a rocky
road made this one of our most toilsome journeys, and when, half frozen,
we reached the fanatical town, we were greeted only with curses, and
owed shelter, food, clothing, and fire to the hospitality of a Jewish
family in the despised suburb to the north of the Haram.
The desert of Judah was no doubt as much a desert in David’s time as it
is now. Here he wandered with his brigand companions as a “partridge on
the mountains.” Here he may have learned that the coney makes its
dwelling in the hard rock. Here, in earlier days, he tended the sheep,
descending from Bethlehem, as the village shepherds of the present day
still come down, by virtue of a compact with the lawless nomads, and
just as Nabal’s sheep came down from the highlands under agreement with
the wild followers of the outlaw born to be a king. I do not know any
part of the Old Testament more instinct with life than are the early
chapters of Samuel which recount the wanderings of David. His life
should only be written by one who has followed those wanderings on the
spot, and the critic who would embue himself with a right understanding
of that ancient chronicle should first with his own eyes gaze on the
“rocks of the wild goats” and the “junipers” of the desert.
North of the Dead Sea, the wide plain of Jericho lies beneath the
wilderness where the Jordan Valley broadens between the Moab mountains
and the western precipices. This region we first entered in the November
of 1873, and pushed the survey rapidly over the plain. Our camp was by
the clear spring of “Elisha’s Fountain,” well known to tourists; and
here, emerging from the glaring chalk hills and barren precipices of
Marsaba, we enjoyed greatly the greenness of the plain, the song of the
bulbuls in the thorn trees, and the murmur of the stream. Unfortunately,
this very greenness was a sign of deadly climate, especially in the
autumn months. No sooner had the first thunderstorm swept over us,
turning the Brook of Cherith (as it is traditionally called) into a
torrent ten feet deep or more, than fever suddenly attacked the party,
then numbering five Europeans and fifteen natives. Even the Nuseir
Arabs, who were our guides, lay round the tents shaking with ague;
and for a time the life of my companion, Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, was in
danger. In fact, though his zeal and fortitude prevented his leaving the
work, he never really recovered from this terrible Jericho typhoid, and
the hardships of the following spring, which we again passed in the
Jordan Valley, proved too much for his shaken health. It is only after
the soil in such malarious regions has been purified by a winter’s rain
that it is safe to remain, even for a night, in the low ground or near
water; and the premature visit to Jericho threatened at one time to
bring our small party entirely to a standstill.
[Illustration: THE DEAD SEA (VIEW S.E. OF TAIYIBEH).
_To face page 43._]
The region round Jericho is well known. The tall cliff burrowed with
hermit’s caves, and supposed to be the place where Christ fasted forty
days in the desert; the flat marshy valley sprinkled with alkali plants
and with lotus trees and feathery tamarisks; the eastern mountain ridge
which we afterwards explored; the strange white peak of Kurn Sartaba on
the north; the oily Dead Sea on the south, must have been seen by many
who may read these lines. In clear weather in spring, the snowy dome of
Hermon can be seen from near the mud village of Jericho, marking the
north end of the Jordan Valley; but the Lake of Tiberias is hidden even
from the higher ground near the plain.
In this Jericho region also new discoveries were made. A solitary
tamarisk marks the site where, at least in early Christian times, it was
believed that the Gilgal camp was set up by Joshua. The surveyors
verified the existence of the name, even now known to the Jericho
peasants. Here also we copied the curious mediæval frescoes, which still
remained on the ruined walls of two monasteries, and several hermit
caves. In the twelfth century there were many monasteries in the desert
and round Jericho, and the memory of the monks has not died out. The
Bedu point to a curious chalk hill called the “Raven’s Nest” as the
“place where the Lord Jesus ascended;” and in studying the mediæval
accounts of Palestine, I found that this very place, although the top is
below sea-level, was pointed out to Crusading pilgrims as “the exceeding
high mountain” whence, as we read in the Gospel, Christ surveyed the
kingdoms of the world. This is but one instance out of many in which the
teaching of the monks and hermits still lingers among the Moslem
population in many parts of Palestine.
In England a fresco of the twelfth century is to us a rare and ancient
thing. In Palestine, so far back are we carried by history, that
Crusading remains rank among the latest. But the explorer has no right
to confine himself to any one period. His duty is to bring home
everything he can find, and without such exhaustive work the sifting out
of the most valuable and most ancient results cannot with safety be
undertaken. I spent several days in the hermits’ caves and in the ruined
monasteries, copying such frescoes as were distinguishable, and reading
the various titles above them. In the middle of the Jericho plain lies
Kusr Hajlah, then a Crusading ruin with frescoes bearing the names of
Sylvester Pope of Rome, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and John Eleemon. By
the character of the writing I was able to fix these paintings as
twelfth-century work. When in 1881 I revisited the spot, I found that
not a single trace remained of any one of the pictures. Russian monks
from Marsaba had settled there, and had rebuilt the monastery. Every
fresco had been scraped from the walls, in order, they said, that new
and better might replace them. Judging from the existing paintings at
Marsaba, it is hardly to be expected that much advance will be made on
the quaint style of the figures which represented the Last Supper, or
the Apostles robed by angels in resurrection garments of white. I think
rather that the monks suspected that the frescoes were of Latin origin;
yet, in destroying them, they had obliterated the names of two of the
most famous Greek Patriarchs of Jerusalem; but then they also destroyed
the representation of Sylvester Pope of Rome. This single instance shows
that the systematic exploration of Palestine was undertaken none too
soon.
Not only in monasteries and hermits’ caves were these pictures painted.
On the north side of the Kelt ravine (the traditional Brook Cherith)
there is a ruined monastery of St. John of Choseboth. Here I copied many
texts and pictures; and outside the gate there is a wall of rock eighty
feet in length, once covered with very large figures, like those which I
have seen on the outer walls of Italian churches. The weather had long
since destroyed them, but at Mar Marrina, near Tripoli, I afterwards
found another cliff cemented and painted in like style. In this case the
Greeks had come after the Latins, and instead of scraping off the old
work, had begun to paint over it huge figures of the throned Christ and
of the Mother of God, beneath which--as though on a palimpsest--I was
able to copy a set of pictures representing the miracles performed by
some Latin saint or abbot.[33]
Such are the remains preserved by the dryness of the desert air in the
vicinity of Jericho. We must now cross to the west side of the
watershed, where the country presents a very different aspect. Looking
down from the heights of the Judean mountains, you see beneath a strip
of low hills, covered in some places with brushwood, but full of
villages, and with olive yards along the valley courses and round the
stone or mud houses of the hamlets, so many of which preserve the old
names of the Book of Joshua. Beyond these foot-hills is the broad plain,
here and there rising into sandy downs, but, as a rule, brown in autumn
with rich ploughlands, and yellow in summer with ripening grain. In
spring the delicate tinge of green, the wide stretches of pink flush
from the phlox blossoms, and the great variety of flowers and flowering
shrubs, present a strong contrast to the grimness of the desert.
The Shephelah or foot-hills form a district full of interesting sites,
and of ruins from the twelfth century A.D. back to the times of Hebrew
dominion. Here our discoveries were numerous and important, but I will
only refer to two periods of special interest--the time of the Jewish
revolt under Judas Maccabæus, and the time of the first establishment of
the Crusading kingdom in Jerusalem.
The history of the heroic brothers who recovered the religious freedom
of the Jews by revolting from the Greek kings of Antioch in the second
century B.C., is as easy to follow in detail on the ground as is that of
David’s wanderings. I have already devoted a short volume to the
subject,[34] and have tried to show how the attacks on Jerusalem were
made successively by the Greek armies along the roads from the
north-west, the west, and the south; how Judas met the foe on each
occasion at the top of the narrow passes; how he hurled them back, as
Joshua did the Canaanites on the same battle-fields; and how not even
the elephants dismayed him. The native town of Judas, Modin--now called
Medyeh--is a little village in the foot-hills, where, however, the
reported tomb of the Maccabee and his family turned out to be merely a
Byzantine monument. The scene of the death of Judas, while he was
defending a fourth mountain pass leading from Shechem to Jerusalem, was
not known; but we have, I think, been able to identify this important
battle-field, where for a time the hopes of the national party seemed
for ever to have been crushed.
It is an instructive fact that so long as the Greeks strove to prevail
by arms, the puritan movement was never stamped out. When at length the
native princes were allowed to reign and to coin money in the native
tongue, they became in a few generations as Greek as the Greeks
themselves, and finally as hateful to the extreme party of the orthodox
as any Greek oppressor.
At the border between the foot-hills and the Philistine plains three
Norman castles were built to protect the kingdom of Godfrey and Baldwin
against their Egyptian enemies. A little later (in 1153 A.D.) Ascalon
was taken, and long remained the great Christian bulwark on the south.
Still later, when Richard Lion-Heart was striving to prop up the Latin
kingdom, ruined even more by vice and degeneracy than by the fierce
attacks of Saladin, the English conqueror spent many months in this
region. I had with me in Palestine the chronicle of his expedition,
written by Geoffrey de Vinsauf, which is one of the most vivid
monographs of the age. It was thus possible to trace every point in his
travels; and very few places remain, among the many mentioned in the
Philistine plains, which cannot be found on the Survey map. The lists of
property of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and other documents of
like kind, were compared, and thus what is to us an early chapter of our
history could be worked out on the spot in Palestine. The difficulties
and dangers of Richard’s army, how they were troubled by the wind, rain,
and hail, which blew down the tents and spoiled the biscuit and the
bacon, how the flies, “which flew about like sparks of fire, and were
called cincenelles” (mosquitoes), stung the Englishmen till they looked
like lepers, and how they suffered from fever and fatigue, we could well
understand; and even of the attacks of Saracens we had some experience
when one day a party of Bedu on the war-path, mistaking us for their
enemies, charged down upon us with flying cloaks and lances fifteen feet
in length quivering like reeds.
The walls of Ascalon, so often built, and which Richard raised again
from the foundations, we surveyed with difficulty, clambering over the
fallen masses of the towers, all of which are mentioned by name in the
chronicle--such as the Maiden’s Tower, the Admiral’s, the Bedouin’s, and
the Bloody Tower, and Tower of Shields. Yet farther south we explored
the little fortress of Darum, which Richard rebuilt, with many others,
as garrisons against the Moslems. North of Jaffa, in the Sharon plain,
we found the oak wood through which the English in 1191 A.D. marched
down from Acre, sorely harassed by the rain of arrows on their armour.
Every river and every tower mentioned on that toilsome march are now
identified, and the fort of Habacuc, where fell the brave knight Renier
of Marun, who was, I believe, an ancestor.
Yet earlier scenes belong to this region, which was the theatre of
Samson’s exploits. In the low hills, Zoreah and Eshtaol and the valley
of Sorek were already known, but to these we added the site of the rock
Etam, where the strong man hid in a cave, which we explored. The tracing
of this topography gave us, however, experience of the great caution
which the explorer must exercise in sifting the evidence of natives. It
had been supposed that the memory of Samson’s history still survived
among the peasants of Zoreah. Certainly they all were able to repeat a
garbled version of the story, and this excited the greater interest
because such tales are extremely rare in occurrence among the villagers,
though the Arabs have a fancy for wonderful legends, as we afterwards
found in Moab. I was anxious to ascertain if the Samson legend was a
truly ancient one, but soon discovered that it was quite modern. The
village lands had recently been purchased by a Christian Sheikh from
Bethlehem, and it was from him that his tenants learned the Bible story,
which they were unable to repeat without converting all the characters
into good Moslems and wicked Christians.
In these same foot-hills lies the site of the celebrated Cave of
Adullam, on the side of the Valley of Elah, the scene of David’s meeting
with Goliah. It was first discovered by M. Clermont Ganneau, whose views
were fully borne out by our researches. The cave itself is a small one,
blackened by the smoke of many fires, and scooped in the side of a low
hill, on which are remains of a former town or village. Beneath the
slope is a wide valley, which was full of corn; and the spot is marked
by a group of ancient terebinths, like those which gave the name Elah,
or “terebinth,” to this important Wâdy. There are other caverns opposite
to the Adullam hill, and these are used as stables, while in the cave
itself we found a poor family actually living. The name is now corrupted
to the form ’Aidelmîa, but the position fully agrees with the Bible
accounts, and with the distance from Eleutheropolis (now Beit Jibrîn)
noted by Eusebius.
The Philistine plain from Jaffa to Gaza is one of the best corn
districts in Palestine. It grows steadily wider to the south, and sweeps
round the base of the Hebron hills to Beersheba. The celebrated cities
of the Philistine lords are now, with the exception of Gaza, no longer
important places. Ekron and Ashdod are villages with a few cactus
hedges; Ascalon lies in ruins by the sea; Gath is so much forgotten that
its name has disappeared, and the site is still not quite certain. Gaza
is, however, a large place, with some trade, and with extensive olive
groves. Along this whole coast the sand from the high dunes, which, as
seen from the hills, form a yellow wall between the ploughlands and the
sea, is always steadily encroaching. It has covered up a great part of
the gardens within the walls of Ascalon, and has swept over the little
port of Majuma, west of Gaza; but beyond the line of its advance the
soil is everywhere fertile, and the villages are numerous.
The Philistine plain seems never to have been long held by the Hebrews.
Joshua, Samuel, or Simon the Hasmonean may have conquered its cities, as
Richard Lion-Heart afterwards did, but the Egyptian power in Syria in
all ages has been first felt in this plain. The natives indeed, in
dress and appearance, are more like the peasantry of Egypt than they are
like the sturdy villagers of the other parts of Palestine. In times of
trouble this region is now much exposed to the attacks of the southern
Arabs. Egyptian records show us that the Philistine plain was long held
by the Pharaohs, and we have a representation of the siege of Ascalon by
Rameses II. In Hezekiah’s reign we learn, from the cuneiform records,
that each of the Philistine towns had its own king, and these princes
allied themselves with Sennacherib against Jerusalem.
These facts agree with the account of David’s struggles with the
Philistines, and give the reason why Israel did not enter Palestine “by
the way of the Philistines,” as probably at that time the plain was
actually garrisoned by Egyptians.
It is clear from monumental accounts that there was a Semitic population
in Philistia at a very early period, but it is not certain that the
Philistine race was of this stock. We have Egyptian portraits of
Philistines--a beardless people wearing a peculiar sort of cap or tiara.
Many scholars believe that the Philistines were of the same stock with
the Hittites (who were a Mongolian people), and this may account for the
curious fact that the Assyrians speak of the Philistine town of Ashdod
as a “city of the Hittites.” In Philistia the name of the Hittites is
also probably still preserved in the villages of Hatta and Kefr Hatta.
Among the peasantry there are several legends of the Fenish king and his
daughter, of his garden, and of the place where she used to spin. I
think it is probable that the Fenish was a Philistine, rather than a
Phœnician, legendary monarch.
The town of Gaza, standing on a mound above its olive groves,
surrounded by the crumbling traces of its former walls, contains several
good mosques, one of which is the fine Crusading Church of St. John.
Near Gaza, on the south, is a mound called Tell ’Ajjûl, “hillock of the
calf,” from a legend of a phantom calf said to have been here seen by a
benighted peasant. At this place was discovered a fine statue of
Jupiter, 15 feet high, which now stands at the entrance of the
Constantinople Museum, where I drew it in 1882. This discovery reminds
us that Palestine had also its age of classic paganism, when statues
like those of Roman temples were erected. We have, indeed, an account of
the temples of Gaza, which existed as late as the fifth century, when
the Christians overthrew them and built a church. Venus had here a
statue, much adored by the women, and the Cretan Jupiter was known under
the name Marnas, which is thought to mean “our lord.” It is probably the
statue of Marnas himself that has now been discovered, one of the very
few statues of any importance as yet found in Palestine.
The Philistine plain merges on the south in the plateau called Negeb, or
“dry,” in the Old Testament. This is the scene of Isaac’s wanderings as
described in Genesis, where lie Gerar the city of Abimelech, and
Rehoboth and Beersheba. The region was visited late in 1874, when it was
at its driest, the spring herbage being all long since burnt up. The
Beersheba plains consist of a soft white marl, rising in low ridges, and
not unlike some parts of the Veldt or open grazing-land of Bechuanaland,
in South Africa. The Negeb still supports a considerable nomad
population, and their flocks and herds are numerous. On the east it
sinks to the Judean desert, and on the south descends by bold steps to
the Wilderness of Sinai. The view from the spurs of the Judean hills
near Dhaherîyeh (identified with Debir) is very extensive, ridge beyond
ridge of rolling down stretching to the high points on the horizon which
mark the passes by which ascents lead from the south.
[Illustration: DESERT OF BEERSHEBA.]
This region, though generally without water on the surface, possesses
several groups of deep and abundant wells, where the herdsmen gather to
water the flocks. Among the most renowned are the Beersheba wells, of
which there are three, each a round shaft lined with masonry; one is
dry. The principal supply is from the largest well, 12 feet 3 inches in
diameter, and 38 feet deep to the water in autumn. The smaller dry well
is 5 feet in diameter and 40 feet deep. Round these wells, which have no
parapet, rude stone troughs are placed, into which the water, drawn up
in skin bags, is poured. The water-drawing, to the sounds of Arab
shepherd songs, is one of the most picturesque of sights. It used to be
thought that the masonry was very ancient, but it only extends to a
depth of 28 feet in the largest well, and on one of the stones I found
the words, “505 ... Allah Muhammad,” showing apparently that the
stonework was at least renewed in the fourteenth century A.D.
Any student who desires really to be able to judge of the social life of
the Hebrew Patriarchs should visit the plains of Beersheba. It was here,
we are told, that Isaac passed his life. Here Abraham settled after long
wanderings through the length of Palestine. Here Jacob was born, and
hence he descended into Egypt. It is very notable that Palestine appears
in Genesis as a country already full of cities, and in which land could
only be obtained by the Hebrew immigrants by purchase from landowners
already settled--the Hivites of Shechem and the Hittites of Hebron. In
the pastoral plains of Beersheba, however, the wanderers ranged
undisturbed even by the Philistines of Gerar. So it is to the present
day. The Jordan Valley, to which Lot is related to have taken his
flocks, the desert of Judah, where David fed his sheep, the plains near
Dothan, and the pastures of Beersheba, are still the grazing-lands of
Palestine, where nomadic shepherds range, while the higher lands are
held by a settled population. Although we have no monumental records
sufficiently early to compare with the narrative of Genesis, we find
that the country presented the same aspect when the conquering Pharaohs
of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties invaded it. There were then
regions held by the nomads, and other regions full of fortresses and
open towns.
In the history of the Patriarchs we find described a mode of life just
like that of the modern Arab. The great chief or Emir dwelt in his tent
among his followers, led them out to war, and allied himself to the
neighbouring townsmen, with whose families, however, he scorned to
intermarry. The sons of the Emir and his daughters (like Leah and
Rachel) tended the flocks and herds, and strove at the wells, where
countless beasts awaited their turn. The relation which the Hebrew
chiefs bore to the distant paternal tribe beyond the Euphrates reminds
us how Syrian Arabs still trace their descent from distant families,
with the same tribal name, far off in the Nejed. The stone memorial is
still raised by the Bedawi, as Jacob reared his stone of Bethel; and the
covenant is still sealed by the eating of bread. Still, too, the Arab
hunter brings back savoury venison to the camp, like Esau; and by the
wells of Beersheba you look northwards to the same low hills which were
before Isaac’s eyes when he went forth to pray in the open field--as the
Arab still prays outside his camp--and “beheld the camels coming.” In
the early morning, by the light of the rising sun, I have seen the
camels, preceded by their giant shadows, coming in troops to the wells,
guided by the shepherd-boys, whose music is the same rude pipe on which
the ancient shepherds played. I have seen, too, the dark gipsy-like
girls, with elf locks, blue robes, and tattooed faces, who tend the
sheep as Rachel and Leah (still children) tended those of Laban before
they were old enough to be restricted to the women’s side of the
curtain, and to follow their mothers to the well.
The visit to Beersheba was not without its adventures. This was the only
occasion on which a thief--of many who tried but were discovered by our
terriers--succeeded in making his way into the tents. He took with him
all our food, and we had to depend on the wild sand-grouse and plovers
for our dinner. It was during the fast of Ramadan that this journey was
undertaken, and the Moslem guides suffered greatly in consequence; for
fasting among the Moslems in Ramadan is a very serious matter, and
especially so among the primitive villagers of Judea. Not a scrap of
food, not a drop of water, not a whiff of tobacco will then pass the
lips of the strict Moslem between sunrise and sundown. I have seen the
wrath of the spectators roused when an old man of eighty washed his
mouth with water on a day of scorching east wind. We had gone down to
explore an underground tank in Hebron, and as he stooped to the water we
heard a voice shouting, “Ah! Hamzeh, God sees you!” and the unfortunate
elder rose at once in confusion. When the sun sets, a cry goes up
throughout the town or village--a shout from the men and a shrill
tremulous note from the women--for then it is lawful to break the trying
fast. Even children are induced by pious parents to keep Ramadan, and
some zealots will continue fasting for ten days beyond the prescribed
time. The Moslem year being lunar, and thus never the same year by year
in relation to the seasons, it is especially at those times when Ramadan
falls in September that this privation is most felt.
Not that I would lead the reader to suppose that all Moslems are thus
strict in religious duty. In Islam there is as much scepticism,
indifference, outright rejection of religious belief as in Christendom;
and history reveals that this has always been so since Islam became a
religion.
Among the antiquities of the Beersheba desert there are several rude
buildings of undressed chert blocks, which may be almost of any age. It
was, however, in the early centuries of Christianity that this region
was apparently most fully inhabited.
The hermits who, like Hilarion, came from Egypt and settled in the Holy
Land, soon gathered disciples round them; and even against their will
monasteries rose by their cells, and a village round the monastery.
Pious pilgrims like Antoninus, not content with seeing Palestine,
ventured far into the deserts, and down to the miraculous tomb of St.
Catherine in Sinai. Thus, in the fourth century, Jerome found the land
full of monks and nuns, even in the wilderness; and stories which may
have been told to the Arabs by these eremites still linger among them.
We have early Christian accounts of Pagan rites among the natives of the
Negeb, who still in the seventh century were worshipping Venus at Elusa,
and the stone menhirs on Mount Sinai. There is no part of Syria in which
the anchorites’ cells are not found, though in modern times they are
only represented by the Jericho hermits--Abyssinians and Georgians, who,
I believe, only retire to the wilderness during Lent.
Glancing back over this sketch of exploration in Judea, I only note one
place of primary interest which has not been mentioned, namely,
Bethlehem. It is, however, familiar to every tourist, and nothing new
was added by the surveyors to what was already known concerning this
city, except that the crests which Crusading knights drew upon the
pillars of Constantine’s great basilica were carefully copied.
Bethlehem is a long white town on a ridge, with terraced olive groves.
The population is chiefly Christian, and thrives on the manufacture of
carved mother-of-pearl shells, and objects made from the bituminous
shale of the desert, which pilgrims purchase. The peculiar (and probably
very ancient) head-dress of the women, adorned with rows of silver
coins, has often been represented in illustrated works.
The main antiquity of the place is the great basilica of Constantine,
with its thirteenth-century mosaics and wooden roof. Beneath the choir
is the traditional site of the “manger,” which has been constantly shown
in the same place for nearly eighteen centuries. The church itself is
one of the oldest in the world; and Justin Martyr, in the second
century, mentions the cave. Origen also says that “there is shown in
Bethlehem the cave where He was born, and the manger in the cave”
(Against Celsus, I. li.), so that the Bethlehem cave-stable is noticed
earlier than any other site connected with New Testament history. It is
the only sacred place, as far as I know, which is mentioned before the
establishment of Christianity by Constantine, yet it is remarkable that
Jerome found it no longer in possession of the Christians. “Bethlehem,”
he says, “is now overshadowed by the grove of Tammuz, who is Adonis; and
in the cave where Christ wailed as a babe the paramour of Venus now is
mourned.”