enlarge-imageTHE PLAIN OF JERICHO, AS SEEN FROM AI. To face page 35.THE PLAIN OF JERICHO, AS SEEN FROM AI.To face page35.
THE PLAIN OF JERICHO, AS SEEN FROM AI.
To face page35.
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. TheShephelah 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-echoedfrom 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 thatmoney 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 70A.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 74A.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 300feet 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, theempty 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 coneymakes 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 shakingwith 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.
enlarge-imageTHE DEAD SEA (VIEW S.E. OF TAIYIBEH). To face page 43.THE DEAD SEA (VIEW S.E. OF TAIYIBEH).To face page43.
THE DEAD SEA (VIEW S.E. OF TAIYIBEH).
To face page43.
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 twelfthcentury 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 bettermight 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 centuryA.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 centuryB.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 theGreek 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 1153A.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 ofthe 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 1191A.D.marched down from Acre, sorely harassed by the rain of arrows on their armour. Every river and every tower mentionedon 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 remainsof 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. Thenatives 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 itsolive 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 theWilderness 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.
enlarge-imageDESERT OF BEERSHEBA.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 itonly 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 centuryA.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 wildsand-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, inthe 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 bituminousshale 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.”
MYfirst experiences of Palestine survey were from the camp at Nâblus,[35]the ancient Shechem. The method which we then employed was very little varied throughout the whole period of our labours. The camp, consisting of three or four tents, was pitched in some convenient central position by a town or village. Thence we were able to ride eight or ten miles all round, and first visited a few of the highest hill-tops, where, when the observations with the theodolites were complete, we built great cairns of stone. The survey was trigonometrical, depending on two bases, one near Ramleh, east of Jaffa, the other in the plain of Esdraelon, north of Jenin. In 1881 I measured a third base on the Moab plateau, south of Heshbon. All these were connected by triangulation, the stations being from five to fifteen miles apart. The heights of these stations were also fixed by theodolite angles, and thus the elevations above the sea of every great mountain from Dan to Beersheba, and of those east of Jordan between the Jabbok and the Arnon, are known within a limit of four or five feet at least.
The triangles having been calculated in camp, the surveyors separated, and each with his prismatic compass worked in the detail of roads, valley beds, villages, ruins, towers, and all that is usually shown on maps of this scale by Ordnance surveyors. He took the aneroid heights of all important points, which I regard as reliable within ten or twenty feet. He was invariably accompanied by a local guide, who gave the names of the various features shown. The surveyor was never responsible for the spelling of these names. A native scribe was employed to catalogue them in Arabic letters, and thus the errors which might have been caused by the difficulty of distinguishing the sounds of Arab letters were avoided. Without such precaution it would have been impossible to make any scientific comparison with the Hebrew names of the Old Testament.
This work being complete and penned in, we were ready to move the camp. There are parts of the map which I executed to assist my staff, but, as a rule, when the triangulation was complete, I was free to spend much of my time in exploring the important sites within reach, of which I made special surveys on a larger scale.
The explorer is, however, not his own master until he becomes practically acquainted with the language of the natives; and although I had learned French in France and Italian in Italy, the acquisition of a Semitic tongue was only so far rendered easy, that no one who has learned one foreign language grammatically and idiomatically is likely to be content with any other kind of knowledge of other tongues. At the same time, those who have had the advantage of studying foreign languages on the spot know how much easier and moreagreeable it is to learn them, as a child learns his mother tongue, first by practice, afterwards by the rules of the grammarian. In the East, the spoken dialects, such as those of Arabic and Turkish, differ greatly from the literary languages. In speaking, simplicity and brevity take the place of the high-flown and artificial refinements of the modern grammarian. The vernacular grammar is simplicity itself compared with the literary style, which only schoolmasters or pedants affect in everyday speech. Nor, indeed, is such indifference to strict grammar unknown even in our own land, though in a less degree, in spoken as compared with written phrase.
At first there was only time to obtain a very superficial smattering, for everyday uses, of the Fellah dialect, which is archaic and rude as compared with theNahuor “correct” language; but it appeared to me absolutely necessary, not only to understand the Arabic alphabet, but also to become acquainted with the elements at least of grammatical structure; and for this I found leisure during the winters, and the summer holiday of 1873, when a native teacher could be obtained from Damascus. When once the unfamiliar principles of Semitic grammar are understood in one language of the small group (including Hebrew, Arabic, and the Aramean dialects), the student should be able to learn other tongues of the group by the aid of books; but my first lessons in Hebrew I owe to the kind interest of a friend since dead, who devoted time to my education in Jerusalem itself. So unlike in structure are these tongues to either Aryan or Turanian languages, that the idiom is at first hard to catch; and I doubt if any European, until he has lived in the East some time, isever likely correctly to pronounce the gutturals of the Arabic, unless he is gifted with an ear much more sensitive than usual.
After many years’ study of the native dialect, it appears to me that its further investigation would be of great value to scholars. There can be no doubt that ordinary conversation of the peasantry preserves archaisms of sound, of idiom, and of expression which recall rather the Aramaic spoken in Palestine in the days of Christ than the pure Arabic of southern Arabia. The Syrian dialect (which is much less degraded than Egyptian) is acknowledged, even in dictionaries, to have its peculiarities. The Lebanon servants in my employ were almost unable to understand the speech of the Beni Sakhr Arabs in the Moab desert. The dialect of the towns differs, again, especially in pronunciation, from that of the peasants. The convenient auxiliaries used in daily speech are not recognised in standard grammars, and not a few familiar words of the Fellah dialect I have been unable to discover in the standard dictionaries of Lane and Freytag.[36]The Hebrewgoran, “a threshing floor,” andmoreg, “a threshing-sledge,” are still words used by the peasants, as is the Assyriansada, for a “mountain,” and many other ancient words which a good Hebrew scholar will recognise. The peasantry, in short, are not, properly speaking, Arabs, but descendants, in part at least, of the old population to which the Phœnicians belonged, mingled with colonists imported by the Assyrians from Aram, and with the Nabathean and Arab tribes from the south-east. To one acquainted with such a race, the narratives of Genesis and Samuelmust always read as though falling from the lips of a modern Syrian, speaking with the same terse vigorous idiom in which his fathers wrote. The Fellahin have been called “modern Canaanites,” and if by this is meant descendants of the Semitic race which the Egyptians found in Palestine before the time of the Hebrew conquest under Joshua—akin to those whose language is represented by the Moabite Stone, and the Phœnician texts from the north coast—the term seems justified by what is known; but, as we shall see a little later, there has always been another population in Syria side by side with the Semitic, of which a few traces are yet discoverable not far north of Shechem.
Ancient Shechem stood very nearly on the same site occupied by the large stone town of Nâblus, in the well-watered gorge, full of gardens of mulberry and walnut, with vineyards and olive-yards and fig trees, above which rise the barren slopes, of Ebal on the north and Gerizim on the south. About one and a half miles to the east, where the vale opens into the small plain of Moreh, is the undisputed site of Jacob’s Well; and north of this, at the foot of Ebal, the little village of Askar, among its cactus hedges, preserves the site of Sychar, mentioned in the fourth Gospel, below which is the tomb of Joseph.
It is curious that Josephus believed Joseph to have been buried at Hebron, for the Book of Joshua places his tomb at Shechem. The monument now shown is an ordinary Syrian tomb in an open-air enclosure by a little ruined mosque. The peculiar feature consists in two pedestals with shallow cups in their tops, placed one at the head, the other at the foot of the grave. I have been told that both Jews and Samaritans offerburnt-offerings at this shrine on these pillar altars, the offerings consisting of shawls, silks, and such fabrics. The same practice is observed by Jews annually at the tomb of the celebrated Simeon Bar Jochai at Meirûn, in Upper Galilee. The substitution of fabrics for animal sacrifices recalls the paper figures which the Chinese burn, representing the various sacrifices, animal or human, which in earlier ages were burned at tombs.
Shechem has long been a place of special interest, because it is the last refuge of the few survivors of the old Samaritan sect, which, according to their own records, once inhabited every part of Galilee and Samaria, and whose synagogues down to quite recent times existed in Damascus and Alexandria. Although almost every traveller visits their synagogue at Nâblus, it is very difficult to become intimately acquainted with this proud and reserved people; and there are very few persons living who have really seen the oldest of the manuscripts of the Pentateuch which they possess. Scholars, it is true, no longer attach the exaggerated value to this document which it was thought to possess when first attention was called to its existence, and before science was able to show its comparatively modern date, as indicated by the character in which it is written. Yet this venerable roll is perhaps the oldest copy of the Bible in the world, and until it has been read by a competent scholar, it is impossible to say what light it may throw on the study of the Pentateuch.
The Samaritans, according to the latest accounts which I have been able to obtain, number about 160 persons. I had opportunities not only of visiting their synagogue, but of holding a long conversation withthe high priest, and questioning him concerning their traditions and literature. They claim to know not only the real tombs of Joseph and Joshua, and of the sons and grandsons of Aaron, sites which are now identified, but also the burial-places of all the sons of Jacob, of which tombs many are also revered by Moslems; but the reliability of such traditions is not very certain. The Samaritan chronicles are not traceable beyond the Middle Ages; but one of these (to be distinguished from their “Book of Joshua,” with its wild legends of Alexander the Great) is a very sober work, to which successive high priests are said to have added brief notes of the chief events of their age.[37]Of this chronicle I made careful study, and found that, as regards its geography at least, it is possible to obtain a very clear idea, and many interesting notices are included of places otherwise very little known in all parts of Palestine. This practice of extending a historic journal from time to time is worthy the attention of students of other ancient literatures; and although the chronicle only claims to have been started by Eleazar ben Amran in 1149A.D., it has been carried down to 1859 by successive authors. This chronicle presents, as above noted, a great contrast to their “Book of Joshua,” which is full of Samaritan folk-lore tales, and consists of two parts, one penned in 1362A.D., and the second in 1513A.D.Of their copies of the Pentateuch, kept in the Synagogue, the oldest of those usually shown dates only from 1456A.D.; the date of the oldest of all, called “Abishuah’s Roll,” is not yet known, but it is certainly very ancient, the ink being much faded and the parchment decayed. The fact that a Samaritan text of the sixth century is built into a tower near the Synagogue, and preserves letters of the peculiar character employed by this people, seems to show that not impossibly Abishuah’s Roll may be as old as the sixth or seventh century of our era.
The Samaritans are a fine race, above the average of Orientals in stature, and possessing a beauty of feature and complexion very like the best type of south European Jews. Even in the peculiar crinkle of the hair they resemble the Jews, and there can, to my mind, be no doubt that they are more closely allied by blood to their great rivals than they are to any other Oriental people. It is impossible here to inquire into the details of their history, which are very generally known, but the inquiries made by us at various times agree with former researches in indicating that, in many particulars, the pietists of Nâblus have preserved the letter of their law in more primitive degree than have even the Karaites or other puritan Jewish sects which discard Talmudic teaching. So great is their terror of defilement, that they will not even close the eyes of their dead, and employ Moslems to prepare them for burial. In this extreme observance they resemble the Falashas or Abyssinian Jewish converts, who even take the sick out of their houses before death. One very curious custom is observed when, on the eighth day, the Samaritan boys are circumcised. An ancient hymn is sung, which includes a prayer for a certain Roman soldier named German, because he connived at circumcision when forbidden by the Romans, and refused to acceptany reward for so doing, asking only to be remembered in their prayers; which desire has been respected for perhaps sixteen hundred years.
Shechem, the home of the Samaritans, has often, from the twelfth century to the present day, been confounded with the city of Samaria, five miles farther to the north-west; but at the latter site there are, I believe, no Samaritans living. The peasant population of Palestine in this central district differs somewhat, however, from that of either Galilee or Judea. It was here that we found the peculiar head-dress which recalls the “round tires like the moon” that roused the Hebrew prophet’s wrath (Isa. iii. 18). These horse-shoe head-dresses, made up of large silver coins laid overlapping, are worn only by married women, often with a crimson head-veil. Some of the little terra-cotta statues of Ashtoreth which are found in Cyprus and in Phœnicia, representing a naked goddess, have just the same crescent-shaped bonnet, and it was perhaps originally connected with the worship of this deity, and therefore hateful to the servant of Jehovah.
The site of Samaria is that of a considerable town, upon an isolated hill, with springs in the valley and olives climbing the terraced slopes. On the summit a colonnade, probably of the age of Herod the Great, runs round a long quadrangle, enclosing the site of the temple built in honour of Augustus by Herodian servility; and on one side are the ruins of the great Crusading Church of St. John, in the crypt of which was shown his tomb. It was believed in the Middle Ages that the head of the Baptist was here preserved. St. John had apparently two heads, since another was shown in Damascus.
There is no doubt that the tomb in question is an ancient Hebrew sepulchre. Perhaps it may be that of the “Kings of Israel.” At least eleven bodies could have been here interred, and there were only thirteen Kings of Israel between Omri and the fall of Samaria.[38]An ancient stone door once closed this tomb, carved in panels like other doors of tombs in Palestine belonging to an early age. One which was found farther south was adorned with the heads of lions and bulls, like those found in Phœnician sarcophagi. The date of these monuments is uncertain. In Lycia, Sir Charles Fellows found doors sculptured with exactly the same ornamental details, which may be as old at least as 500B.C.
enlarge-imageKURN SARTABA.KURN SARTABA.
East of Shechem, and to the south, there are mountains more rugged than any south of Galilee. The border of Samaria, which divided it from Judea, ran through these mountains, following the line of theprincipal valley bed. It had never been laid down with any attempt at exactness before the Survey, but now that the position of the border towns is correctly fixed, it becomes possible to trace it throughout. The Judean outpost on the north-east was the extraordinary conical mountain called Sartaba, which rises from the Jordan Valley. This little-visited peak was thoroughly explored. On the summit a square foundation was discovered, surrounded by an oval rampart. The cone has been artificially cut in places, and is some 270 feet high. The remains may be those of the fourteenth-century fortress, but the site has a much earlier history.
On their return from exile the Jews were accustomed to fix the first day of each month by actual observation of the new moon, and according to the Mishna, the announcement was made throughout the Holy Land by means of bonfires on the mountains. One of these bonfire stations was Sartaba, and it is not impossible that the remains of extensive ash-deposits observed on the mountain were traces of such beacons. The practice was open to mistake, for the Jews assert that the Samaritans used to light fires on neighbouring heights with the malicious intention of confusing the Jewish calendar, and making the Passover feast to fall on the wrong day. Whether we are to credit the statement that this chain of beacons extended even to Mesopotamia is doubtful, but the Jews certainly long kept up intercourse with their brethren in Babylonia.
On the south of Shechem rises the great rounded top of Gerizim, whence the eye ranges from Gilead to the Mediterranean, and on the north to dusky Carmel and snowy Hermon. On the south side of the mountain is Kefr Hâris, where, according to the Samaritans, Joshuawas buried—a tradition nowise discordant with the statements of the Old Testament, and which can be traced back at least to the fourth century. Here also the peasants show the tomb of his father, Nun. On the mountain-side, near the summit, the Passover is still eaten, and here, as the Samaritans say, once stood their temple. There are no remains of any great building, but a sacred slab of rock, in which is one of those curious “cup hollows” so frequently found in connection with prehistoric monuments. On the west, the Sharon plain extends beyond the olive groves of the foot-hills to the dark ruined ramparts of Cæsarea—a region which was surveyed in the spring of 1873, and many interesting ruins were then explored. It is one of the most lawless parts of the country, and was then but little cultivated. Scattered oak woods, sandy dunes, marshes, and boggy streams occupy great part of its extent; and on the north is the Crocodile River, still the dwelling of these monsters, who are not found in other streams, but lie in the muddy river under the papyrus or amid the reeds as comfortably as in the Nile.
The crocodiles of this region are mentioned by many writers, from Pliny downwards. A curious story was told in the thirteenth century, according to which they were imported from Egypt by a lord of Cæsarea, in order that his brother might become their victim. The brothers went to bathe in the river, but the wicked lord went in first and was eaten, while his innocent brother escaped.
This part of the plain of Sharon and the west side of the Esdraelon plain are the only places in Palestine, so far as I have been able to ascertain, where Turkoman encampments are found. In Northern Syria the Turkoman camps are more numerous. I have visitedtheir tents in the plains near Kadesh on Orontes, and in the oak-dotted vale where the Eleutherus rises. To the casual visitor they seem to be Bedu, and indeed those in the Sharon plain have almost forgotten their original language. We know historically that a horde of the followers of Ghazan Khan in 1295A.D., consisting, it is said, of 18,000 tents, came down to Damascus and settled on the coasts of Palestine. Probably the existing Turkoman tribes are the last relics of this horde; but in this mixture of Tartars with the Semitic race of Syria we see still surviving a condition of population as old as the days of Abraham. It is now the general opinion of competent scholars that the non-Semitic population which the Egyptians in the sixteenth centuryB.C.found in Syria—more especially in the north—was a Mongolic race. The monuments show that in feature they were Mongolian and that they wore the Tartar pigtail, and the names of their chiefs and towns tell the same tale. The Turkomans are degraded representatives of a kindred race. The Turkish masters of Palestine hold now the same position which the Hittite princes held in the days of Abraham and Solomon as over-lords in a country whose inhabitants were mainly of another race.
The greater part of the Jordan Valley lies within the boundaries of Samaria, and it was for this reason that Galilean Jews travelling to Jerusalem crossed the Jordan and journeyed down the left bank to Jericho, where they crossed again without having approached the country of heresy. As regards the western borders of Samaria, there is less certainty perhaps, but such information as we possess seems to show that the limits of this province must be extended to the sea-shore.[39]Indeed, hadit been otherwise, the journey from Galilee along the coast would always have been preferable to that along the east side of the Jordan Valley. It must be confessed that the Samaritans possessed some of the best land in Palestine.
Since the greater part of the Jordan Valley thus belonged to Samaria, the exploration of the valley may be here noticed. The survey of the plains of Jericho has been recorded in the preceding chapter. From Jericho in the early spring of 1874 the party proceeded northwards, and by April, in spite of very bad weather, the work was finished within a few miles of the Sea of Galilee.
The total length of the valley is about a hundred miles from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. The level of the latter Sir Charles Wilson has determined as 1292 feet below the Mediterranean. The former, as determined by the line of levels which, under a grant from the British Association, I commenced in 1875, and which was completed in 1877, is 682 feet below the same datum. Thus the average fall of the river is 600 feet in a hundred miles, but the upper part of the course is the more rapid, falling about 400 feet in fifty miles. The width is pretty constant along the whole course, the evaporation counterbalancing the additional flow of the Jabbok and other affluents. The volume of water brought down by the Jordan, and evaporated during the summer months in the Dead Sea, makes a difference of fifteen feet between the summer and winter surface of that sea over an area of about 400 square miles. The flow is greatest when the snows on Hermon begin to melt, about the time of Passover, when “Jordan overfloweth its banks all the time of harvest;” forharvest in this deep valley is much earlier than even in the Sharon plains. The river flows in a narrow bed between banks of marl, and the Zor, or depressed channel on either side, averages about a mile across, flanked by white cliffs and steep slopes fifty feet high. In high flood this channel is at times all under water, and the river becomes about a mile wide, but soon sinks within its natural borders. The Zor is filled with brushwood of tamarisk, agnus-castus, and other vegetation, and in places the river is hidden between the bushes and cane beds. Near the fords it is seen as a brown swirling stream with a rapid current. In the upper part of its course there are numerous fords and small rapids. No less than forty crossing places, nearly all of which were previously unknown, were marked by the surveyors.
enlarge-imageTHE JORDAN VALLEY (ESH EL GHURAB).THE JORDAN VALLEY (ESH EL GHURAB).
The most interesting discovery in connection with the river was that of the ford called ’Abârah. The name was found in one place only, and does not recur in the ten thousand names collected during the survey. It was applied by the Arabs to one of the chief fords leadingover to Bashan, in the vicinity of Bethshean, where the road from Galilee comes down the tributary valley of Jezreel. ’Abârah means “ferry” or “crossing,” and there is no doubt that it is the same word which occurs in Beth Abârah, “the house of the crossing,” mentioned (John i. 28) as a place where John preached, and where, according to the usual opinion, Christ was Himself baptized.
The traditional site of the Baptism, from the fourth century down to the present day, lies much farther south, at the ford east of Jericho, where Israel crossed from Moab to Gilgal; but the distance from this spot to Cana of Galilee is so great, that it is impossible to reconcile this tradition with the New Testament account. Nor is there anything in that account which points to this southern site. The visit yearly paid by Greek pilgrims to the traditional spot, near Justinian’s old monastery of St. John on Jordan, has often been described. In the sixth century Antoninus speaks of the vast crowd which used there to assemble at the Feast of Epiphany, when it was believed that Jordan yearly rolled itself back and stood still till the baptisms were ended. “And all the men of Alexandria who have ships, with their crews, holding baskets full of spices and balsams, at the hour when the priest blesses the water, before they begin to baptize, throw those baskets into the river, and take thence holy water, with which they sprinkle their ships before they leave port for a voyage.”
It must be confessed that these offerings to the Jordan savour of paganism rather than of Christianity. Sennacherib, before he crossed the river-mouths at the Persian Gulf, threw gold and silver fishes into the water. Alexander the Great, in like manner, according to Arrian,offered a golden goblet to the Indus. In Etruria the Lake of Ciliegeto was found full of bronzeex votos, with coins and other objects, thrown by pious visitors into the water, and other instances are known in India. Nor is this a solitary example in which the practices of Byzantine Christians in Palestine are intimately connected with the older pagan rites of the country.
There is, as before said, no strong reason for accepting this traditional site for Bethabara. Some of the earliest MSS. of the Gospel read Bethania for Bethabara; but Origen disputed this reading, and Bethania is probably the later form of the Hebrew word Bashan. Bethabara is found at least in the Codex Ephraemi (C2), and Origen says that nearly all copies of the Gospel in his time had this reading. It would seem then probable that the scene is to be laid, not in the lower, but in the upper part of the Jordan Valley, where the highway from Galilee crosses over to Bashan, where, gay with flowers and carpeted with grass, the plain, dotted with stunted palms, extends between the basalt heights crowned by the Crusading Castle of Beauvoir and the long slopes round Pella, the home of the early Ebionites, who fled from the destruction of Jerusalem, and formed a quiet Christian community in the wilderness where John had baptized.
Few more beautiful scenes can be desired than that which the Jordan Valley presents in spring, when the grass has grown long, and the eye looks down from the hill on the wide stretches of varied colour which fields of wild-flowers present. The pale pink of the phlox, of the wild geranium and cistus, the yellow of the St. John’s wort and of the marigold, the deep red of the pheasant’s-eye and anemone, the lavender of the wild stock aremingled with white and purple clover, white garlic and purple salvia, snapdragons, star-daisies, and the earlier narcissus. Theretem, or white broom—the juniper of Scripture—is then in blossom; the long wreaths of vapour cling to the stony mountains of Gilead, and hide its oak glades and firs. The stork pilgrims have come from the south, bringing the spring-time, and rest their weary wings by the marshy brooks round Bethshean, where the chorus of frogs day and night invites their own destruction.
But towards the south the saltness of the soil is too great for such vegetation. For five or six miles north of the Dead Sea the marl flats support only the low bushes of the alkali plant. Even half-way up the valley there are salt springs and tracts of barren salt marl; and one of our camps in the narrow gorge called Wâdy Mâleh (“the Valley of Salt”) was placed beside a hot sulphurous spring too brackish to drink. For several days we experienced much discomfort in this volcanic ravine, and had to fetch water from a considerable distance. These traces of volcanic action occur from north to south on both sides of the Jordan Valley. Beds of lava and basalt occur both west and east of the Sea of Galilee, and again east of the Dead Sea. Hot springs are found on either shore of that sea, and again at the famous Baths of Gadara, and at those of Hammath near Tiberias. Even in times long after the great fault had rent this mighty gorge from north to south, tearing asunder the sandstone beds, and bending down the chalk strata on the west, forming the chain of lakes between Hermon and the Arabah of which the Dead Sea and Sea of Galilee are the last relics, and of which we traced the raised beaches far up the valley—long after all theseconvulsions, fiery streams of lava flowed over the plains of Bashan, and reached the shores of Tiberias, and covered the cliffs to the west with black volcanic rocks, which form rolling downs of treeless land. Nor was this energy spent even in late historic times, when the great earthquake of 1837 overthrew the town of Safed, and raised the temperature of the hot springs in the valley.
Among the curious delusions which seem destined again and again to recover from the ridicule cast upon them by practical knowledge is the famous fallacy of a Jordan Valley Canal. Leaving aside the question of an expenditure to which that of the Panama Canal cannot compare, the theorists who have proposed this wild scheme do not seem to reflect that the whole volume of the Jordan never suffices permanently to alter the Dead Sea level. The canal then must let in much more water than the river. If it were possible to fill this valley to sea-level—as no doubt it may once have been filled by Nature herself—not only would the crops of the inhabitants be overwhelmed, with the villages of Jericho and Delhemiyeh and the town of Tiberias, but the sea so formed would extend to a breadth of from ten to twenty miles, covering all the villages and corn-lands of the valley of Jezreel. It is almost incredible that this chimera should have received serious support from influential and monied believers in the unlimited powers of modern engineering. A very simple calculation shows that were the sea admitted by such a canal as was proposed in 1883, it might pour into the valley, but could never make headway against the enormous power of evaporation in this burning gulf. Even on the higher plateau near Damascus the rushing stream ofthe Abana is unable to penetrate far into the desert, and sinks in the marshes of the Birket ’Ateibeh.[40]
The exploration of the valley was one of the most trying periods of the Survey. At first a constant downpour of rain, with clouds scudding along below sea-level, and storms of snow and hail interrupting the observations from the hill stations, delayed our progress. Afterwards the want of fresh water at Wâdy Mâleh proved very trying; then the marshy land round Bethshean brought fever into the camp; lastly, the intense heat obliged us to work in the very early hours of dawning light, and nearly cost me a sunstroke.
There was also great difficulty in obtaining supplies and transport. Our party was by this time so well organised that no time, as a rule, was lost in changing camp. But in the valley we waited day after day in the wet, suffering some of us from rheumatism, and unable to move the sodden and heavy tents. Our first camp was at Wâdy Fusail, near the site of the ancient Phasaelis; and here we found it almost impossible to get any of the Bedu to stay with us. The reason, true or not, which they gave for avoiding the place was, that it is haunted by a ghoul,—that evil and corpse-eating demon whose haunts are shown all over Syria. More than once, while exploring a dark cavern or descending a rock-cut tunnel, we have heard the frightened guide shouting outside, and found him astonished to see us emerge in safety from the ghoul’s den. The ghoul lives also in the great dolmens and in hermits’ caves; but though I have felt on one occasion, in a tunnel where itwas necessary to crawl flat, the frightened bats creeping in my hair, I have never been privileged to see or hear a ghoul.
The Wâdy Fusail ghoul, however, was the cause of much delay, and when at last we induced the Arabs to come by daylight with camels, we found that they never used saddles, and their camels were, indeed, almost untrained and very small. We missed the sturdy beasts used by the peasantry, and had very great difficulty in loading the desert dromedaries at all.
It was a pleasure, in the times when the party was well provided with transport, to watch the expedition on the march. The horsemen, on trusty Arab ponies, never sick or sorry, never baffled by the stoniest bridle-path, came first, with our breed of white terriers, which were hardly recognised as dogs by the natives, and which often, night after night, saved us from the depredations of determined horse-thieves. Behind the horsemen came our own baggage-mules, carrying all that was needful for the first founding of the new camp; behind these, again, the camels with heavy stores swung slowly along, while the Maronites, on their donkeys, the Bedu guides on horses and dromedaries, formed a picturesque straggling band, which, as reviewed from a low hill, sometimes extended over half a mile of road. It is pleasant to reflect that, in the years we worked together, there was no dissension, no desertion, and no grumbling in the camp. We suffered together in seasons of sickness, but we stuck together as long as health lasted, and till the work, was done.
enlarge-imageA CAMP IN THE JORDAN VALLEY.A CAMP IN THE JORDAN VALLEY.