Another incident showed me Arab life in a more pleasing colour. We had ridden through Jordan, and were resting on the bank, when a poor Arab with his wife on a donkey came down to the river. Addressing Goblan in that simple way in which the meanest Arab addresses the greatest chief, he said, “Goblan! take my wife over the river.” The old chief at once complied, and ordered his son to take the woman on his horse behind him. Rather sulkily his handsome son obeyed, and went back through the river to the western bank. These men were the true sons of that great Arab who, having conquered all Syria, rode into Jerusalem on his camel in the simple garb of the desert.
The kindly greetings which Goblan bestowed on the men he met, on the women and children at the springs, and on the poorest of his fellows, showed perhaps that he had learned the secret of governing others, and his strength lay in the simplicity and steadfast constancy of his actions. They had but one opinion in Moab, that Goblan alone represented the freedom of earlier days.
Tall, gaunt, with a dusky colour, one eye red and sightless, one cheek furrowed with the sword, with a thick, straight, obstinate nose, and a few silver locks, usually hidden, the old chief was yet at times, when no one mentioned the Turks and the Beni Sakhr, of cheerful mien. He is one of the few Orientals I ever met with a sense of humour, and often laughed most heartily.He could neither write nor read, and he never smoked tobacco.
Peace be to his ashes; and I hope the monument which covers them is at least equal to that which is erected in Goblan’s own country to his great rival, Fendi el Faiz, who died on his way to the Beni Sakhr country.
NORTHof Heshbon the country rises slightly, and we enter the region surrounding the large ruined city of ’Ammân—the Rabbath Ammon of the Bible and the Roman Philadelphia. This was the most important ruin surveyed in Palestine, as regards its antiquarian interest, and the best specimen of a Roman town that I visited, except the still more wonderful ruins of Gerasa, which yield only to Baalbek and Palmyra among Syrian capitals of the second century of our era.
On the slopes below the plateau in this region is the still more interesting ruin of Tyrus, the only dated Jewish building of early age that we possess. Although it had often been visited, we were able to add some interesting architectural details, and to correct a false impression about the great Jewish inscription of five letters here boldly carved on the rock.
Tyrus, now called ’Arâk el Emîr, is our one relic of the Jewish architecture of the days of Judas Maccabæus. The priest Hyrcanus, who fled from his brothers beyond Jordan, committed suicide at this place (where he had lived seven years) on hearing of the approach of Antiochus in 176B.C.His life was one of adventure and of constant warfare against the Arab or Nabathean tribesof the region. He first made himself a stronghold consisting of numerous caves in two storeys, with an open rock terrace leading to the upper tier, where, among other chambers, he cut a great stable for his horses. We measured this stable, and found mangers for a hundred steeds. Near this fortress he built his great palace, which is now fallen in, except the east wall. The palace was surrounded by a broad moat, and water was brought by an aqueduct from the stream, which here breaks down rapidly towards the Jordan Valley through dense bushes of oleander, which have grown to the size of forest trees. The walls of the palace were of stones six to eight feet in height and fifteen to twenty feet long. Only three courses were required to reach up to the roof. The top course above a narrow frieze was adorned at each corner by rude sculptured figures of lions, which were carved in relief by sinking back part of the face of the stone after it was placed in position.
The details of some fragments of cornice are rude imitations of Greek classic style, but the extraordinary capitals of great pillars belonging to the interior are unlike any that I have elsewhere seen, and they most resemble Egyptian work. They seem not to have been noticed by De Vogüé, whose work I have generally found to be very detailed and faithful.
Whether this great palace was ever quite finished seems doubtful. A stone which must weigh about fifty tons lies half-way between the building and the quarry, as though left on the last day when the building was stopped. A deliberate destruction of the walls seems also certainly to have occurred.
enlarge-imageALPHABETS OF WESTERN ASIA. 900 B.C. TO 500 A.D.
Here, then, we have an ancient dated Jewish inscription, belonging to an age singularly deficient in monumentalremains, and to a time when the characters used in writing were slowly changing from the old Hebrew to the later square Hebrew letters. A photograph of these boldly-cut letters shows that some of the great authorities who have discussed it have unfortunately started with an incorrect copy. If we compare the letters with those of other alphabets, we find only one which properly accounts for these forms, namely, the alphabet of the Jewish coins which were struck in the same century in which Hyrcanus lived. The meaning of the text is still doubtful, but its date agrees with the comparison of the letters with those used west of Jordan in the same age.
In spite of the scantiness of our materials, the history of writing in Palestine is being gradually unfolded in a marvellous manner. When we look back on the old theories which made the square Hebrew of our own times an original alphabet, unchanged since the time of Moses, and on the equally crude criticism which denied that writing was practised before about 500B.C., we become aware of the rapid advance of knowledge. First came the Phœnician inscriptions, for a few of which great antiquity is claimed, though the majority belong to Greek or Persian times. Then the Moabite Stone was found, and the inhabitants of Eastern Palestine were proved to have been acquainted with monumental writing in the ninth centuryB.C.Then came the Siloam inscription, giving almost an equal antiquity for the alphabet of Jerusalem. To these are added several inscriptions of the second or first centuryB.C., and quite a number which belong to the earliest Christian age. In this series of alphabets we trace the same steady and gradual change which has differentiated all knownalphabets in the world. It would be impossible now to mistake, within fairly narrow limits, the date of such a text as that at Tyrus; and the same reasoning assures us of the age of the important and ancient inscriptions above noticed.
Equally valuable is the light thrown on history by the remains of the Tyrus palace. It belongs to the period just before the revolt of Judas Maccabæus against the Greeks. We see how strongly the builders were influenced by Greek art, while the sculptures of animals show that they were not limited by the commands of the Law which forbade such representations of living things. It is also interesting to notice that the stones in the wall, which are much larger than those in the Jerusalem Temple, are surrounded by a draft like that employed by Herod the Great. This drafting was a Greek method of finishing the stone. It occurs in the walls of the Acropolis at Athens, and it was used in the second centuryA.D.by the Roman builders of Gerasa and Baalbek, the stones in this latter case having in a few instances Greek letters for mason’s marks. There is, I believe, absolutely no foundation for the idea that the early Phœnicians used such a finish to their stones. Drafted stones are, it is true, used in Phœnicia, but the oldest occur on structures of Greek character, and the latest in the Crusading walls of Tyre.
It was the spread of this Greek influence in Palestine which led to the revolt of the zealous and orthodox followers of Judas Maccabæus. The monuments have begun to show us how strong and widely spread was this influence. On the borders of the Egyptian delta Greek cities begin to be known, through the admirable work of Mr. Petrie and others, which give us remainsof Greek or semi-Greek art of a time earlier than that of which we speak. Of course the account of Naucratis in Herodotus; the story of the flight of the Jewish high priest Onias to Egypt, and of his opposition temple; and the account of the translation of the law into Greek at Alexandria in the third centuryB.C., were all well known, as are the chapters in the Book of Maccabees which describe the spread of Greek manners in Jerusalem; but the discovery of existing monuments brings this all more vividly before us; for we rightly attach a far higher value to such contemporary evidence than we do to the modern understanding of ancient literary works, especially when criticism deserts its proper sphere, and begins to invent and to dogmatise.
We know then already, from the monuments, that before the days of the revolt under Judas all the Levantine coast was permeated by Greek influence. Greek coins passed everywhere; Greek pottery is found along the coast; Greek architecture penetrated even into the wilds of Gilead beyond Jordan. The Greek kings of Antioch are said to have left no architectural remains, yet even as far away as southern Arabia the Greek influence extended, and down to the days of Herod the Great it remained one of the great civilising agents in the Levant.
At ’Ammân we find remains of later civilisation—of the great age of the Antonines, when all Syria remained for a time peaceful and prosperous; and in this town also exists one of the most remarkable architectural relics of the Sassanian period in Syria. The oldest remains at ’Ammân are the dolmens, of which, with other rude stone monuments, there are some twenty in all. Next to these come the old rock-cut tombs, which,from comparison with others, I should suppose to be of the early Hebrew period. The Roman remains are the most important, including two theatres, baths, a street of columns, and remains of what was once a very great temple on the highest part of the acropolis of the city. To this age also belong the magnificent private tombs surrounding the city—towers of well-cut masonry filled inside with well-arranged sarcophagi.
No inscriptions were found on these tombs, though inscriptions occur in ’Ammân. From the Greek texts which Sir C. Fellows collected in Lycia we know that these monuments belonged to rich families in Roman times, and that even then the Greek language predominated over Latin in Syria and in Asia Minor. Greek texts of this age also occur at Gerasa and elsewhere side by side with Latin inscriptions. The tomb-towers were under the protection of the Government of the country, and an illicit burial in any of the sarcophagi carved to await the death of the next member of the family, was punished, not only by the curse announced against such violation of a sepulchre, but also by a very substantial fine levied by the state. The tomb-towers round ’Ammân show us, therefore, that several noble families must have lived in the town.
The walls of the citadel may be of earlier date, perhaps of Greek origin; for, according to Polybius, Antiochus the Great here besieged Ptolemy Philopater’s forces in 218B.C.The garrison held out until a prisoner discovered a secret communication with a water supply outside the walls. I was not aware of this statement in Polybius when we were at ’Ammân, but it explains a discovery which we then made, and I think there can be little doubt that we found both this water supply andalso the secret passage. There is a great cavern in the hill on the north of the citadel, evidently once used as a reservoir for water, the stream which supplied the lower town being at some distance from the Acropolis. In the side of this cavern, high up near the entrance, I found a very narrow passage running away in the direction of the citadel walls. I pursued it as far as possible, but it is choked at the end before emerging above-ground. This cave probably contained the water supply on which the Egyptian Greek forces depended in their struggle against the Syrian Greek forces of Antiochus.
To a later period belongs what I have called a Sassanian or early Arab building. It is well known that Dr. Tristram discovered near the Haj Road, east of Heshbon, the remains of a very fine building, which Mr. Fergusson called the Palace of Chosroes. Whether it was really built during the short period of Persian rule in Palestine preceding the triumph of Islam, will probably not be settled until we have copies of the inscriptions which remain at this palace. I regret that the sudden stoppage of the Survey and the unfriendliness of the Beni Sakhr Arabs made it impossible for me to obtain such copies. It is, however, beyond dispute that the art of the Mashita palace is of Persian origin, or influenced by Persia, and it is perhaps not Moslem work; for whereas in the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem the representation of animal life is absent from the mosaics, the stone carvings of Mashita give us many such forms in their elaborate arabesques.
At ’Ammân there is one building, and remains exist of another, which appear very clearly to belong to about the same age with the Mashita palace. The completebuilding is singularly perfect, though its decorations are unfinished. How it ever came to be described as a Byzantine church it is hard to understand, seeing how well known are the features of Byzantine churches in Palestine. Moreover, there is a ruined cathedral with two chapels at ’Ammân itself which are of the Byzantine age.
The building in the citadel is entirely different to any church. It is a square structure, with a central court and four deep alcoves under arched roofs, one on each side of the court. This arrangement is exactly that of some ruined buildings of the Sassanian age in Persia. The form of the arches, the adornment of the walls with arcades in low relief, and other features, are, equally with the plan, common to the ’Ammân buildings and to those of the Sassanians in Persia.
This building may, however, have been erected by Persian architects for one of the early Moslem Khalifs of Damascus. No birds, beasts, or other living things occur in the rich details of its stone tracery, which I carefully copied and measured, and of which Lieutenant Mantell took photographs. The building is of high importance for a period of art in the East concerning which very little as yet is known.
It may be noticed in passing that the walls of this kiosque at ’Ammân are in a style which throws some light on the history of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem. That building is pronounced by architectural authority to be the work of the Khalif Abd el Melek, just as the Arab chroniclers, nearly contemporary with its building, also tell us, and in accordance with the existing inscriptions; but, as I pointed out in 1878, there are reasons for thinking that the octagonal outerwall was built only in the ninth centuryA.D.The details of that wall are very like those of the ’Ammân building, and this comparison will, no doubt, some day prove instructive, especially if we can ascertain the age of the great Mashita palace in Moab.
There is a very old mosque at ’Ammân, with round arches and a short minaret. Unfortunately it is without inscription (save for a later scrawl over the door), and whether it is older than the kiosque may be doubtful, but it shows us that the Moslems built in this town at a very early date. From El Mukaddasy we have a Moslem account of the place as old as the tenth centuryA.D.He speaks of this very mosque as being near the market-place, and he calls the citadel “Goliah’s Castle,” and apparently alludes to the kiosque as a mosque over the tomb of Uriah. Thus the buildings we are discussing clearly existed in 985A.D.The town appears to have been then prosperous; living was cheap and fruit plentiful; grain and honey are mentioned by the Moslem geographer, where now the only cultivation is that of a few wretched gardens tilled by Circassian exiles living in the theatre.
The Survey was extended only a few miles north of ’Ammân; the region as far as Gerasa I saw in 1882, when accompanying their Royal Highnesses Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales beyond Jordan. The region is extremely picturesque, including the wooded hills of Gilead, the bare heights of ’Ajlûn, and the uplands round Gerasa. It is remarkable that this great city beside its mountain stream seems to have been deserted earlier than ’Ammân, although the country near it now contains villages with a settled population, whereas south of Es Salt there are now no villages beyondJordan, and the Circassians at ’Ammân are almost the only inhabitants who do not live in tents. To the antiquary this has been an advantage, since Gerasa remains a purely Roman ruin, only equalled by Palmyra. The area within the city walls at Palmyra (500 acres) was indeed greater than that included within the walls of Jerash (170 acres), but in some respects the architectural remains at the latter date are even of greater importance.
Some very interesting Greek inscriptions once belonging to the early church in Gerasa have been copied by De Vogüé, by Rev. R. B. Girdlestone, by Sir Charles Warren, and by myself. They appear to have gradually fallen into decay, so that my own copy is somewhat less complete than those of the text as it existed twenty years before. The longest of these texts is a poem in hexameter, consisting of thirteen lines, of which the eleventh is taken from Homer,[57]and the whole is a Homeric imitation.
The longest inscription that I copied is not written in regular lines, but runs on, the new line of hexameter being in one case divided from the preceding by a well-shaped Greek cross. The forms of the letters, which I very carefully preserved, are those used in Greek Byzantine inscriptions. This text consisted of six lines of poetry, and is written by a certain wrestler, Theodorus, whose soul is in the broad heaven and his body in the earth. The longer text belonged to the church door, and mentions the cross. It may be translated asfollows, being one of the most curious of the early Christian inscriptions in Syria:—
“Wonder and awe together the passer-by have encountered.Clouds of error are gone, and now in place of the darknessWhich was aforetime here, the grace of God is around me.And when the sound of the groans of the four-footed victims is silencedFormerly falling here—and dire was the stench that arose,So that the wayfaring man must stop his nostrils in passingYea and strive to escape the evil smell on the breezesNow on the sweet-smelling plain the wandering travellers journey,Lifting up as they go the palm of the right to their facesMaking the honoured sign of the cross as a deed that is holy.And if you farther would ask this also that you may know it,Æneas to me has given this excellent glory.Æneas the all-wise priest, well instructed in worship.”
“Wonder and awe together the passer-by have encountered.Clouds of error are gone, and now in place of the darknessWhich was aforetime here, the grace of God is around me.And when the sound of the groans of the four-footed victims is silencedFormerly falling here—and dire was the stench that arose,So that the wayfaring man must stop his nostrils in passingYea and strive to escape the evil smell on the breezesNow on the sweet-smelling plain the wandering travellers journey,Lifting up as they go the palm of the right to their facesMaking the honoured sign of the cross as a deed that is holy.And if you farther would ask this also that you may know it,Æneas to me has given this excellent glory.Æneas the all-wise priest, well instructed in worship.”
“Wonder and awe together the passer-by have encountered.Clouds of error are gone, and now in place of the darknessWhich was aforetime here, the grace of God is around me.And when the sound of the groans of the four-footed victims is silencedFormerly falling here—and dire was the stench that arose,So that the wayfaring man must stop his nostrils in passingYea and strive to escape the evil smell on the breezesNow on the sweet-smelling plain the wandering travellers journey,Lifting up as they go the palm of the right to their facesMaking the honoured sign of the cross as a deed that is holy.And if you farther would ask this also that you may know it,Æneas to me has given this excellent glory.Æneas the all-wise priest, well instructed in worship.”
The reference is clearly to the establishment of the Christian ritual, and to the abolition of sacrifices in the Pagan temple.
These inscriptions show us that Gerasa was still inhabited in early Byzantine times, and the church stands just south of the great heathen temple. My visit to Jerash only lasted a day, and it was thus not possible to explore the site very completely, but we found nine inscriptions in all, one of which seems to be new, though unfortunately only a fragment.
On the stylobate of the southern temple is a very boldly carved name, perhaps that of Pertinax, which would give a date towards the end of the second century.[58]
The city stood on the sides of an open mountain-valley, and through the midst flowed a stream, which, running south, breaks in a cascade just by the southern wall. The course is fringed with oleanders, but the hill slopes are bare and stony, though covered, when visited, with corn. The whole course of the city walls is traceable, the masonry lying in heaps, having probably been thrown down by the early Arab invaders from the south. Five gates are distinguishable at the ends of the streets, which were regularly laid out at right angles. The main street ran parallel to the stream on the west, and was flanked throughout, for a length of 700 yards, by columns supporting epistylia. On the south this colonnade ends in a peribolus, which has been supposed to be the forum, just in front of the southern temple. Fifty-eight pillars remain in a single oval 300 feet long, all having Roman Ionic capitals, but not all of equal height.
We approached the city from the south, where, nearly a quarter of a mile from the gate, the road is spanned by a Roman arch of triumph, supposed to be not earlier than the time of Trajan. The ground on the side is strewn in places with violated sarcophagi. On the left of the arch is the great Naumachia basin, surrounded by seats for the spectators, and filled by channels from the brook. On entering the town, a temple is found immediately to the left, and behind this is a theatre with twenty-eight tiers of seats, and capable of holding five thousand persons.
The street of columns from the oval forum consisted of pillars, generally about fifteen feet high and five yards apart. It is divided into three sections by tetrapylons where cross streets intersect. Towards the centre of the street the Corinthian order was found, with Ionic capitalsin the northern and southern parts. Near the middle was a basilica to the right, where, no doubt, judgments were pronounced, and on the left a propyleum, behind which flights of steps appear to have led up to the great temple, which stood high on the hillside, having pillars thirty-eight feet high and six feet in diameter. North of this temple was another theatre, with sixteen tiers of seats—not an odeum, like the preceding, which had a stage, but probably intended only for gladiatorial shows. So also at ’Ammân an odeum with stage, quite as complete as that of the southern theatre of Gerasa, stands close to the larger semicircle, before which is the open area with its vomitoria.
To the right of the street of columns, opposite the northern theatre, and close to the stream, are well-preserved remains of the great baths of Gerasa. In the extreme north-east part of the city, not far from a spring is a third temple, well preserved, and by the spring itself there seems to have been a nymphæum with three altars. Ruins farther south, east of the brook, are thought to represent a market-place and its stables. There are two ancient bridges over the stream, one close to the central basilica, and just outside the south-east gate are the ruins of another church or chapel. It was interesting to note how the paving of the bridge was laid diagonally (as in the opus reticulatum), and ruts seemingly cut through it to guide the wheels of carts or of chariots. By the basilica also are remains of four porphyry columns, and since no such stone is found anywhere nearer than Egypt or Sinai, we see here, as at ’Ammân also and at Tyre, that great labour and expense were devoted to the adornment of the town. I also observed some double columns like those of theGalilean synagogues of the same age, or like the huge granite double monolith at Tyre, probably once belonging to the temple of Melcarth.
The most remarkable fact concerning Gerasa is the absence of historical notices of the city. It already existed in 78B.C., and is mentioned by Josephus and by Pliny. It was still a place of importance in the fourth century, and there are allusions to the name in early Arab works and in Crusading history. Stephen of Byzantium says that Ariston Rhetor came thence. Origen, Jerome, and Epiphanius knew the place, and there were bishops of the city present at some of the Councils; but beyond this we know nothing, save that which we gather from the inscriptions still existing. So numerous and so magnificent were the Roman cities of the second century of our era, that even the fine buildings of a town as large as ancient Tyre excite no particular notice. So imperfectly was it known, that the old Roman map of the fourth century, which makes the Hieromax flow into the Dead Sea direct, appears to put Gerasa opposite Jericho, and the Persian Gulf immediately east of the city. Yet when we visit the ruins, we find that granite pillars were brought from Egypt to adorn its basilica; that its busy population (said to include descendants of some of Alexander’s soldiers) had their baths, their theatres, their public memorials. AnÆthlophoros, become Christian, dedicates a church with Homeric hexameter verses, and the names of Antoninus and perhaps of Pertinax are boldly sculptured on public buildings. Few ruined cities so well attest the far-reaching power of imperial Rome.
The Crusading King Baldwin II., in 1121A.D., made a raid into this country, and overturned a Moslem fortressnear Jerash. The Crusaders had other outposts at Tibneh, at Salt, and on the conical hill of Rubud; but the broad plains of the Hauran, which Baldwin III. endeavoured in vain to conquer, were never wrested from the Sultans of Damascus.
The road to Jordan from Gerasa passes along in sight of the distant castle of Rubud and by the ancient village of Reimun, a well-watered place with ancient tombs. Here, I believe, we should probably place the celebrated Ramoth Gilead, which has, for no reason at all, been identified with Es Salt, a town which takes its name from the old episcopal title Saltus Hieraticus, due to the woods on the hill slopes not far off. From Reimun the path winds down into the beautiful “Valley of the Roebuck” (Wâdy Hamûr), full of picturesque glades. The valley was green with young corn when I visited it, and the stream bordered with oleanders. On the hillsides a dense wood of oaks was topped by dark pines on the higher part of the ridge. Lentisk, arbutus, oleaster, formed its underwood, and here, as on Carmel, the blackbird’s song may be heard. The jay, cuckoo, hoopoe, and tomtit I also found in these woods, with the “murmuring of innumerable doves,” as in the Nazareth oaks.
Among the flowers which I saw in spring on the slopes of Gilead are many of our English species. Clover, ragged-robin, red and white cistus, clematis, crow’s-foot, purple lupins, squills, the pink phlox, the red or blue anemone, cyclamen, corn-flowers, pheasant’s eye, salvia, asphodel (both blue and yellow), vetches, wild mustard, marigold, borage, moon-daisies, cytizus, orchids, and the white broom, Star of Bethlehem, poppies, tulips, and buttercups, all grow in thegrassy dells. Mock orange, hawthorn, honeysuckle, and antirrhinum, the arbutus and the lauristinus, are among its shrubs. Nowhere else in Palestine save in the Jordan Valley have I seen such fields of flowers; but the ravines and hill-slopes of the beautiful Sorrento scenery near Naples both in fauna and flora very nearly approach the natural history of Gilead.
These scenes were among the last through which it was my lot to pass in Syria. Hurrying back from Damascus to Jerusalem, I rejoined my companions, and we went down to Jaffa, where we took the northern steamer in order to escape Alexandria by a longer sea-route. Rumours had already reached us of the massacres in Egypt, and my reports concerning the unsettled state of the Levant I found to have been already confirmed by the telegrams which were arriving in England when we returned. The steamer was crowded with refugees, and it was not many weeks later that I again stood in the familiar streets of Alexandria, and saw the city of gutted houses, and the ruins which covered the great square with heaps of stone and of plaster. Thus our explorations may be said to have been continued to the last days of peace, before the Levant became the theatre of historic events.
There is only one district of Palestine which has not been described in this volume, namely, the great plains of the Hauran and the volcanic regions of the Lejah and Jaulan. Full as this region is of rude stone monuments, of Roman towns, of Nabathean and Arab texts scrawled on the rock, of Greek temples and Greek inscriptions, it is yet perhaps less unknown and less interesting than the wild deserts of Moab and of Judah, the oak woods of Gilead, the fastnesses of Hermon, the romantic mountainsof Northern Syria, which have here been described. Still it remains a matter of regret to me that the work which was so systematically carried out in other parts of Palestine has not yet been extended over the whole of the Hauran plains.
Such, then, is the present condition of exploration east of Jordan. About a quarter of that region has been surveyed and mapped, and nearly the whole region has been visited by modern trained explorers. Much, however, still remains to be done in the future in this interesting country.
Reference has already been made in the introductory chapter to the map made in this region by Herr G. Schumacher, a younger member of the German colony of Haifa, which has been published by the Palestine Exploration Fund. This map extends eastward of the Sea of Galilee for about twenty miles, and reaches on the north to Banias, and on the south to the region near Abila of Decapolis. An account of the country has also been published from Herr Schumacher’s notes. The curious volcanic region of the Jaulan is included in this area, and the most interesting discoveries, already noted, were the sites of Susieh (or Hippos) and of Kokaba, one of the towns mentioned in connection with the ancient Ebionite sectarians of the second century,A.D.
The unfinished work by De Vogüé remains, however, perhaps the most important contribution to our knowledge of this region. He was the first scientific explorer who exploded the popular fallacy of the “giant cities of Bashan,” by proving that not only were the stone towns of the Hauran of very ordinary dimensions, but that the Greek inscriptions on their walls showed them to have been built by Christians of the third andlater centuries,A.D.The oldest remains in Bashan are apparently the dolmen groups discovered by Herr Schumacher, which are of the same character with those described further south. In the early Christian period the Ebionites flourished in Bashan, where they converted the invading Arabs who advanced from the south; and it is even said that the Arab king, Amr, erected monasteries as early as 180A.D.The Græco-Roman buildings found in the Hauran belong chiefly to this period when the Arab capital was at Bosrah.
The Hauran is a great plateau stretching east to the isolated Jebel Kuleib, which lies on the borders of the Syrian desert. This plateau presents the chief cornfield of Palestine, and the wheat is thence brought down for export to Acre. The population is in great measure Druze, mixed with Arab and Circassian elements. The water supply is chiefly from wells and cisterns, and for this reason Bashan has always presented great difficulties to military expeditions, and the Crusaders never effected its conquest.
The Greek texts, pagan and Christian, here collected by Waddington, De Vogüé, and others, are very numerous, but less interesting as a rule than are the early Arab inscriptions copied by the same explorers. The Nabathean or North Arab texts of the Hauran range from 200B.C.to 200A.D., and are of great epigraphic importance, showing a population of the same stock then also existing in Petra. Yet further east Mr. Cyril Graham discovered inscriptions and rude sketches executed by another Arab stock which advanced from Yemen about the same period. Some seven hundred of these South Arab texts are now known, and in 1877 their relation to the alphabet of South Arabia wasdemonstrated by Halévy. It was this rising tide of northward migration which a few centuries later broke down the Roman power in Syria at the famous battle of the Yermuk (south-east of the Sea of Galilee), when Islam triumphed over the degenerate Byzantines.
PALESTINEproper—from Dan to Beersheba—extends only over the southern half of the Syrian coast which runs northwards to the Bay of Alexandretta, distant 370 miles from Gaza. Yet there is no true geographical division which separates Palestine from Syria, and it is only because the Land of Israel attracts our interest chiefly, that the northern region of Lebanon and the Land of the Hittites is less generally visited. The scenery is perhaps finer than that of Palestine, the antiquities are more important, and the ancient history of the region is equally interesting, though mainly traced through the fragmentary notices of monumental records. Mention has already been made of the ride in Northern Syria which led to our discovery of Kadesh on Orontes, and which extended over half the length of the region. In the following year I twice followed the coast by sea to Alexandretta, but found no opportunity of visiting Antioch and Aleppo. The travels of Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake in this region are published in Captain Burton’s “Unexplored Syria,” and among other modern explorers De Vogüé and Rey have perhaps done most to recover all that is of greatest interest, while valuable discoveries have been made by members of the American MissionarySociety. On the coast also the excavations of Renan at Byblos produced important Phœnician discoveries, and the magnificent collection of the late M. Peretié, which he kindly showed to me at Beirut, was mainly gathered in Northern Syria. It is probable, however, that much still awaits the explorer in this region, hidden in the great mounds of the Buka’a, and in the truly Oriental towns on both sides of the Lebanon.
Northern Syria is divided into two regions by the River Eleutherus, which rises in a hollow plain on the watershed—a saddle dividing the Lebanon on the south from the Anseiriyeh Mountains (the old Mons Bargylus), which runs northwards to the valley of Antioch. East of these chains is the plateau of the Buka’a, watered towards the south by the Litâni River, but for the greater part of its length on the north by the Orontes, which finally turns sharply to the west, entering the valley of Antioch, and falling into the Mediterranean at Seleucia, the old port of Antioch, south of the Bay of Alexandretta. Farther east, the Anti-Lebanon runs out to the great bastion of Hermon, dividing the plains of Damascus from the Buka’a; and on the north this chain sinks into isolated white peaks, where the Buka’a broadens out, east of Homs, into the desert of Palmyra.
The east and west slopes of the Lebanon present a considerable contrast, due in part to the geological formation, and in part to climatic causes. On the west, the deep gorges in the ruddy sandstone are fringed with umbrella pines and tangled copses, and the green of the vineyards extends high up the slopes towards the iron-grey limestone of the upper ridges. On the east, the barren limestone and the gleaming chalk below are only sparsely covered with stunted trees, though olive grovesoccur round the villages. This contrast is, however, not peculiar to the Lebanon—it is notable in all parts of Palestine. The western slopes of Gilead are clothed with oak woods, while the eastern slopes of the Palestine hills are barren deserts. The hills of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea west of the watershed are for the most part well covered with copses, and in the Anti-Lebanon also the same contrast is (though to a less degree) observable.
The reason of this contrast is very evident. The cool and humid western breezes blow from the Mediterranean, and all the vapour so carried inland is caught by the western slopes. Those which face the east are, on the other hand, exposed to the hot blast which blows from the Syrian deserts, while they are at the same time shut out from the sea-breeze. In the Anti-Lebanon the western slopes also are partly excluded from the same life-giving breeze by the superior height of the Lebanon range, while the more fertile sandstone is covered in the Anti-Lebanon by white chalk, grey limestone, and nummulitic beds, which, as a rule, have very little surface soil. The vine is, however, much grown on this range, and its broken ridges present a finer sky-line than is to be found, as a rule, in Lebanon itself. The broad valley which divides these ranges contains some of the best corn-land in Syria, and the Orontes is one of the brightest rivers that water this part of Asia.
The true source of the Orontes is found west of Baalbek, but the main supply of water is from the spring nearly thirty miles farther north, now called ’Ain el ’Asy. The river is here invisible from the plain, being hidden in a ravine some 300 feet deep. The pool, fringed with willows and full of cresses, is surrounded with tawnycliffs, and the full-grown river rushes rapidly northwards in a broad, shallow stream, breaking over a rocky bed between barren slopes dotted with wild olives. Above these slopes rises the grey and stony ridge of the Lebanon on the west, while the brown Buka’a stretches on the east. After about fifteen miles’ run the river emerges again on to the plain near Riblah, and flows by Kadesh to the long artificial lake of Homs, already noticed. Then breaking over the Roman dam in cascades, it again sinks into a trench in the plain, and flows by the gardens of Homs or Emesa, and so on to the hot and unhealthy gorge near Hamath, and to the marshy plain of El Omk, where it joins the Kara Su (“black water”), and suddenly bends to the west.
The limestone both on Lebanon and on Anti-Lebanon appears to be honeycombed with great subterranean caverns, in which underground rivers, fed by the snows of the higher ridges, flow towards the plains. The Abana, which rises in the plain of Zebdâny, west of the main ridge of the Anti-Lebanon, springs up in a blue pool of unknown depth, where the snow-cold water rises with great force and feeds a considerable stream, which, when increased by the rushing fountain at ’Ain Fiji (one of the most picturesque spots in the region), becomes the “River of Damascus,” which Naaman rightly preferred to the muddy waters of Jordan. At Beirut, also, the Dog River rises in magnificent stalagmitic caves in the bowels of the Lebanon, and farther north the old castle of Krak (already noticed) looks down on a narrow valley where is the monastery of St. George, near the cave in which rises the famous Sabbatic River, whose intermittent flow was reckoned among the wondersof Syria by the ancients. This river springs from a pool in the cave, and at intervals of between four and seven days a rumbling sound is heard in the mountains, and torrents of water flow forth from the cavern, pouring down the valley for several hours. In the Hermon region there is another similar phenomenon, which is, however, only to be seen in winter. The plain near the village of Kefr Kûk is said yearly to be turned into a lake by a torrent which rushes out of its cavern with a roaring noise like that of the Sabbatic River.
Josephus (VII. Wars, v.I) has given us a correct account of the rise of the Sabbatic River, which Titus visited on his return from the Jewish war, but Pliny has inverted the facts (H. N., xxxi.II), and supposes the river to observe the Sabbath, flowing all the week and resting on the seventh day. The Bordeaux pilgrim makes the same mistake. In the Middle Ages the legend of the River Sambation became famous among the Jews, who identified it with the Ganges, and held that the ten tribes existed beyond its banks, and there awaited the day when, on the appearance of the Messiah, its waters should be dried up. Thus the true origin of the story was forgotten, and the situation of the river, which, however, still preserves its ancient name in the modern Arabic title, Nahr es Sebta.
The western slopes of the Lebanon fall abruptly into the sea, and the flat ground at the foot of the mountains is at most a narrow strip, while the coast road often leads over the rugged stony limestone of the promontories. There is no real harbour along the shore at all comparable to that of Smyrna, but the Phœnicians made the most of outlying reefs and shallow bays to construct their little ports. The harbour of Tripoli is reckoned the best in Syria by the captains of coasting steamers.The Bay of St. George at Beirut is subject to storms, as is also the gulf at Alexandretta, where in winter the gusts from the mountains are often very dangerous. At Latakia there is only an open roadstead, and Gebal or Byblus, famous as its sailors were in early historic times, presents only a shelving beach.
The shore scenery is throughout of most picturesque character, not unlike some of the South Italian coast; and the steep slopes, pine-dotted and riven with great gorges, rise to snowy summits, often wrapped in cloud even in summer. Near Tripoli the shore plain widens, and the Eleutherus flows through an open sandy flat. This river, which formed the boundary of Jewish conquest in the Hasmonean age, has often been mistaken for the Sabbatic River. Its source is in a sort of crater west of the Lake of Homs, a picturesque basaltic hollow plain, marshy and dotted with oak trees. The black basalt extends westwards along the open valley, which leads down seaward, confining Lebanon on the north; and the pass, which has always been important in history, is commanded by the great castle of the Knights Hospitallers, already mentioned, and perhaps the best preserved of the Crusading strongholds.
Into the wilder mountains of the Anseiriyeh it was not my good fortune to be able to penetrate. The thick copses here cover remains of ancient cities, of which but little is known. On the north the vale of Antioch divides this ridge from the great spur of the Taurus, which rises over the gloomy Gulf of Alexandretta. The steep mountains here spring from the sea, and a narrow, pestilent, swampy shore lies at their feet, making this port at the “gates of Syria” the most notoriously unhealthyplace in the Levant. Many suggestions for draining the swamp may be found in consular reports; but the difficulty is that its level is only a few feet above the sea, allowing no fall for any irrigatory channels. If ever the great railway which may connect the Mediterranean with the Persian Gulf is made, it is to be hoped that the port will be chosen at the old harbour of Seleucia, at the mouth of the Orontes, and not in the fever-stricken and mountain-locked bay of Issus, as the Alexandretta Gulf was called when Alexander won on its shores the great victory over the Persians which made him master of all Western Asia.
The climate of the Lebanon is superior to that of Palestine on account of the brisk mountain air, some 4000 feet above the highest points reached by even the Galilean mountains, while the snow-fed rivers and streams give an abundant water-supply throughout. The modern inhabitants are a hardy and ruddy-faced people, whose cheerful independence contrasts with the dull fatalism of the Southern peasants. Thus from the dawn of history there has been perhaps more energy, enterprise, and civilisation in Syria than in Palestine; and trade and art flourished in Phœnicia and among the Hittites, while in the south the wandering Shasu ranged over an unsettled land. In order to preserve some method in briefly describing the early civilisation of this country, it will be best to adopt an historic sequence, for the centres of power were constantly changing, and a geographical treatment of the subject is difficult.
The earliest known notice of Northern Syria is in the time of Thothmes III., about 1600B.C.After the great battle of Megiddo, which laid Palestine at his feet, the hardy Nubian advanced northwards, even beyond Aleppo and across the Euphrates. At Karnak he has recordedthe names of 218 towns in Syria and Aram which he claimed to have conquered; and from this list we know that even as early as the seventeenth centuryB.C.many famous cities of later times were already in existence, including Hamath, Aleppo, Calchis, Circesium, Nisibis, Aradus, Carchemish, Pethor, and Kadesh on the Orontes.
Even earlier, however, than this time it appears that the Hittites dwelt in Northern Syria, which is called also the “Land of the Hittites” in the Book of Joshua. Thothmes I. is believed to have reigned about 1700B.C., and began his career by attacking the Hittites, who, however, at that early period, may have extended their rule farther south.
Seven years after the battle of Megiddo, Thothmes III. attacked Kadesh on Orontes, and cut down the trees near it. Twice again in later campaigns he stormed the town on his way to Mesopotamia, and carried off silver and precious stones as tribute; but on his death the Hittites recovered their independence, and about 1540B.C.they became a formidable power. The recently discovered Tell el Amarna tablets show us that an early Babylonian conquest of Phœnicia dates from that period. The kings of Egypt and of Mesopotamia were then in alliance, and governors who used the cuneiform script appear even to have been posted at Tyre and at Sidon; but the Semitic invaders were jealous of the Hittite power, and Tunep (now Tennib) appears then, as well as later, to have been a Hittite city.
Two centuries passed, and Rameses II. found the Hittite power as formidable as ever. The great battle of this period was fought near Kadesh; and the celebrated battle picture at Abu Simbel gives us most lively portraits of these great Mongol warriors in their chariots,and of their walled and tower-crowned city, with its name written over it, and its bridges over the Orontes and the smaller western stream, which together surrounded the mound now known as Tell Nebi Mendeh. The Egyptian advance followed the coast-line north of Beirut, where Rameses left his bas-reliefs cut on the cliff by the Dog River, and the army reached a town called Shabatuna, which some scholars place near the Sabbatic River, in which case their road lay, no doubt, up the valley of the Eleutherus, already noticed as the highway from Tripoli to Homs. Kadesh, we learn, was on “the west bank of Hanruta” or Orontes; and the incautious advance of the Pharaoh very nearly led to his defeat and death. The city was, however, again taken, and the great alliance, which included auxiliary forces from Aradus, Cyprus, Carchemish, and even from Mæonia and Southern Asia Minor, was defeated. The Egyptian conqueror pursued his way far north and west, and left his cartouche on Mount Sipylus, where the old figure of the “Weeping Niobe” had already been carved.
enlarge-imageHITTITES FROM ABU SIMBEL.HITTITES FROM ABU SIMBEL.
In this same reign we have also an incidental noticeof the same region in the celebrated “Travels of an Egyptian,” which were carried as far north as Kadesh. Speaking of the Lebanon, he says: “The sky is darkened by the cypresses, the oaks, and the cedars, which grow to heaven. There also are lions found, and wolves and hyenas, which the Shasu hunt.” Yet the spoils taken and tribute offered in Syria at that time abundantly witness the civilisation of the Hittites and of the Phœnicians, whose “holy city Gebal” is noticed in this early papyrus with Sidon, Sarepta, and Tyre.
Two centuries passed by, and, with the decreasing power of Egypt, the freedom and prosperity of the independent kingdoms of Israel and of the Hittites increased. Yet while Samuel was still a child we find Tiglath Pileser I. hunting in the Lebanon. The account recovered from a cuneiform tablet is of great interest, seeming to show that the Lebanon ridge was the division between the Semitic Phœnicians on the coast and the Mongolic Hittites along the Orontes. The broken obelisk in the British Museum records of Tiglath Pileser that “in ships of Arvad he rode, a porpoise in the great sea he slew, wild bulls (rimi) fierce and fine he slew at the city Araziki, which is opposite to the land of the Hittites at the foot of Lebanon.” Thus the wild bull, which is mentioned in the Bible, was still found in Syria as late as 1100B.C.
The foundation of our knowledge of the Hittite hieroglyphic system of writing, which was probably in use as early as 2000B.C., was laid by Burckhardt’s discovery of one of their monuments at Hamath. That great traveller and observer describes a stone, now in the Constantinople Museum, but then in a wall in the city of Hamath, as covered with hieroglyphics which differedfrom those of Egypt. Yet the discovery was without further result until the stone, with four others, was rediscovered by the American visitor Mr. J. A. Johnson in 1870. The further finds at Carchemish, and in Asia Minor, of similar monuments have shown that Northern Syria possessed a written character of its own, and that a language akin to the old speech of the Medes and Akkadians was spoken by the Hittite chieftains as well as by their relatives, the Lydians, Carians, and early Cappadocians.
enlarge-imageHAMATH STONE, NO. 1.HAMATH STONE, NO. 1.
As we advance to the eighth centuryB.C., we find the power of this Mongolic stock decreasing, while that of the Semitic race increases. Among the most interestingdiscoveries of this period is that of the general diffusion of the worship of Jehovah throughout all Syria and Assyria. As early as 822B.C.the names of Assyrian officials are compounded with the divine name, and yet earlier, in 887, the name Abijah occurs in Assyria. In the time of Sargon, Yaubidi was king of Hamath, and the names of Joram, king of Edom, Zedekiah, king of Ascalon, Padiah, king of Ekron,[59]tell the same tale as does the name of Joel in a Phœnician text from Malta. The adoration of Jehovah was not peculiar to the Hebrews, nor does the Bible state it to have been. It was common, as early at least as the tenth century B.C., to all the Semitic peoples of Western Asia as far east as Nineveh; for, as Malachi wrote somewhat later, “From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, My name is great among the Gentiles ... saith Jehovah Sabaoth” (Mal. i. 11).
In spite of such community of religion, the growth of Assyria brought troublous times on Northern Syria.[60]About 854 Assur Nazir Pal defeated the Hittites, and advanced as far as Tyre; but a great battle was fought on the Orontes, in which we find Ahab of Sirlai[61]leagued with the kings of Damascus, Arvad, and Ammon—a force in all of 85,000 men, and this league for a time stopped the Assyrian advance. In the same long reign, however, about 842B.C., another battle was fought near Hermon, and Damascus was besieged and the Hauranoverrun by Assyrian armies. From that time forward the road to Palestine began to be open. Tiglath Pileser II. advanced in 740 to Hamath, and six years later invaded the Land of Israel and marched to Ascalon and Gaza. In 720 Sargon takes Samaria and quells an outbreak in Hamath; and about this time the system of deportation, which was the ordinary Assyrian policy, led to the establishment of North Syrian, Chaldean, and Thamudite Arab colonies in Palestine, and to the captivity of the Ten Tribes. In 717 Carchemish fell to Sargon, and the power of the Hittites was finally overthrown, and six years later the Assyrians were at Ashdod in Philistia. Sennacherib followed in 701, and penetrated even to Petra in 688. Yet the internal troubles of the Assyrian Empire gave a brief respite after his death, when a new foe appeared in the northward march of the Arabs and Nabatheans, who raided through Eastern Palestine and the Hauran into Northern Syria in 650B.C.With the fall of Assyria a period of peace followed, but a century later we find Nebuchadnezzar on his way to Jerusalem, following the defeated Egyptians from Carchemish.
Of this troublous history the rocks of Syria themselves give evidence. At the mouth of the Dog River, near Beirut, where Rameses II. had erected three bas-reliefs in honour of Ptah, Ra, and Ammon, Tiglath Pileser I.—the hunter already noticed who also conquered the Hittites—left his statue about 1100B.C., and another Assyrian tablet on this spot is thought to be even older. Four more tablets were added later, between 885 and 681B.C., by Assur Nazir Pal, by Shalmanezer III., by Sennacherib, and by Esarhaddon, showing that all these conquerors passed by Beirut. Near this group of tabletsmutilated inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar have also been found, and quite recently, in 1884, other inscriptions by Nebuchadnezzar have been recovered on the eastern slope of the Lebanon not far from Kadesh.
The Medes swept away the Babylonians, the Persians succeeded the Medes, and the Syrians continued to preserve their own civilisation, as witnessed by the art of Phœnicia, which throve especially in the Persian period. The battle of Issus raised a new power in Asia, and with the successors of Alexander a new capital arose in the valley of the Orontes at Antioch. It is remarkable, considering the power and wealth of these Greek monarchs, that they should have left us no monuments in Syria, as far as is at present known. Their coins are frequently found, and are often of great beauty, being among the earliest on which the head of a king appears portrayed from life. During this age, even as late as 307B.C., the Greek kings of Cyprus were still using the peculiar script called the Cypriote syllabary, but no trace of its use has yet been discovered in Syria, where the simpler Phœnician alphabet reigned supreme, while on the Greek coins of the Seleucids the kindred Greek characters appear.
Nor are the troublous times of the great struggle which gave Syria to the Romans represented by monuments; but with the Antonines a great architectural period began, when Baalbek was built, as well as many great cities throughout Syria. It has often been supposed that the enormous stones which form part of the outer wall at Baalbek are remains of a Phœnician temple preceding the Roman fane, but the visitor can satisfy himself that these huge blocks—more than sixty feet in length, and unrivalled elsewhere in Syria—stand onRoman masonry; and we have nothing to lead us to suppose that the Phœnicians ever used such enormous masonry. The Baalbek Temple is indeed one of the most certainly-dated buildings in Syria, and the Latin inscription on the east wall, copied by Ward and Dawkins, but now almost illegible, gives the names of Antoninus Pius and Julia Domna, who appear to have founded the huge sanctuary in honour of the “great gods of Heliopolis.”
In the wild mountains of the Anseiriyeh other remains of the same period have been found. Though attributed by popular tradition to Solomon, these buildings, by the details of their architecture, and by the Roman eagle, whose winged form occurs here as well as at both Baalbek and at Rukhleh on Hermon, are to be ascribed to the Roman period, to which also we must refer the curious monument near the source of the Orontes called Kamu’at el Hirmil, on which, in bas-relief, is represented the chase of the stag, the boar, and the bear.
Homs, the ancient Emesa, was the birthplace of Julia Domna, the mother and bride of emperors. This city also had a famous fane—that of the Black Stone, which was transported to Rome. When El Mukaddasi in the tenth century visited the city, he found a remarkable statue still standing in the mosque—“the figure of a man in brass standing on a fish, and the same turns to the four winds.” It was regarded as a talisman against scorpions, and was apparently a kind of weathercock. It was perhaps to this statue that the Greek inscription which I copied in the same mosque originally belonged, the text, when translated, reading thus:—