“Image of the round earth, the king ...The people having all, with wise mind ...”
“Image of the round earth, the king ...The people having all, with wise mind ...”
“Image of the round earth, the king ...The people having all, with wise mind ...”
El Mukaddasi says that this mosque was formerly a church, and its nave and aisles I found still clearly traceable in the later Moslem building.
The third century saw the rise and fall of Palmyra, the great Syrian trading city which formed the emporium of Northern Syria, connecting the coast towns with the Euphrates by a route across the desert from its oasis. As the bulwark of the Roman Empire against Persia, the Palmyrene colony was allowed privileges amounting almost to independence, and under Odenathus and his widow Zenobia it flourished until rebellion brought down on that famous queen the heavy Roman hand. Its celebrated buildings show how strong was the influence of Græco-Roman art on the Aramaic inhabitants; but its numerous inscriptions are for the most part in the native script—a late form of the old Phœnician alphabet—and its gods are the old Phœnician deities, though Christian heretics found shelter at Zenobia’s capital. Whether any remains of earlier ages are to be found in the desert city is still perhaps open to inquiry, since a very curious Aramean tablet was recovered from the vicinity by M. Peretié. The ruins as yet known are of Zenobia’s time, but tradition points to Palmyra as the Tadmor or Tamar in the wilderness founded by Solomon—Tamar, which is perhaps the better-authenticated reading, being the Hebrew name (“palm tree”) equivalent to the classic title Palmyra.
In the later days of Paganism Northern Syria was very famous for its temples—the shrine of Daphne, in its oleander thickets near Antioch; the yet more picturesque site at the source of the Adonis River, where stood, under a theatre of barren crags, high up on Lebanon, the shrine of the mourning Venus; and thecurious temple of the Dea Syria at Heliopolis (the ancient Carchemish) on the Euphrates. Three statues existed at the latter shrine, one representing the mother goddess seated on the lion—whose image, standing on the same, has been found carved by the Hittites—the second the father god on a bull, and the third a deity of unknown name. Two lofty obelisks stood in the porch, and to their summits the priests went up, and remained for seven days in converse with the gods and never sleeping. It was perhaps the memory of this strange rite (not, however, peculiar to Syria, but known also in India) which led Simeon the Stylite to ascend his column four centuries later at a site not very far west of the old temple of the Dea Syria, for the ruins of the great monastery erected over the base of his pillar are still to be seen at Kal’at Sima’an, between Aleppo and Turmanin.
The temples of Daphne and Afka were famous for their licentious rites, the temple-women who served Aphrodite in Cyprus and in Babylon here remaining recognised until suppressed by Constantine. At Afka the statue of Venus was represented with its hands covered by its robes, and the lamentations which were part of the midsummer ritual were but the survival of the old Akkadian and Phœnician “mourning for Tammuz,” which was observed even in the Temple at Jerusalem. A star was believed to fall annually into the great pool or lake at the temple, where the sacred river, which falls in cascades in a deep and wooded gorge, to flow into the sea at Byblus, had its spring. The river itself was said to run red with the blood of Adonis in spring-time, and I have crossed it on Easter Day when it was turbid and ruddy with the rich red sandstone soil from Lebanon.It was at this season that the Phœnician women at Byblus used to set little papyrus cradles floating on its stream, holding an image of the infant sun-god.
The disciples of Simon Stylites were spread all over Syria, and even as late as the twelfth century they sat on solitary pillars. This may account for the single columns which are to be found standing alone in the plains of Syria in more than one case. West of Baalbek one of these pillars is to be seen, called “the pillar of the maidens,” and there is another not far from Acre. In the eleventh century the monastery already mentioned, called Kal’at Sim’an, still held no less than sixty Georgian monks, and Phocas mentions another of their establishments at St. Gerasimus, on the banks of Jordan, in the Jericho valley, where was “a hermit’s pillar.” At present the hermits are content to inhabit inaccessible caves on the Quarantania Mountain, where the pious go to fill the baskets which they lower down the cliff.
In Justinian’s time a perhaps more useful invention was brought to Syria by monks from China, who introduced the silkworm. The Roman silk was imported from the far East, but in the sixth century it began to be manufactured in Syria and in Cyprus, and continues to be made on the slopes of Lebanon, and even as far south as Tyre. The mulberry gardens round Beirut are cultivated to feed the worms. Under the Crusading rule the silks of Tripoli and Antioch were also famous. In the tenth century El Mukaddasi speaks of the silkworms of Ascalon as renowned.
Considering how eagerly the Christian pilgrims sought out every site of Bible interest, it is curious that the early notices of the cedars of Lebanon are so few. Thedestruction of the cedar forests, however, began early. Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs, not less than Solomon, appear to have sought out the Lebanon cedar-wood to adorn their palaces and temples. Justinian could hardly get cedar enough to roof the great Church of the Virgin which he built at Jerusalem, and in the Middle Ages the private houses of Sidon were ceiled with cedar. The trees usually visited at Ehden are not, however, the only survivors, for within the last fifty years at least other groves existed, and perhaps still exist, in the Northern Lebanon east of Tripoli. Seetzen, in 1805, found thousands of cedars at Etnub, and the less known forests have probably the better chance of surviving.
Northern Syria was overrun by the Moslems before Jerusalem fell. Abu Obeideh advanced from Damascus to Homs, Hamah, Latakia, Jibeil, Aleppo, and Tarsus, before the Byzantine army took the field; and though he was forced to beat a rapid retreat to the Yermuk, south-east of the Sea of Galilee, his great victory on that river confirmed his conquests. This Arab raid of the seventh centuryA.D.repeats in a curious manner the old incursion of the Arabs in the seventh centuryB.C., to which allusion has already been made. The Crusaders, in like manner, after the fall of Antioch, followed the same route which the various Assyrian conquerors had taken, and after passing Hamath and Homs, went down by the Eleutherus to Tripoli, and thence south along the sea-shore by the historic tablets of Rameses and Tiglath Pileser.
In the twelfth century Northern Syria was divided into two great fiefs—Beirut and Tripoli—belonging to the kingdom of Jerusalem, and embracing all theLebanon; while the Anseiriyeh Mountains were part of the principality of Antioch. The Buka’a appears generally to have been under the rule of the Turkish Sultans of Aleppo and Damascus, and the border castles were on the eastern slopes of the Anseiriyeh chain. In this region, also, the famous Assassins established an independent colony, which was only subject to tribute in the times when Christian rule was strongest. The Normans were forced in this region to enter into treaty with the Saracen rulers, whose dread of the Tartars rendered them long indifferent to the cause of Islam.
Mention has already been made of the many mystic sects which dwelt in Palestine, and more especially in Northern Syria, in the Middle Ages. Even in the tenth century El Mukaddasi speaks of a considerable population of Shi’ah—or Persian Moslems—in Syria, whose descendants still survive as Metâwileh, Anseiriyeh, and Ismailiyeh, the latter representing the mediæval Assassins or “hemp-smokers.” This sect was founded in the eleventh century, but whether the curious Paradise story, according to which the young devotee was initiated for a few days into the joys of the Moslem Eden, has any foundation in fact may be doubted. It is, however, not doubtful that the influence of the Sheikh el Jebel, or “old man of the mountain,” over his disciples caused the murder of many well-known Crusaders and Norman princes, including Conrad of Montferrat and Raymond of Tripoli, as well as of an Egyptian Khalif and of several Turkoman and Arab princes. In 1174 the Assassins attempted the life of Saladin himself, and in 1172 of Prince Edward of England at Acre. Hence came the suppression of the order by Saladin, and by the Mongols in Persia, the original seat of the society. The Assassins owned tencastles, according to William of Tyre, extending their sway as far west as Tortosa.
There were two famous places of pilgrimage in North Syria in Crusading times. One of these was Tortosa, on the sea-coast, which the good Joynville visited, and where was one of the pictures of the Virgin painted by St. Luke. At that time it appears that the Mother of God was absent in Egypt helping St. Louis (who sadly needed help), a fact which the pious knight states to have been immediately reported to the Legate.
The other shrine was that of Notre Dame de la Roche at Sardenay—the present Jacobite convent of Saidnaiya (“Our Lady”), north of Damascus. This was venerated by Christians and Moslems alike. The Jacobites were friendly to the Normans, and were then more numerous than they now are. They preserved the old rite of circumcision, which they received from the early Ebionite Christians, who dwelt in the Hauran in the second centuryA.D.They preserved also the old Syriac language—almost the same spoken in Palestine in the time of Christ—and their old alphabet, a late form of the Palmyrene. In our own time the Maronite churches of Lebanon still contain curious pictures dating back to the Middle Ages, with Syriac inscriptions; but the Syriac language is said only to survive in three villages not far from Saidnaiya.
The miraculous image at this place had a long legendary history. It was said to be partly of wood, partly of flesh, and from its breasts distilled a sacred oil which was used to light the lamps in the church, and carried away to France, where it was treasured in many abbeys. In the present age the image is not shown to the faithful, as it is said that any who look upon itwould be struck dead; but the saint is still believed to be able to grant offspring to her adorers, and it is reported that her chapel is filled with indecent pictures. She is, in short, a Lucina, who no doubt traces her descent from the old Ashtoreth of Syria, adored by Hittites and Phœnicians alike.
It might be thought that miraculous pictures and images had ceased to work wonders in the nineteenth century, but the Roman sect has no monopoly of such marvels, nor is human credulity limited to any period of time. Colonel Churchill, in 1853, was still able to report the existence of a miraculous sweating picture of St. George in the Maronite church at Heitât, producing a liquid eagerly purchased by Christians; and many a survival of early Paganism may yet be traced among the priest-ridden peasantry of the Lebanon.
The Normans held on to their North Syrian possessions almost to the end of the thirteenth century, and till the fall of Acre they still kept possession of the shore towns. The success of Saladin and Bibars seems to have led the Franks to look to a Tartar alliance as the best means of retaining their power. It was generally believed that the Tartars—to whom the Armenians were tributary—were Christians, and the legend of Prester John, the Christian king of Central Asia, was eagerly accepted. For this reason St. Louis sent Rubruquis even as far as Siberia offering his alliance, and the plan was still in favour apparently in 1282, when Sir Joseph de Cancy wrote his letter home to Edward I., for he says, in describing the battle between the Egyptians and the Tartars near Homs, that “the King of Cyprus not being yet come up, could not join the Tartars.” It appears that the Mongol princes, who were then following the steps oftheir Mongol predecessors, the Hittites, were willing, in a very politic manner, to nurse such illusions for their own purposes, and indeed the tolerance shown to Christians, Moslems, and Buddhists by Genghiz Khan and his descendants contrasted in a marked manner with the zeal of the Arab and Turkish Moslems.
There is no part of Syria where the past is more vividly recalled than in the little-visited regions of the Northern Lebanon. Standing on the ramparts of Kal’at el Hosn, where the great towers retain their battlements, and the great oak door still swings in the gateway, the traveller, as he looks down on the village which nestles at the foot of the fortress, climbing the steep sides of the hill, might almost expect to see the mailed knights ride forth, or the Turkoman princes advancing under their emblazoned banners[62]from the east. At Homs the picturesque bazaars are still girt by the black basalt walls with their round gate-towers, which no doubt existed when, in 1281, the power of the Mongols was broken in the plain before them, and which may have been built before Zenghi attacked the town in 1130, by Normans or by Turkoman princes. The influence of Europe had not visibly reached this city in 1881, when I explored its narrow lanes, and it stands amid its green gardens by the Orontes much as it was some seven centuries ago.
Yet, on the other hand, the Lebanon district presents us with the one bright spot in the Turkish Empire, the freest and best governed of the Sultan’s provinces. Under the guardianship of European states, with a Christian governor, a constitution, a taxation amountingto only a shilling a head, a smart mounted police, and a coach-road over the mountain, the Lebanon province has become prosperous and happy, filled with a cheerful population, and covered with vineyards and gardens, thus presenting a most remarkable contrast to the ill-ruled province of Tripoli on the north and the ruined regions of Palestine on the south.
IPROPOSEto conclude this volume by a slight sketch of the results which have been gathered by exploration in Palestine. In journals or memoirs the importance of these results is hardly to be appreciated in their scattered form, and I find that they have certainly not yet been grasped even by learned writers who have penned accounts of the country quite recently in England. These results are geological, geographical, physical, antiquarian, ethnical, and biblical, or, more widely speaking, historical, and under these six headings they may successively be considered.
Geological research was not one of our principal objects, but a knowledge of the geology of a country is indispensable, if the explorer would rightly estimate, not only its geographical character, but the possibilities of ancient cultivation and natural history. I was taught the elements of geology by more than one specialist well known by name in England, and though the studies of Lartet and others left no great discoveries to be made, I always felt the necessity of studying the structure and the mineralogy of every district which we visited.
The great geological problem of Palestine had longbeen solved when we entered the country. It was interesting to trace the smaller faults in the Jordan Valley, and to discover volcanic outbreaks on Carmel which were previously unknown; but the fact that the Dead Sea and the valley were formed by a mighty fault 200 miles long, leaving the sandstone of the lower beds bare on the east side, and producing violent dips in the limestone on the west, had already been explained. Professor Hull has since given scientific accounts of the formations south of the Dead Sea, but Canon Tristram described the sea-beaches in the valley in 1876, before I mentioned the existence of a very remarkable example north of Jericho.
What chiefly interests us from a general point of view is the relation which geology bears to the question of the ancient fertility of the country. Porous strata must have been porous in all historical periods, and impervious strata impervious. The last convulsions had long given place to the slow processes of denudation on the Palestine hills before man existed, and though the Jordan Valley was formed after the chalk age, the great lakes had dried up, leaving only the Sea of Galilee, Merom, and the Dead Sea in existence when history opened.
It seems clear, then, that the well-watered parts of Palestine now existing are those which were so when the Old Testament was penned; that where wells and cisterns are now used, they were then also in use; that what is now trackless and waterless desert was so in the time of David. The snow of Hermon is mentioned in the Bible as well as the saltness of the Bitter Sea. Palestine is still a land of corn, wine, and oil, as of yore, and sheep are still fed in the same pastoral regions, the same vineyards are still famous, the corn of its plainsstill yields an hundredfold. I am unable to see that in any respect, either in climate or in natural productions, can the land have changed, excepting always that a decrease in population has led to decreased cultivation, and that goats and peasants have often wrought havoc among the trees. Palestine can hardly have been more healthy in Bible times than it now is. Plagues, famines, fever, and leprosy are mentioned in the history of the Hebrews, and in the New Testament we find the poor stricken with eyesore, fever, and palsy quite as much as they now are. There are still “former and latter rains,” and the rose of Sharon has not withered: the purple iris is still royally robed: the imagery of the Song of Songs is still easy to apply. Except in the disappearance of the lion and the wild bull—which are also represented on Assyrian bas-reliefs, yet no longer found in Assyria—there is no change in the fauna: the deer, the antelope, the fox, the wolf, the hyena, and the jackal, the ostrich, and the crocodile still survive in the wilder parts of the land, with the great boars which delight in the marshes; the leopard lurks in the jungles and the coney in the rocks; the wild goat leaps on the precipices, and the wild ass in the distant eastern deserts is not unknown.
Considering how complete was the examination of the fauna by Canon Tristram, it was certainly an unexpected stroke of good fortune to discover an unknown quadruped in Palestine; but the bones of the Yahmur deer, which we sent home from Carmel, were pronounced to belong to the same species with the English roebuck; and we thus recover in existence one of the species mentioned in the Pentateuch, and which furnished venison to King Solomon’s table.
The seasons, not less than the fauna and flora of Palestine, are unchanged. Indeed, the names of the old Aramaic months, as now translated by aid of Assyrian, show us this uniformity, while the spoils taken by Thothmes III. (as already noted) carry back the agricultural prosperity of the country to a time earlier than the Exodus. The spring brings grass and flowers; the corn ripens even in April in the Jordan Valley, and in May on the hills; the olive harvest and the vintage follow in the early autumn, when the threshing-floors are full of grain, over which the old threshing-sledge of Hebrew times is still driven. With the first rains the ploughing begins, and with January comes the snow, with ice and hail. In one year, at Jerusalem, we had seven falls of snow. The top of Mount Salmon was white for days, recalling the words of the psalm; and the occasional occurrence of a sudden storm in harvest-time also agrees with a passage in the Books of Samuel. There is no exaggeration in the statement that Palestine is unchanged, and the best comment on the physical incidents mentioned in the Bible is found in the meteorological observations of Palestine explorers.
The geographical results of the Survey are, of course, among its most important scientific claims. The best previous maps depended on a few observations of latitude and longitude, and on the calculation of distances by time. Many of these distances were better known in the fourth century than they were in 1872; for the Romans placed milestones along their great routes, which will be found marked on the Survey maps; and these were known to Eusebius, to Jerome, and to other travellers, and are mentioned in the Onomasticon. On the maps sent out for my use I not only found many omissions,but large villages were placed on the wrong sides of valleys, and the courses of many important watercourses were wrongly laid down. The level of the Sea of Galilee was uncertain within three hundred feet, the fords of Jordan were unknown, and the affluents of Jordan had not been traced. The number of important ruins was, of course, large in districts hardly approached by former travellers, and even on the hills near the Sharon plain villagers told me that I was the first Frank they had ever seen, which was no doubt true, as they rarely travel more than ten miles from home.
Ancient geography has equally benefited by the work. The names of the old towns and villages mentioned in the Bible remain for the most part almost unchanged. I believe that I was able to add to future maps about 150 of these old sites west of the river and some thirty east of Jordan. Among these may be reckoned some places of great importance for the understanding of the Bible, such as Bethabara, Bezek, Debir, Etam, Gilgal, Jeshanah, Kadesh, Kirjath-jearim, Luz, Megiddo, Nephtoah, Rakkon, Sorek, the Valley of Zephathah, the important border-towns of Dabbasheth and Ataroth Adar, with Bamoth Baal, Peor, and Nehaliel, Minnith, Luhith, and other places beyond Jordan. These discoveries have already found their place on the Bible Society’s maps published in 1887; and by such recovery of ancient sites it became possible to lay down the boundaries of the tribes, and of the later divisions of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, with an amount of certitude before unattainable. Very considerable changes have thus been made on the new Bible maps, which will be seen when they are compared with the old; and the acceptation of these results in standardworks shows that the arguments by which they were enforced were clear enough to overcome the most conservative geographers. The fact that each name was carefully recorded in Arabic letters made it possible to compare with the Hebrew in a scientific and scholarly manner. The wild shots which have been made by those who compare the English of the Bible with the English of the Palestine maps might serve to discredit such comparisons; but when the Hebrew and the Arabic are shown to contain the same radicals, the same gutturals, and often the same meanings, we have a truly reliable comparison. The scholar knows that Hazor and Hadirah are the same words, and he at once sees the fallacy of comparing Jiphtah-el with Jefât. In the one case the words are identical in lettering and in meaning; in the other, the actual Arabic of Jiphthah-el is Fath Allah—a name which still survives in the Jordan Valley.
There are still points disputed in Palestine geography, which is for the most part due to the meagre information which we possess. Some of these questions of opinion may remain always unsettled, but we have now recovered more than three-quarters of the Bible names, and are thus able to say with confidence that the Bible topography is a genuine and actual topography, the work of Hebrews familiar with the country, and free from contradictions such as are presented, for instance, in the Book of Tobit by a writer ignorant of the places of which he speaks.
It is not only the Bible geography which has thus been explained. The topography of Josephus, of the Talmud, of the Byzantine pilgrim writers, of the Crusading chronicles, are equally illustrated by our maps. The Memoirs, which give a detailed account of everyhill range, stream, spring, village, town, ruin, and large building in Palestine, also contain notes of every statement as to topography which I was able to gather from Jewish, Samaritan, Greek, Latin, and Norman French notices of Palestine. Not only Josephus and the Bible, but Pliny, Strabo, the Rabbinical writers, the Samaritan chroniclers, the Onomasticon, the early Christian pilgrims, the Crusading and Arab chronicles, have been put under contribution, and we can now prepare not only a map of Canaanite Syria as known to the Egyptians or one of the Twelve Tribes or of the Roman provinces, but a Byzantine map of fifth-century bishoprics, or a yet fuller map of the Crusading kingdom, with its Norman and Normanised Arab names, some of the former even of which are now preserved.
The Memoirs to which I refer fill three quarto volumes, full of plans and pictures, special surveys of important places, and detailed accounts. A volume on Jerusalem and another on special subjects are added, and the set includes, in other volumes, Dr. Hull’s geological account, Canon Tristram’s natural history, and Professor Palmer’s editing of the name lists. Yet another volume of natural history is promised from the observations of Mr. Chichester Hart, and the volume of my Moabite Survey has just appeared, making the ninth. It must not be forgotten that the Survey was no mere compass sketch. It is based on a triangulation with three carefully measured bases. All important mountain tops are laid down within a circle having a diameter of ten yards. All important heights are determined within five feet. The levels of the Sea of Galilee and of the Dead Sea are known within a few inches. The hill features are represented not by conventionalised lines,but by actual tracing of every spur and by actual survey of every top. Whatever disputes may arise as to the meaning of an Arabic or Hebrew word, or as to the identification of some obscure site, there can be no dispute as to the geographical position or the elevation of any spot shown on the Palestine Survey, for the principles of the work are the same on which our original Ordnance Survey in England was carried out; and although the appliances at our command would of course not allow of the same minute accuracy of instrumental measurement, still, on the scale of one inch to a mile such minutiæ are invisible to the eye.
I had occasion very often to test work done some time before by my surveyors: it always stood the test; and when we were informed from home that a “village had been left out,” I was not alarmed, for I had checked the map by the Turkish Government list of villages under taxation, and we found to our amusement, when the actual prismatic compass came into our hands, with which our critic took angles at the so-called village (which was a ruin actually shown on the map), that the instrument had no needle, which explained why no three angles of those given to us could be made to intersect in a single point. The survey of Jordan and the position of points east of Jordan were subjected to severe tests by an independent authority, with the result that our work was pronounced to be the only accurate representation of the ground. I always felt sure that my companions recognised their responsibility to the public, and that the work was done in earnest by men who took pride in its being good. Such criticisms were therefore welcome, as opportunities of demonstrating that, as far as in us lay, our work was thorough andconscientious. I have often been amused at the “mares’ nests” which have arisen from misunderstanding the accounts of other travellers, and then attempting to apply to the map. Those who quote these earlier maps must remember that we had them before us, and that if we omitted names thereon shown, we did so after due inquiry, either because they are wrong, or because they are at least doubtful.
Turning to antiquarian questions, some disappointment has been expressed that we found nothing very sensational, to compare with the Moabite Stone for instance, or with the cuneiform tablets. It is true that we did not bring home the ark, or the calves of Dan, or Ahab’s ivory house, or Joseph’s mummy, but I doubt if this detracts from the scientific value of our work. I was offered Samson’s coffin, and a contemporary account of the Crucifixion. I was often presented with ancient MSS. and early pottery, but no record will be found of these wonders in the work of the Survey. The dolmens of Moab, the true copy of the Siloam inscription, the shekels sent home by Mr. Drake, the plan of the Hebron Haram, are the most ancient antiquarian results we have been able to place before the public. We have not offered Shapira Pentateuchs, or seals of David in square Hebrew, but the drier records of decipherment and measurement.
As regards epigraphy, it is true that our Memoirs contain only one Hebrew text of great antiquity, with three Hebrew tomb-inscriptions; but these form a very substantial addition to previous materials. The number of Greek texts scattered over the whole country and previously uncopied is large, including the interesting text from the door of a ruined basilica, reading, “Thisis the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter in;” and, as mentioned previously, the twelfth-century frescoes in the Jordan Valley, which are reproduced in their colours, have since been completely destroyed.
Since the finding of the Moabite Stone no discovery has been as important as that of the Siloam inscription. The exact forms of the letters, and the question whether these forms were exactly repeated, were points of the greatest interest. The first copies were most misleading in these respects, and the difficulty of copying was very great; the earliest correct representation published in Europe was taken from our squeezes; and it may be compared with the cast which was made for us, and which is now in England. The text opened out a new chapter in the history of the alphabet, and gave the first monumental evidence of the civilisation of the Hebrews in the days of their kings.
As regards antiquarian questions which depend on accurate survey and levelling, the most important are those which concern Jerusalem. It is disappointing to find that the cogency of such evidence is not always understood, especially by scholars who have not travelled or studied survey. Quite recently allusion has been made by one writer to “imaginary contours” as the work of Palestine explorers; as though there existed some kind of contours which were not imaginary. I have never been in a country where actual contours could be found, but the accuracy of contours depends on the accuracy and number of the levelled points which they represent. For general purposes, sections of ground may be recommended as better understood by laymen. In the present instance, the accuracy of the levelling by which the lie of the rock in Jerusalem is determined ishappily beyond dispute; and the observations of the rock surface exposed in tanks, wells, and excavations are fortunately most numerous in just the places where they are most wanted. From these results there is no escape for those who wish to found their theories on facts.
It is curious, however, to note that not even a scaled survey will appeal in all cases to the antiquary. Plans of Jerusalem have been put forward which reduce the size of the city to that of a gentleman’s garden—not exceeding five acres for the older town, and fifteen acres in all. This is gravely propounded in face of the surveys of Tyre, Cæsarea, and other cities, which, though placed on restricted sites, have an area of 100 to 200 acres each. Jerusalem, in Hebrew times, really occupied some 200 acres, with a population of more than 10,000 souls, even in Nehemiah’s time. A modern village of 500 souls in Palestine is larger than the “Pre-Exilic” Jerusalem of writers who put no scale to their plans. It is not, I fear, unnecessary to point out the importance of mastering the results of scientific survey, especially in the case of scholars who have not been in Palestine. No amount of literary ingenuity can destroy the actual results of measurement and excavation, and as these become more familiar the theories which ignore them must become obsolete.
After surveying and planning a very large number of ruins, it became possible to form some opinion as to comparative dates, and, from instances where history or inscriptions furnished a clue, to obtain starting-points of comparison in other cases. In this work I found most assistance from the writings of De Vogüé and Rey, and from Fergusson’s “Handbook of Architecture.” Manyfallacies thus came to be exposed, and the discovery of pointed arches often transferred a building from the Phœnicians to the Crusaders. The number of really ancient remains naturally proved to be small, for we must remember that the antiquary in Palestine ends nearly where he begins in England. A Saxon church is a very great rarity at home. In Palestine, where we go back some three thousand years earlier, many important ruins are six or seven centuries older than our Saxon chapels (such as that of Bradford). In England we point with pride to Norman Winchester. In Palestine we regard the Crusading Cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre as quite modern. The Dome of the Rock was the model of our Temple chapels, and so old was it when the Temple Order was instituted, that it was confounded by the Knights with Herod’s Temple, still seven centuries older. Yet even Herod’s work does not content us in the East, where we look to find the walls built by Solomon. Some antiquaries have failed to remember the many great builders—Hadrian, Constantine, Justinian, the Khalifs, the Crusaders, the later Moslems—who followed Herod and Solomon. Palestine has an ancient history of eight centuries between the date of the Crucifixion and the time when England became a state. This is a truism, yet it is one which is not unfrequently forgotten.
Among the most important results was the classification of various kinds of rock-sepulchre in Palestine. To convince us that an ancient site has really been discovered, it is not enough to find a ruin with the required name. When neither inscription nor architecture gives a date, and when no measured distances along Roman roads point to the spot, we must often rely on theevidence of rock-cut tombs. It is not enough to find even these, unless they are really Hebrew tombs. It was our practice not only to record their existence, but to measure and describe them. They fall thus into categories—Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Early Christian, and Crusading—all rock-cut, but all presenting differences. Some were inscribed, and served to date the class to which they belonged. In some cases tombs of the earlier class had been enlarged later, the inner chambers presenting different arrangements to the outer or older. In some cases Jewish tombs were half destroyed by more recent excavators of caves, which were thus proved not to be as old as formerly thought. It was finally clear that tombs withkokim, that is, with tunnels in the walls of the chamber running in lengthways, so that the corpse was placed with its feet towards the chamber, were the oldest; and that this style of sepulture was Hebrew and preceded the Greek age. In Phœnicia similar tombs occur; but the tombs at the bottom of a deep shaft, as in Egypt, which occur at Tyre, are unknown in Palestine, where the entrance is in the face of a rock.
Whenkokimtombs occur at a ruined site, they may now be considered good evidence of the antiquity of the place. They are found at most of the sites which have been otherwise proved to be Hebrew towns, but their antiquity is demonstrated by independent means.
There are in Palestine eight great periods of building, beginning with the rude stone or pre-historic age, and including Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusading, and Saracenic.
The rude stone monuments have been already noticed, and are probably the earliest remains in the country. Hebrew remains are chiefly represented by rock-cuttombs, rock scarps, tunnels, and pools (as at Siloam), the great Tells or mounds beside springs and streams, and a very few inscriptions. The wall on Ophel, found by Sir C. Warren, is probably as old as Nehemiah, and in the extreme north we have Phœnician sculptures, tombs, and sarcophagi of equal antiquity. The Greek age presents several examples of native art under Greek influence, such as the palace of Hyrcanus, and some of the Jerusalem tombs. To the earliest Roman period belong the walls of the Jerusalem and Hebron harams, with the temple at Siah, the colonnade at Samaria, the earliest remains at Masada and Cæsarea. Advancing to the second century of our era, we find Syria to have been suddenly covered with Roman cities, Roman roads, Roman temples and inscriptions, funerary and official; and this period, to which the synagogues also belong, is one of the greatest building ages in Palestine. The Roman work gradually gives place to the Christian architecture of the Byzantines. Chrysostom’s description of Syrian civilisation fully agrees with the discovery of countless Greek chapels and churches of this age, with cities, castles, and other buildings. At Bethlehem we have one of the oldest churches in the world, the fourth-century pillars still standing in place. The church was five hundred years old when England became a kingdom.
The early Arabs have left us very few buildings beyond the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem, the great Damascus mosque, and perhaps the buildings beyond Jordan mentioned in the fifth chapter. They employed Persian and Greek architects, and brought no original style of their own from the deserts of Arabia. The Crusaders, who followed, were great builders, civil andecclesiastical; the country is full of their castles and of their churches. The Italian-Gothic style was slowly modified during the two centuries of Norman supremacy; the latest buildings being those along the western coast, which was latest held. The nearest approach to their architecture that I have seen is found in Palermo and in Messina; and it was to Norman success against Islam in Sicily that the establishment of the Latin kingdom in Syria was due. The Normans were succeeded by the Egyptians, to whom Syria owes many of its finest architectural monuments, dating from the fifteenth century. The Turks have added very little of any interest to the architectural remains of the country.
These various epochs and styles are distinguishable by the student who has studied dated monuments of each age. The forms of the arches, the dressing of the masonry, the mortar even and the plaster, tell their tale to the practised eye. Crusading work is distinguished by its mason’s marks, of which we made a large collection, and which are often the same used about the same time in England and in Scotland. They are neither marks of individuals, nor do they show the position intended for the stone, but clearly they were put only on the best finished stones, and often they are luck-marks, which, from a remote antiquity, have been widely used in Asia and in Europe. Neither the earlier Arabs nor the later Saracens seem to have used such marks, and they form the most distinctive peculiarity of Crusading work in the East.
Next in order we must consider one of the most interesting subjects studied by the explorers, namely, that of ethnology. Very little was really known as to the peculiarities of the natives of Syria. I find thatit is still thought in England that they are Turks, though the number of Turks in the country south of Damascus might perhaps be counted only by tens. For six years I carefully studied every class of the population, and collected facts concerning race, religion, and language, which form the most important considerations in such study, and on which manners and customs must chiefly depend.
The population of Palestine, though very sparse, is also very mixed. In addition to the Moslem peasantry, who are mainly of an Aramaic stock, and the Arabs, who are more or less of pure southern extraction, we have to deal with native Greek Christians; with the Lebanon Maronites; with the Druzes, Metâwileh, Ismailiyeh, Anseiriyeh; with Greeks, Jews, Samaritans, and with yet later colonies of Germans; with Italian monks and French priests; with the annual hordes of pilgrims, Russian, Armenian, or Georgian, and the annual inroad of European tourists. Some European stocks, such as the Italian and German, have left their mark on the racial types of the country. We cannot study the question of ethnology practically on the assumption that the population is of pure stock, and represents without mixture that existing three thousand years ago. Not only has there been some admixture of late years, but there have been from the dawn of history various races in Syria. The Crusaders who married Maronite and Armenian wives originated thePoulains, who remained in the land. The soldiers of Rome or of Alexander, whose colonies were found even as far east as Gerasa, no doubt intermarried with natives; as the Palmyrene archer of York wedded a wife of the Catuvellauni. In the time of Christ Greek was spoken inPalestine, and the inhabitants of Decapolis were probably in many cases of Greek descent. The Arabs from the south were then pushing northwards to meet the descending Aramaic stream from Palmyra. When we go back to Nehemiah’s time, we find the Jews as strangers, surrounded by a peasantry of mixed race. Yet earlier, the Assyrians brought colonists from the east and planted them in Samaria. When we go back to the time of Rameses II., we already find, side by side with the Semitic inhabitants, a race which was akin to the Medes and other ancient Mongolic peoples of Western Asia. The “Canaanite was then in the land” when Abraham began his migrations from the north.
These two great stocks, Semitic and Turanian, have contended ever since in Syria, with varying fortunes; and from the third centuryB.C.downwards the Aryans also have been always present. We have seen already how far south the Turkoman hordes pushed in Palestine, still surviving in the plain of Sharon; and, as in all other countries, there are gypsies in Syria, representing another element of Aryan origin from India; while among the Druzes I believe a Persian stock is also present.
If, therefore, ethnology is to be studied in Palestine, it must be with these facts kept steadily before us. If peasants are to be asked to have their heads measured, we must know something of their genealogies also. If skulls are to be collected, we must find out what skulls they are. I have known the skulls of peasants recently murdered to be sent home as types of the ancient population of the country. I have read of blue eyes attributed to the Amorites, when probably a much morerecent admixture of Aryan blood might account for this most abnormal occurrence.[63]
Even the studies of religion or of language present less difficulty than that of race. We are constantly reminded that race and language are not synonymous. It is no doubt true, since a conquered people often learns the language, and sometimes adopts the creed, of the conquerers. In Palestine, gypsies and Turkomans talk Arabic, for it is a necessity that the minority should speak the tongue of the majority; yet, as regards the more important stocks in Syria, there has been no great change. The peasantry speak almost as they spoke in Jerome’s days, almost as the Galileans spoke in the time of our Lord. The Arab tongue as spoken by the wild Bedu of Moab was admired for its classic expressions by my educated scribe, and was hardly understood by my Maronite servants. The speech of townsmen differs from that of the peasantry in its sounds as well as in its words, and the Lebanon muleteer’s jargon would certainly not be understood by an university professor of Arabic.
As regards the Moslem religion in Syria something has already been said. To study only one phase of Islam, as represented by educated Turks or Circassians in a city like Cairo, which has so long been open to European influence, will give only a partial and misleading picture of the creed, even when the good faith of such latitudinarians is undoubted. In Damascus, in Homs, in Hamah, in the remote villages, in the sanctuaries of Hebron and Jerusalem, another and a verydifferent tone prevails. Let the student of Islam run the gauntlet of the fanatical guards of these sanctuaries, let him be stoned for a dog and denied a drink of water as a Kâfir, and then acknowledge that the stern prejudices of the Middle Ages are not extinct. Guarded by an English garrison, in a country where subservience to England is a necessity, how can he judge the real temper of Moslems? Rather should he reflect on the ruins of Alexandria, on the dervishes who surrounded Arabi at Tell-el-Kebir, on the curses which will meet him in Hebron or in Acre. It is not by their words, but by their actions that Orientals, like Westerns, must be judged; and it is not by the opinions of the most advanced and civilised that the strength of prejudice among the many is to be gauged.
The ethnological study to which I devoted most of my time was that of the Moslem peasantry and of the nomadic Arabs. “We recorded their customs, their beliefs, their superstitious practices. We described their dress and food, and studied the peculiarities of their dialect. We found among them good, bad, and indifferent, honest and upright men, and scoundrels or hypocrites. Some were intelligent and able, others were stupid. We cannot generalise concerning them, any more than we can generalise at home. The average standard is very low as regards morality, truth, and intellect. Education they have none, and their courage, though generally remarkable, is not always to be relied on. The Arab is superior in many respects to the Fellah, but he is quite as untruthful and as greedy.
The feeling that is left on the mind by constant and lengthy communion with such a peasantry is not easy to describe; they are “as sheep having no shepherd,” even as in the ancient days. What heart could fail topity them in their weakness and ignorance, tortured by want, by debt, and by disease; cruelly ground down by robbers and taskmasters; torn from their homes to fight in Balkan snows, and left to find their way back without money or aid? I believe that in the minds of the present Sultan and of the present Khedive a real compassion for these poor creatures exists, though neither is able much to help them. The gratitude expressed for very little kindness, and the good feeling excited by common acts of justice among them, I shall not forget. There is but one state more miserable than that in which they usually live, and that is their condition in time of war. Whoever wins, whoever is covered with decorations, the poor at least are certain to suffer. I have seen them so suffer in Egypt in a campaign carried out by civilised and merciful Englishmen, but I have only heard from them what they underwent in the horrors of the great struggle with Russia in 1877. At Gibeon I found a young Sheikh who alone had made his way back out of all the conscripts taken from the village; and the peasantry in 1881 were forced to sell themselves and their families into practical slavery to foreign merchants, so ruined were they by the war. The horrible revenge that they took in a village, and on a European whom I well knew, cannot here be told. It is one of the many things beneath the surface which one learns by living long in a country, and which cannot be appreciated by the visitor of a season.
As regards race and language, enough has been said; and as regards religion, I have striven to show that the faith of mosques and Mollahs is hardly more in sympathy with peasant superstition than it is with thescepticism of Moslem philosophers. It was not, however, only with the peasantry that our work brought us in contact. I have conversed with men who traced their lineage from the companions of Omar, and with respectable merchants and learned doctors, as well as with Fellahin. The first step to a genuine understanding with such men is that there shall be no pretence on your part. The Oriental sees through such things more quickly than the European. He despises an affectation of consent on your part, and pays you in your own coin. Even as the home-made vest of an unhappy European disguised as a Syrian Christian was seen beneath hisjubbeh, and as his blue eyes betrayed him while his speech did not, so the would-be Oriental Englishman deceives himself when he thinks he is gaining ground with Moslems. In his own colours he is accepted on his merits, and may claim such acquaintance as may exist between Moslem and Christian; but the Korân forbids the making of a Christian intimacy (v. 56). “Take not Jew or Christian,” says the Prophet, “for a friend.”
Few men could be more respected or more worthy of respect than the famous Abd-el-Kader, whose acquaintance I was honoured by making. Strict and stern as was his creed, countless Christians owed their lives to his influence in the massacres of 1860. With him I would contrast my so-called friend the Sheikh of the Jerusalem Haram. He belonged to the new school, which prophesies smooth things, and cries peace where there is no peace. A milder-mannered man I never met. He went out of his way to propose that he should start excavations for us near the mosque, and that he should let us see down into the Well of Souls. Henever meant a word he said. I never believed him; and I knew his object was merely to get money on promises never to be fulfilled. Finding exactly where I wanted to excavate, he used to see no difficulty in the way. The next time I went to the Haram, a huge mound of earth had arisen before the walled-up archway which he promised to open. It was the stupidity of the Pasha, he explained (a Christian and an educated man), and he was still anxious to do something else. He could smatter a little English, and could ask for a copy of the Gospels. From such a man I could fancy the words to come easily that “Moslems and Christians were just the same;” but among all Muhammadans of Syria I despised no one else so heartily.
It is not the Moslem only who takes the measure of your foot in the East. I have heard the dragoman, who is so obsequious and respectful, describe the peculiarities of his convoy in their absence with considerable humour. There have been well-known prelates of Oriental Churches whose “printing-press funds” have not been visibly devoted to the benefit of their flocks. As long as the Turk is thought to be stupid and the Eastern believed to be eager for our teaching, he possesses the great advantage of being undervalued. The Turks have not allowed railways to be made, but they have adopted the electric telegraph; they have stopped explorations, but they are careful to collect antiquities having a saleable value. The Syrians have not adopted hard hats or French bonnets, but they buy lucifer-matches, and they use guns and gunpowder. They, like the Caffres, have keenly observed the manners of Europe, and have adopted only what seemed to them practical improvements. It is difficult to convey the results of experience in words.We go out to other countries supposing that we can carry all before us. We come home after a time to doubt whether in all respects our civilisation is superior to that of peoples who in Asia were the heirs of an ancient culture when we were painted with woad. If we are ignorant at first of the manners and beliefs of Eastern lands, the shock to our prejudices must be very great; but I cannot believe that long acquaintance with Moslem life can fail to dispel the charm of our first contact with the dignity and courtesy of the East.
There is another important question bound up with Palestine exploration on which a few words may be here permitted, namely, the relation which it bears to the study of the Bible. There is hardly a historic chapter which I was not able to read with the scene of the events recorded before my eyes; there is not a poetic line in the Old Testament which is not more vividly brought home by a memory of Eastern scenery and life. The conditions under which we study the Bible at home are most peculiar. We read it in translation, and in a country which has little or nothing in common with the home of Hebrew prophets or of Galilean disciples. We learn, as a rule, hardly a word of the original language, and while we never feel that Dante or Goethe are known to those who read translations and who have never been in Italy or in Germany, we regard the Bible as intelligible to every reader. Not that the translation is other than the most wonderful in existence—except Luther’s—and not that Englishmen were ignorant of the Holy Land in the days when it was first rendered from the original. Queen Elizabeth had her fleet on the Euphrates and her consuls in the Levant; Maundrell was chaplain at Aleppo in 1697, and addressed the recordof his travels to the Bishop of Rochester. Not, again, that such familiar names as those of the roebuck and the fallow-deer are misnomers, or that “green pastures” are unknown in Palestine, but because the average reader who has not seen the East cannot but colour that which he reads with the colouring of familiar scenes.
It is not only the uncritical reader to whom this applies: the literary critic is no better off. I have studied much that has been written by Colenso, by Ewald, by Kuenen, and by Wellhausen; but there is perhaps only one critic of eminence to whom the East is familiar, and in whose eyes the antiquarian discoveries of explorers seem to have primary value, namely, Renan; and the tone of those authors who write without practical and long experience of the East at once betrays their deficiency. Their criticism smells of the lamp, not of the desert; and the arguments which seem so strong in their eyes have often little force in those of an Oriental traveller.
It has always been the fate of genius to be criticised by narrower minds. The Book of Job, for instance, is a work which cannot be truly appreciated anywhere but in the desert. It breathes the desert air, it tells of desert beasts and plants, of the pastoral patriarch with his flocks and herds, of the Chaldean raiders from the east, of the whirlwind, the frost, and the stars. Here you read of the broom still burned for charcoal—“sharp arrows of the mighty with coals of juniper.” In Job you hear the poet speak of the “eyelids of the dawn.” “The ghosts tremble beneath the waters, even the inhabitants thereof.” The stork and the ostrich, the wild ass and the ibex on the cliffs, are familiar to hismemory. Of his critics he asks a question which may puzzle them yet: “Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve? Canst thou number the months that they fulfil? or knowest thou the time when they bring forth?” Even after criticising the language and dividing out the “documents,” I fear it is to the Arab hunter that the most learned Hebraist in England must go for the answer.
The Song of Solomon is another Hebrew book which is equally full of Eastern colour. The vineyards of Lebanon, the secret places in the “stairs” of the rocks where the wild dove hides, the roes on the mountains, are among its images. Over the Moab plateau you may see the dawn stretching her wings as Joel beheld her, and from the mountains of Judah you may see her sinking in the “uttermost parts of the sea,” as the Psalmist describes. Surely in the days of a “modern theory of the Pentateuch,” it is not amiss that we should at times be reminded that the Hebrews knew better their own land, and even their own history, than strangers in a remote and very different clime, in the midst of a very different civilisation and theory of life, and at a time separated by some twenty-five centuries from that which is studied.
Every fact that is collected in the East serves better to explain the Bible and more and more to control critical views. Surely those who write of “peasant proprietors” in Solomon’s days cannot be aware that individual property in agricultural land has never been an Eastern tenure. As in India, in Russia, or among Bechuana tribes, so also in Palestine to the present day,the lands are held on “village tenure.” If Isaiah’s writings were ever circulated as “broad-sheets,” I would ask who read them in a country where only a few scribes here and there had acquired the great art of writing?
The tenth chapter of Genesis has been put on one side, as though unworthy of scientific notice, by those who have assumed that there was only one stock and only one language in Syria and Chaldea. Now that the monuments tell us of other races and other languages, its distinctions become valuable, and serve to guide scientific research; while the full elucidation of its geography has only been attained by the painful travels of explorers. In this way, also, we are now able to restore, bit by bit, the topography of Palestine as described in the Bible. It is found easy to recognise the most important towns, to trace the borders of the tribes, and to explain the scene of David’s wanderings or of Gideon’s pursuit. In the peasant’s mouth you may still hear the old language almost unchanged, with its terse idiom, its vigorous wording, and its naturally religious tone. It is not the language of the grammatical pedant that comes from his lips, but the mother-tongue of earlier days.
In all things founded on actual knowledge of the land, the labours of the explorers have added materially to the knowledge of the Bible. The seasons, the climate, the fauna and flora, the crops, the native customs and speech, the remains of Hebrew architecture, art, engineering, and monumental writing, have been described. Even as regards the question of transmission of ancient documents and the method of their preservation, some new hints have been collected.
It seems to me impossible for any one familiar with Oriental ideas to accept the ordinary theory of edited“documents,” which German scholarship has taken as its datum, since Astruc’s discovery of parallel passages in Genesis. Nor is it correct for critics to speak of the modern “theory of the Pentateuch.” There is more than one such theory, and their respective upholders are not in accord. If we take such a work as the Book of Kings, it seems to me that light is thrown on the method of its construction by the practice of the Samaritan high priests, who, as already explained, have continued their very sober chronicle from 1149A.D.to 1859A.D.by successive additions, and a knowledge of the documentary history of the Talmud or of the Zendavesta shows us that in Asia it is with the “commentator,” and not with the “editor,” that we have to deal—with sacred books preserved by loving care and reverence, not with a modern literature to be compared with our daily press.
I have been led to make these remarks, not through any want of respect for English scholarship and erudition, but because we are now entering on a new epoch of scientific study, and because the great importance of the change wrought by the increase of our actual knowledge is at times not recognised. We no longer depend on literature alone. We have actual monuments before our eyes. We have inscriptions, coins, seals, statues, chased metal-work, and pottery; we have collected measurements of tombs, walls, synagogues, and reliable photographs of every famous place. We have accounts of race, language, custom, and tradition, not hastily gathered, but the results of sifting and repeated inquiry. From such materials facts totally unexpected have been brought to light. Fifteen years ago no one knew that in Syria there was a system of hieroglyphics quite distinct fromany other.[64]Forty years ago no scholar suspected the early civilisation of a forgotten Turanian race in Chaldea, whose language was recovered by the genius of Sir Henry Rawlinson. Now it is generally admitted by the few who have turned their attention to the matter that an old Mongolic people ruled over the Semitic dwellers in Palestine before the time of the Exodus. But this discovery has as yet found its way into no critical workon the Bible, save one hasty attempt to show that it contradicts Genesis. It is evident that in the future, when the subject is more fully understood, it must modify many conclusions previously supposed final. The Hebrew language itself was not perfectly understood until the knowledge of Assyrian had been sufficiently advanced to permit of comparison. Even now further steps are possible, and are being cautiously taken, by scholars familiar with the Akkadian, which show beyond dispute how words foreign to the Hebrew language, but proper to the Turanian speech of Western Asia, have found a place even in the earliest books of the Old Testament. This fact, only dimly suspected by Gesenius, has been brought to light entirely by monumental research.
Even in the nineteenth century, then, we are only beginning to understand the Bible from its historical and natural point of view. New maps, new dictionaries, new handbooks have already been found requisite to keep pace with the advance of knowledge due to exploration; and even these cannot pretend to be final or complete presentments of all that it is possible to know.
I may conclude, then, by a few words concerning the work which still remains to be done, which should be in two directions—excavation and the study of native life.
As regards excavation, there is very much to be done. At Cæsarea, at Herodium, at Jerusalem itself, at Samaria probably, at Gerasa, and Baalbek, there are secrets hidden still beneath the soil. The great Hittite Tells near Homs ought all to be examined by digging. The ruins of Carchemish have only been scratched over. Lebanon and Amanus are as yet but little known. New hieroglyphic texts may be expected from Northern Syria,and the Siloam inscription cannot be unique. Unfortunately the state of the East is very unfavourable to the antiquarian; but it must not be supposed that exploration is complete while fields as yet hardly worked exist all along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
As regards ethnological study, there is also much yet to be done. This can only properly be undertaken by residents. The observations of a stranger are not reliable. The inquirer must know the personal characters of those with whom he deals, and must be able to select those whose statements are worth recording. The peasantry especially should be studied, and their confidence will not be given to any save those with whom they are intimate.
The best ethnological information that I collected in Syria came from a respected German resident among the Samaritans, who was known to all the townsmen of Shechem as “the Father of Peace.” The object of those interested in such study should be to organise inquiries from sympathetic residents. The linguistic studies of Mr. C. Landberg at Sidon have been the most important of recent additions to our knowledge of the language, proverbs, and customs of the Syrian peasantry.[65]
A complete Fellah vocabulary should be collected in Syria. The vulgar pronunciation should be preserved, the vulgar idiom and grammatical blunders. A great many archaic words which are not in lexicons would thus be unearthed, just as we find valuable survivals in the dialects of our own provinces. To this vocabulary every legend, song, proverb, or mythical tale that can be gathered should be added, and every customnoted. The charms and amulets worn, the burial, birth, and marriage rites, the common oaths and salutations, the peasant ideas of etiquette and ceremony, every one of these has an unknown scientific value. Some attempt has already been made by the Palestine Exploration Fund to start such an inquiry; and until peace reigns and confidence is restored on the Sultan’s dominions, no more useful method of increasing our knowledge can be devised.
I will take leave, then, of my readers in the words of the old knight whose work in Palestine has not yet been proved to be other than an account of his own travels:—
“And forasmuch as it is long time past that there was no general passage or voyage over the sea, and many men desiring to hear speak of the Holy Land and have thereof great solace and comfort, ... I shall devise you some part of things that are there, when time shall be as it shall best come to my mind; ... for I have oftentimes passed and ridden the way with good company of many gentles. God be thanked!”
THEmost celebrated of the controversies connected with Palestine refer to the site of the Temple of Herod and to that of the Holy Sepulchre. I have given an estimate of the results of exploration as affecting both subjects in various works, but since their publication other writers (not the majority) have in some cases reverted to the views which were held before exploration commenced, and which were deduced from literary researches.
The latest work on the subject (Professor Hayter Lewis’ “The Holy Places of Jerusalem,” Murray, 1888), very fully supports the views which I have advocated for the last ten years.
As regards these questions, it is clear that we are now in a position to study them from monumental evidence, which is safer and more convincing than any argument drawn from literary studies. The views now more generally adopted depend almost entirely on the consideration of such monumental evidence, and on study of the rock rather than on the vague and brief accounts of ancient writers.
As regards the Temple, the excavations have proved to us that a great building exists on the site having masonryof the same general character on its east, west, and south walls. The difference in finish of the ancient stones in some parts may most probably be supposed not to indicate any difference of date, but to be due to the work being in some places intended to be seen and in other cases hidden under earth. There is no evidence that any of this masonry is as old as Solomon. It resembles the work at Arak el Emir (second centuryB.C.), and the Greek style of the Acropolis (sixth centuryB.C.), and the Roman masonry of Baalbek (second centuryA.D.). The masons’ marks found by Sir C. Warren, and resembling Phœnician or Aramean letters, do not necessitate the idea that these stones are of Solomon’s age. The old alphabet was still but little changed in Herod’s days.
Various scholars have taken Josephus’ statement, that the Temple was a stadium square—a statement made, writing in Rome, by an author whose measurements are often self-contradictory[66]—and have thus sought toconfine Herod’s Temple to an area 600 feet square in the south-west angle of the Haram. To this theory, which originated with the late Mr. Fergusson, several objections seem to me fatal.
(1.) Josephus, whom they quote, also says that the town-wall of Jerusalem on Ophel, south of the Temple, joined theeasterncloister of the Temple (Wars, V. iv. 2). This wall Sir Charles Warren discovered joining the east wall of the Haram. Thus, according to Josephus himself, the south-east angle of the present Haram was the south-east angle of Herod’s Temple.
(2.) No walls such as are required by these theorists are known inside the Haram, nor is there any break in the south wall at the point where they suppose the S.E. angle to have been.
(3.) There is also the statement by Josephus that the Temple was on the top of the hill, and I have shown by sections published in theBuilder(January 25, 1879), that according to their theory foundations of between thirty and ninety feet are inevitably necessary to carry down to the known levels of the rock the heavy base of the great central fane. Writers who treat only of the plan without taking this practical builder’s objection into consideration may not admit the strength of this argument, but to those who have themselves built it should have force, and no ingenuity can escape from the necessity of such foundations. In the same paper I have shown that a plan, placing the Holy House on the present Sakhrah rock, necessitates only three or four feet of foundation in all parts of the Temple area. (See further Conder’s “Handbook to the Bible,” pp. 359-385,and “Tent Work in Palestine,” vol. i. chap, xii., for full details as to the levels).
(4.) The site of Antonia, as described by Josephus, most plainly agrees with the present rock at the north-west corner of the Haram. Such a site for Antonia cannot be reconciled with the theory confining the Temple to a small portion of the Haram.
(5.) These scholars also ignore the very important and detailed account in the Talmud, which cannot be reconciled with the small area in question. This account dates from only about half a century after the time of Josephus, a time when the ruins of the Temple might still be traceable and known to the author. The account gives us every measurement, enabling us to make a plan, and by aid of the number of steps stated—in agreement with Josephus—to calculate the levels of the various courts. My plan, based on these measurements, occurs in the books above quoted and in the Jerusalem volume of the “Memoirs of Western Palestine.” By this restoration we are able to account for the great passages north of the Dome of the Rock, and can identify the gates mentioned in the Talmud with existing gateways.
The theory in question seems to me, therefore, to strain the meaning of one particular statement and to ignore several others equally important by the same author. It declines to accept the outcome of exploration in the recovery of the Ophel wall; and it supposes walls and a rock scarp to exist where no traces are found of such walls and where such a scarp is impossible. It must, therefore, be regarded as the survival of earlier opinion, which will in time give place to the facts clearly indicated by excavation.
As regards the site of the Holy Sepulchre, Mr. Fergusson’s theory may be considered defunct. Professor Hayter Lewis has taken up the argument which Iattempted in 1878, and has added further details of architectural criticism. He agrees with others in accepting the historic accounts contained in inscriptions and in Arab chronicles which attribute the Dome of the Rock to Abd el Melek, and he accepts my three propositions:—1st, That older material was re-used in the structure; 2nd, That the outer walls are attributable to the restoration of the building in the ninth century; 3rd, That the Dome of the Chain was the model of the Dome of the Rock. These three propositions were argued in 1878 (“Tent Work in Palestine”).
It is now generally agreed that Constantine’s basilica of the Holy Sepulchre stood on the present site of the church, and there are, of course, many who regard Constantine’s site as of necessity the true one, while other writers have adopted the theory to which I drew attention in 1878, placing Calvary at the present Jeremiah’s Grotto. The main argument against the traditional site is that it must have been within the “second wall,” which was then the outer wall on the north, whereas we learn from the Epistle that “Christ suffered without the gate” (Heb. xiii. 12). It is certain that the position is suspiciously central. Some have tried to draw the second wall so as to exclude the church. The recovery of the rock sections shows how impossible is the line they propose, which is drawn in a valley commanded from outside. The west end of the second wall was discovered in 1886 within a few feet of the point shown as probable on my plan of 1878, and I believe this discovery to be the death-blow to the claims of the traditional site.