C. R. Conder

NEARLY every tourist in Palestine lands at Jaffa, and thence travels to Jerusalem. The open roadstead, the yellow dunes, the distant shadowy mountains, the brown town on its hillock, the palms, the orange-gardens and the picturesque crowd are familiar to very many of my readers. So are the paths over the plain, the mud villages and cactus hedges, the great minaret tower of Ramleh, and the rough mountains, with scattered copses of mastic and oak, with stone hamlets and terraced olive groves, through which lies the way to the Holy City.

When first I traversed this road in July 1872, it was less frequented than it is now. The long rows of Jewish cottages which first meet the eye on reaching the plateau west of the city were not then built, and Mr. Cook’s signboard was not fixed to the ancient walls of Jerusalem. The increase of the population by the arrival of 15,000 European Jews had not commenced, and what has now been gained in prosperity has been lost in picturesque antiquity of appearance. Jerusalem was then still an Oriental, but has now become what is known as a Levantine town.

The winters of 1873, of 1874, and of 1881 I spent within the walls, and many other visits were necessary from time to time; but our work lay in the country, and it was only here and there that we were able to add new details to the exhaustive and scientific records of Sir Charles Wilson and Sir Charles Warren in Jerusalem itself. My first impression was one of disappointment. The city is small, the hills are stony, barren, and shapeless. One seemed always to be traversing bylanes, so narrow were the steep streets, which afterwards became so familiar. But Jerusalem is a city which to the student becomes more interesting the longer he explores the remains of a past stretching back through the proud days of the Crusading kingdom to the glories of the Arab Khalifate, to the quaint superstitions of the Byzantines, to the greatness of the Herodians, to the earlier civilisation of the Hebrews. Relics still remain of the works of every age, from the time when David first fixed his throne on Sion; and even after fifteen years of exploration a great discovery remained to be made in the finding of the only Hebrew inscription, as yet known in Western Palestine, which dates back to the times of the kings of Judah.

Space will not allow of a complete account of Jerusalem, which may be found in the publications of the Palestine Exploration Fund.[28] Few scenes in the East remain more distinctly printed on the memory than do those connected with life in Jerusalem. The motley crowd in its lanes, where every race of Europe and of Western Asia meets; the gloomy churches; the beauty of the Arab chapel of the Rock; the strange fanaticism of the Greek festival of the Holy Fire; the dervish processions issuing from the old Temple area; the pathetic wailing at the Temple wall; the Jewish Passover; the horns blown at the feast of Tabernacles; Russian, Armenian, Greek, and Georgian pilgrims; the Christ crucified by Franciscan monks in the gilded chapel of Calvary; the poor whose feet are washed by a crowned bishop—all remain in the memory with the mighty ramparts of the city as seen by Christ and His disciples, and the blue goggles of the tourist from the West. No other town presents such an epitome of history, or gathers a crowd so representative of East and West.

There are only two discoveries to which I propose to refer, as being the most important since the closing of Sir Charles Warren’s mines. These are the discovery of the Temple rampart and that of the Siloam inscription. The extent of the Temple area, as rebuilt by Herod the Great, was defined by the excavations which Sir Charles Warren carried down to the rock foundations, in some parts by mines 70 to 100 feet deep,[29] but in no part did he find the ancient walls rising above the level of the inner court. The north-west corner of the area is occupied by barracks, standing on the cliff which was once crowned by the citadel of Antonia; and outside this cliff is the rock-cut trench, converted later into a covered double pool, which the Christians of the fourth century regarded as Bethesda. From this pool a narrow lofty tunnel leads southwards through the cliff. It is an ancient aqueduct, which was stopped up by the building of the Temple wall. Sir Charles Warren explored it with great difficulty on a raft on the sewage with which it was filled; but in 1873 was cleared out by the city authorities, and I was able to explore it at leisure. At the very end, through a hole in the floor, it was possible to reach a chamber over this rocky passage, built against the Temple wall and lighted by a window which looks into the north-west part of the Temple court. The east wall of the chamber is the ancient wall built by Herod, and here I found the same great drafted stones which occur in the foundations. I also found that the wall was adorned outside above the ground-level by projecting buttresses, just like those of the enclosure at Hebron, to be mentioned immediately. We are thus able to picture the appearance of the great ramparts of Herod’s Temple enclosure, with such buttresses running round the walls and capped by a boldly corbelled cornice, presenting the same simple and massive appearance which may still be seen in the smaller enclosure round the tombs of the Patriarchs at Hebron.

The discovery of the Siloam inscription was an instance of the accidental manner in which important monuments are often recovered; yet, as in other cases, it was due to the education which the native population receives from the scientific explorer. Had the importance of such discoveries not been impressed on the minds of natives, it is possible that the Jewish boy who, falling down in the water of the narrow aqueduct, first observed the only known relic of the writing of his ancestors in King Hezekiah’s days, would not have been conscious how valuable a discovery he had made on a spot visited by more than one eager explorer who passed unconscious by the silent text.

On the east side of Jerusalem runs the deep Kedron gorge; under the Temple walls on its western slope a rock chamber contains the one spring of Jerusalem, known as the Virgin’s Fountain to Christians, and as the “Mother of Steps” to Moslems, because of the stairs which lead down into the vault from the present surface of the valley, as raised by the accumulated rubbish of twenty-five centuries of stormy history. This spring, with its intermittent rush of waters welling up under the steps, is the En Rogel of the Old Testament, and I believe the Bethesda or “House of the Stream,” the troubling of whose waters is mentioned in the fourth Gospel. From the back of the rock chamber a passage, also rock-cut, and scarcely large enough in places for a grown man to squeeze through, runs south under the Ophel hill for about a third of a mile, to the reservoir which is the undisputed site of the ancient Pool of Siloam. The course of the channel is serpentine, and the farther end near the Pool of Siloam enlarges into a passage of considerable height. Down this channel the waters of the spring rush to the pool whenever the sudden flow takes place. In autumn there is an interval of several days; in winter the sudden flow takes place sometimes twice in a day. A natural syphon from an underground basin accounts for this flow, as also for that of the “Sabbatic river” in North Syria. When it occurs, the narrow parts of the passage are filled to the roof with water.

This passage was explored by Dr. Robinson, Sir Charles Wilson, Sir Charles Warren, and others, but the inscription on the rock close to the mouth of the tunnel was not seen, being then under water. When it was found in 1880 by a boy who entered from the Siloam end of the passage, it was almost obliterated by the deposit of lime crystals on the letters. Professor Sayce, then in Palestine, made a copy, and was able to find out the general meaning of the text. In 1881 Dr. Guthe, a German explorer, cleaned the text with a weak acid solution, and I was then able, with the aid of Lieutenant Mantell, R.E., to take a proper “squeeze.” It was a work of labour and requiring patience, for on two occasions we sat for three or four hours cramped up in the water in order to obtain a perfect copy of every letter, and afterwards to verify these copies by examining each letter with the candle placed so as to throw the light from right, left, top and bottom. Only by such labour can reliable copies be made. We were rewarded by sending home the first accurate copy published in Europe, and were able to settle many disputed points raised by the imperfect copy of the text before it was cleaned. An excellent cast was afterwards made.

The contents of the text, which now ranks as one of the most valuable found in the East, are not of historic importance. The six lines of beautifully chiselled letters record only the making of the tunnel, which seems to have been regarded as a triumph of Hebrew engineering skill. It was begun from both ends, and the workmen heard the sound of the picks of the other party in the bowels of the hill, and called to their fellows. Thus guided, they advanced and broke through; the two tunnels proving to be only a few feet out of line. No date, no royal name, or other means of ascertaining the age of the text exist; yet our knowledge is enough to fix very closely, from the forms of the letters, the century in which it must have been written. It is probably to this tunnel that the Bible refers in noting the water-works of King Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxxii. 30); and the text shows us that monumental writing was in use among the Hebrews about 700 B.C. The differences between these Hebrew letters and those used by the Phoenicians of the same age also show us that writing must have been familiar to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for many centuries before the time when this text was engraved; and it thus becomes the first monumental proof of the early civilisation of the Hebrews which has been drawn from their own records on the rock.

Being aware of the contents of the text, we determined to re-explore and survey the whole length of the tunnel, in order to see if any other texts could be found, and to discover if possible the exact place where the two parties of workmen met, on that day 2580 years before, when they heard each others’ voices through the rock. Followed by Lieutenant Mantell and Mr. G. Armstrong, I crawled over the mud and sharp pebbles for the whole distance, dragging with us a chain, and taking compass angles, which were entered in a wet note-book by the light of a candle often put out by the water. We also suffered from the bites of the leeches and from the want of air; but our chief danger was the sudden rise of the water, which might have caught us in that narrow part of the passage, where, crawling flat, we were hardly able to squeeze through and to keep our lights burning. We noted, however, two shafts to which we might retire if the water rose, and which were perhaps made in order to allow the workmen to stand upright at times and rest. It is almost impossible to suppose that the narrowest parts were excavated by grown men; at all events, they must have been narrower in the shoulders than the explorers; but I believe that boys were probably employed. In this narrow part no inscription could have been cut, nor did we find any tablets on the rock in other parts like that already noticed. On the first occasion, after five hours, we reached the Virgin’s Pool safely; but we found a second visit necessary, and in order to make the danger less, we determined to pass down the tunnel from the spring, where I stationed a servant to warn us if the water began to rise. Hardly had we got a hundred yards down the passage when we heard his shouts, and at once began to canter on all fours to the spring chamber over the pebbles and mud. We had crossed the pool with the water only up to our knees, but when we again reached it from the tunnel at the back, it was well up to the arm-pits; and hardly were we safe on the landing of the steps, when we heard the water gurgling in the tunnel, and knew that it must in the narrow part be full to the roof. In a short time the flow subsided, and we were able to go back safely, knowing that it would not rise again that day. We were astonished, however, on emerging at Siloam, to find the stars shining, for we had again spent five hours in the dark, with the mud, stones, and leeches, and considered ourselves lucky in escaping an attack of fever, which generally follows such exposure to wet and cold in Palestine. We were rewarded by finding the place where the two parties, working from either end of the tunnel, met nearly half-way.

From the fourth century to the present day the sites of Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre have been shown within the precincts of the Crusading cathedral, standing where Constantine’s basilica was raised. The discovery of part of the “second wall” in 1886 shows pretty clearly that the line which—guided by the rock-levels—I drew in 1878, nearly coinciding with Dr. Robinson’s line, is correct, and that the traditional site was thus in the time of our Lord within the city walls. For the last half century this view has been very generally held, but there was no agreement as to the true site. I was enabled, however, through the help of Dr. Chaplin, the resident physician, to investigate the ancient Jewish tradition, still extant among the older resident Jews, which places the site of the “House of Stoning” or place of execution at the remarkable knoll just outside the Damascus gate, north of the city. There are several reasons, which I have detailed in other publications, for thinking that this hillock is the probable site of Calvary. When General Gordon was residing at Jerusalem, he adopted this idea very strongly, and it has thus become familiar to many in England.[30] The bare and stony swell breaks down on the south side into a precipice, over which, according to the Talmud, those doomed to be stoned were thrown, and on the summit they were afterwards crucified, according to the same account. The hillock stands conspicuous in a sort of natural amphitheatre, being thus fitted for a spectacle seen by great multitudes. The neighbourhood has always apparently been regarded as of evil omen, and a Moslem writer says that men may not pass over the plateau beside it at night for fear of evil spirits. Close to this same spot, also, the earliest Christian tradition pointed out the scene of the stoning of Stephen.

When first I reached Palestine in 1872, the Survey party were at work at Shechem, thirty miles north of Jerusalem. Sergeant Black and Sergeant Armstrong, whose names should be specially recorded among those who worked at the survey, because they were longest employed, and because their ability was conspicuous in framing a plan of operations suited to the peculiar requirements, had made good progress, with the aid of Mr. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake, left in charge when Captain Stewart came home ill. They had carried the work from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and thence along the mountains to Shechem, in six months, and the hill country of Benjamin, which I afterwards examined, was thus surveyed before I reached Palestine. This part of Judea, though presenting immense difficulties to the surveyor, which had been overcome by patience and toil, did not yield much of great interest beyond Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake’s discovery of a Jewish tomb-inscription, and the identification of several lost Hebrew cities. The site of Bethel, famous as it is in Bible history, is only that of a small village, on a ridge which, even for Judea, is remarkably barren and rocky. Here truly the wanderer who dreamed of angels could find nought save a stone for his pillow; but the long vista of the Jericho plain, seen over the peaks and ridges of the desert of Judah, might even now, by some modern Lot, be likened to the “garden of the Lord,” so green do its pastures look in spring, set in the stony ring of barren hills.

Not far thence we one day crossed the great gorge of Michmash, where was the fortress of the Philistines that Jonathan assaulted. We were able to lead our horses down from ledge to ledge, following the strata, to the bottom of the valley on its south side; but on the north towered the cliff of Bozez (“the shining”), which the Hebrew hero scaled. Here no horse could find a footing, and climbing up to visit the hermit’s caves, I was able to judge the effort which would be necessary to scale the whole height and then to fight at the top. No doubt the garrison must have regarded Jonathan’s feat as practically impossible.

The ridge on which Jerusalem stands, 2500 feet above the Mediterranean, runs southwards, gradually rising to 3000 feet in the neighbourhood of Hebron, where the open valley of vineyards forms one of the heads of the great Beersheba watercourse. This difficult region was surveyed in the autumn of 1874, and many ancient sites and ruins were discovered. We were not, however, at that time able to enter the Hebron Sanctuary, which had never been fully explored, and which is one of the most interesting places in Palestine. In 1882, however, I accompanied the Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales, who, under the guidance of Sir Charles Wilson, explored this zealously-guarded mosque, of which I then made the only complete plan in existence. The Haram (or “Sanctuary”) at Hebron is an oblong enclosure, repeating that of the Temple of Jerusalem on a smaller scale. It is not mentioned by early writers, yet there can be little doubt that it must be the work of Herod the Great, or of one of his immediate successors. It already existed in 333 A.D., and the walls are so exactly like those of the Jerusalem Haram, that they cannot be supposed the work of the Byzantine emperors.

The ramparts enclose a mediÆval church and a courtyard, built over an ancient rock-cut cave, which in all ages has been regarded as the sepulchre purchased by Abraham from the sons of Heth, where Sarah first is said to have been buried, and afterwards Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Rebecca and Leah. Six cenotaphs, like Moslem tombs, covered with rich embroidered cloths, stand in the enclosure—two inside the church (now a mosque), two in chapels beside the porch of the same, and two in buildings against the opposite rampart walls. It is not however supposed, even by Moslems, that these are the real tombs; they only mark supposed sites of tombs beneath the floor. These lower tombs, which Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveller of the twelfth century, claims to have seen, are now inaccessible, and it is impossible to say how far his account can be trusted.[31] In the floor of the mosque there are two entrances closed by flagstones, which are said to lead down by steps into the rock-cut cave. No Moslem would dare to enter this sacred cavern, where, as they say, Isaac would await and slay them, while Jewish legends tell that Eliezer of Damascus stands at the door to watch the repose of Abraham asleep in the arms of Sarah. There is, however, a hole in the floor which pierces the roof of a square chamber, lighted by a silver lamp suspended from the mouth of the hole.

Into this well-mouth we thrust our heads, and the lamp was lowered almost to the floor. Here I saw clearly that in one wall of the chamber a small square door exists, just like those of rock-cut tombs all through Palestine. There is thus probably a real tomb under the mosque, and the chamber is apparently an outer porch to this tomb. The floor was covered to some depth with sheets of paper, evidently the accumulations of many years. These papers are petitions to Abraham, which the pious Moslems drop through the hole, and thus leave lying at the door of his sepulchre.

Another opportunity of so thoroughly exploring this interesting site may not speedily occur; and so long as the mosque remains a mosque, it is doubtful if any one will succeed in entering the tomb itself, though it might perhaps be reached by the stairs said to exist on the south side of the building, if permission could be obtained to force up the flagstones.[32]

As regards the identity of this sepulchre with that of the Patriarchs, all that can be said is that tradition is unvarying on the subject, and the site nowise improbable; but the Hebrews never appear to have embalmed the dead, and if any inscriptions existed (inscriptions of early date on Hebrew tombs being almost unknown), they would probably belong to a very recent period.

THE PLAIN OF JERICHO, AS SEEN FROM AI.

To face page 35.

In an account like the present it is difficult to follow either a geographical or a chronological order. The geography of Palestine is, however, very generally understood, and the regions next to each other are here mentioned in order. The Survey was extended from a central band along the watershed, the reason being that the plains could only be visited, with due regard to the health and comfort of the party, in the spring and early summer, while the mountains were our refuge in the great heats of August and September, and in the sickly autumn, when the climate of the lower regions becomes almost pestilential. Only once was this system disregarded, and the result was an outbreak of virulent fever in the camp, which threatened for a time to put an end to the expedition.

East of the Hebron and of the Jerusalem hills stretches the desert of Judah, a plateau broken by ridges and ravines reaching to the tall cliffs which rise from the shores of the Dead Sea. Beyond this desert the plains of Jericho, through which the Jordan flows, stretch along the north shores of the sea, and are about 1000 feet lower than the surface of the Mediterranean. On the west of the Judean mountains there are foot-hills (the region called Shephelah in the Bible), and west of these again the broad plains of Sharon and of Philistia extend to the sandhills of the Mediterranean coast, which presents no natural harbour south of Mount Carmel.

The Judean desert I surveyed with a very small party in the early spring of 1875. The Jericho plains we unfortunately visited too soon in December 1873. The Shephelah and the plain of Philistia were completed in the spring of 1875 without any difficulty, save a small part near Beersheba, which was finished in 1877. Beersheba itself was visited in the autumn of 1874. These regions were all more or less wild, and inhabited by nomadic Arabs, so that the adventures of the party were more numerous than when our work lay near the civilised centres and among the settled villagers. The four regions above mentioned may be briefly mentioned in order.

The Judean desert is without exception the wildest and most desolate district in Syria. It seems hardly possible that man or beast can find a living in such a land. Yet, as David found pasture for those “few poor sheep in the wilderness,” so do the desert Arabs find food for their goats among the rocks. It is none the less a desert indeed, riven by narrow ravines leading to deep gorges, and rising between the stony gullies into narrow ridges of dark brown limestone, capped with gleaming white chalk, full of cone-like hillocks and fantastic peaks. Here sitting on the edge of the great cliffs, which drop down a sheer height of some two thousand feet to the rock-strewn shore, gazing on the shining waters of that salt blue lake, watching the ibex herds scudding silently over the plateau, the tawny partridges running in the valley, hearing the clear note of the black grackle as it soars among the rocks where the hyrax (or coney) is hiding, I have felt the sense of true solitude such as is rarely known elsewhere. There is no stirring of the grass by the breeze, no rustling of leaves, no murmur of water, no sound of life save the grackle’s note or the jackal’s cry, re-echoed from the rocks. The sun beats down from a cloudless sky; the white glare of the chalk, the smooth face of the sea, are broad stretches of colour unbroken by variety, save where the tamarisk with its feathery leaves makes a dark line among the boulders of the torrent course. Here really out of the world the solitary hermits sate in the rocky cells which were their tombs; here in the awful prison of the Marsaba monastery men are still buried, as it were, alive, without future, without hope, without employment, with no comradeship save that of equally embittered lives. The chance traveller alone connects them with the world. The grackles, to whom, on the wing, they toss the dried currants, the jackals, who gather beneath the precipice for the daily dole of bread, these are almost the only living things they see. Many are monks disgraced by crime, and what wonder, too, that some are maniacs or idiots? Few sadder scenes can be witnessed than that of a mass sung in the chapel of Marsaba, where John of Damascus (once the minister of a Moslem Khalif) sleeps in the odour of sanctity.

I think it is General Gordon who has somewhere said that for a man to understand the world he should for a time leave the life of busy cities and think out his thoughts alone in the wilderness. Often have I thought that could the critic leave his comfortable study and dwell for a time in this desert of Judah, under the starry sky at night and the hot glare of the sun by day, in a land which men once thought to have been burned by fire, cursed, and sown with salt, and in the great stillness of a world almost without life, he would be able better to understand what Hebrew poets, prophets, and historians have written, and we should perhaps not see Solomon in the garb of a German Grand Duke, or Isaiah in the robes of an University Don.

The north part of this desert is inhabited by scattered groups of the Taamireh tribe, the southern part by the Jahalin Arabs. The Taamireh, or “cultivators,” are not true Arabs, but villagers who have taken to desert life. They wear turbans, and resemble the villagers in type more closely than the Bedu. The Jahalin, whose name means “those ignorant of the Moslem faith,” are a wild and degraded tribe, the poorer being almost naked, while the chiefs have an evil name. I went into this desert without either guide or interpreter, and the party depended throughout on such knowledge of Arabic as I possessed in communicating with natives. I was not then aware how exact are the border divisions between nomadic tribes, and was surprised to find the Taamireh chief one day very unwilling to follow me. As we returned home the reason became evident. We had crossed the boundary valley into Jahalin country, and a number of wild half-clad figures sprang up from behind the rocks on the hillside armed with ancient matchlocks. The Sheikh’s influence was enough to prevent their robbing me, but they guarded us for some distance to the border valley, only asking how soon I was going to cover the land with vineyards. They believe that the Franks control the rain, and that they once grew vines in the desert. It is perhaps a dim memory of the days when the Crusaders had sugar-mills at Engedi, on the shores of the Dead Sea, as mentioned in the chronicles of the twelfth century, of which mills the ruins are still to be seen.

At Engedi the Taamireh left us, and a few days later I rode with my scribe to the camp of the Jahalin, where we sat down and made ourselves guests of the chief. The Arabs were at first surly, but soon came to see that money was to be earned, and finally asked us to recommend their country to tourists. To those who choose to venture into this wild corner, there is an attraction in the wonderful fortress of Masada, on the shores of the Dead Sea, one of the most remarkable places in Palestine, and one which has been little visited.

Masada (now called Sebbeh) was the stronghold built by Herod the Great which held out against the Romans after the terrible destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D. A people less determined than the Romans might well have been content to leave the surviving Jewish zealots in so remote and inaccessible a fortress. But not so the Romans. After the death of Bassus the procurator, his successor, Flavius Silva, in the spring of 74 A.D., gathered his forces against this last refuge of the fanatical robbers called Sicarii or Zealots, who were enemies alike of Jews and Romans. The difficulty of the task was immense. Water had to be brought by Jewish captives from a distance of eleven miles: the nearest supplies of corn were twenty miles away; and only in spring could an army have endured the great heats in the valleys, 1200 feet below sea-level. The fortress is a lozenge-shaped plateau, with precipices 1500 feet high all round; walls and towers, now in ruins, surrounded it on all sides; and while on the east a narrow path called the “Serpent” wound up the cliffs, the only vulnerable point was on the west, where a chalky undercliff 1000 feet high lies against the rocky walls. Opposite this undercliff Silva placed his camp on a low hill, and round the fortress he drew a wall like that which Titus had built round Jerusalem, with small posts at intervals, and a second larger camp on the east. The Romans then piled a great mound 300 feet high on the top of the undercliff, and built a wall on the mound, from the top of which they fought in a siege-tower plated with iron, and battered the fortress wall with a ram.

The besieged were not in want of food or water. There were rain-water tanks, and corn was grown on the plateau. It is even said that the stores of wine, oil, pulse, and dates laid in by Herod a hundred years before were still edible, because of the dryness of the desert air. Within the ramparts was Herod’s old palace, towards the north-west part of the plateau, and until the walls fell to the battering-ram the courage of the Zealots was unabated. Even then they made an inner stockade of beams and earth, and still continued their fierce fight for freedom when this was in flames.

But when the dawn of the Passover came, the Romans put on their armour and shot out their bridges from the siege-tower, yet met with no resistance, and heard no sound save that of the flames in the burning palace: “A terrible solitude,” says Josephus, “on every side, with a fire in the place as well as perfect silence.” In the night 960 persons had been slain; first the women and children by their own husbands and fathers, then the men each by his neighbour. Only one old woman with five children hidden in a cavern had escaped.

Such was the wonderful history of the fortress which we explored and planned. From the plateau one looks down on the Roman wall which crosses the plain and runs up the hills to south and north. One can see Silva’s camp and the guard-towers almost as he left them 1800 years ago. The Roman mound, the wall upon it, the ruins of Herod’s palace and of the fortress walls, the towers on the cliff-side to the north, the empty tanks, the narrow “serpent” path, all attest the truth of Josephus’ account (VII. Wars, viii., ix.), and remain as silent witnesses of one of the most desperate struggles perhaps ever carried to success by Roman determination, and of one of the most fanatical resistances in history. On the east is the gleaming Sea of Salt; the dark precipices of Moab rise beyond, and the strong towers of Crusading Kerak. On all sides are brown precipices and tawny slopes of marl, torrent beds strewn with boulders, and utterly barren shores. There has been nothing to efface the evidence of the tragedy, nor was Masada ever again held as a fortress. Yet even here the hermits found their way, and built a little chapel from the stones of Herod’s house; while in a cave—perhaps the one in which the poor Jewish matron hid—I discovered on the dark walls a single word, Kuriakos, flanked by crosses and written in mediÆval letters—evidence of some peaceful anchorite’s last rest among the ghosts of the Zealots.

The survey of this wilderness was completed in ten days, and the party, having no food for beast or man, were forced to march to Hebron in one of the great spring storms. Sleet and hail, a biting wind, and a rocky road made this one of our most toilsome journeys, and when, half frozen, we reached the fanatical town, we were greeted only with curses, and owed shelter, food, clothing, and fire to the hospitality of a Jewish family in the despised suburb to the north of the Haram.

The desert of Judah was no doubt as much a desert in David’s time as it is now. Here he wandered with his brigand companions as a “partridge on the mountains.” Here he may have learned that the coney makes its dwelling in the hard rock. Here, in earlier days, he tended the sheep, descending from Bethlehem, as the village shepherds of the present day still come down, by virtue of a compact with the lawless nomads, and just as Nabal’s sheep came down from the highlands under agreement with the wild followers of the outlaw born to be a king. I do not know any part of the Old Testament more instinct with life than are the early chapters of Samuel which recount the wanderings of David. His life should only be written by one who has followed those wanderings on the spot, and the critic who would embue himself with a right understanding of that ancient chronicle should first with his own eyes gaze on the “rocks of the wild goats” and the “junipers” of the desert.

North of the Dead Sea, the wide plain of Jericho lies beneath the wilderness where the Jordan Valley broadens between the Moab mountains and the western precipices. This region we first entered in the November of 1873, and pushed the survey rapidly over the plain. Our camp was by the clear spring of “Elisha’s Fountain,” well known to tourists; and here, emerging from the glaring chalk hills and barren precipices of Marsaba, we enjoyed greatly the greenness of the plain, the song of the bulbuls in the thorn trees, and the murmur of the stream. Unfortunately, this very greenness was a sign of deadly climate, especially in the autumn months. No sooner had the first thunderstorm swept over us, turning the Brook of Cherith (as it is traditionally called) into a torrent ten feet deep or more, than fever suddenly attacked the party, then numbering five Europeans and fifteen natives. Even the Nuseir Arabs, who were our guides, lay round the tents shaking with ague; and for a time the life of my companion, Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake, was in danger. In fact, though his zeal and fortitude prevented his leaving the work, he never really recovered from this terrible Jericho typhoid, and the hardships of the following spring, which we again passed in the Jordan Valley, proved too much for his shaken health. It is only after the soil in such malarious regions has been purified by a winter’s rain that it is safe to remain, even for a night, in the low ground or near water; and the premature visit to Jericho threatened at one time to bring our small party entirely to a standstill.

The region round Jericho is well known. The tall cliff burrowed with hermit’s caves, and supposed to be the place where Christ fasted forty days in the desert; the flat marshy valley sprinkled with alkali plants and with lotus trees and feathery tamarisks; the eastern mountain ridge which we afterwards explored; the strange white peak of Kurn Sartaba on the north; the oily Dead Sea on the south, must have been seen by many who may read these lines. In clear weather in spring, the snowy dome of Hermon can be seen from near the mud village of Jericho, marking the north end of the Jordan Valley; but the Lake of Tiberias is hidden even from the higher ground near the plain.

In this Jericho region also new discoveries were made. A solitary tamarisk marks the site where, at least in early Christian times, it was believed that the Gilgal camp was set up by Joshua. The surveyors verified the existence of the name, even now known to the Jericho peasants. Here also we copied the curious mediÆval frescoes, which still remained on the ruined walls of two monasteries, and several hermit caves. In the twelfth century there were many monasteries in the desert and round Jericho, and the memory of the monks has not died out. The Bedu point to a curious chalk hill called the “Raven’s Nest” as the “place where the Lord Jesus ascended;” and in studying the mediÆval accounts of Palestine, I found that this very place, although the top is below sea-level, was pointed out to Crusading pilgrims as “the exceeding high mountain” whence, as we read in the Gospel, Christ surveyed the kingdoms of the world. This is but one instance out of many in which the teaching of the monks and hermits still lingers among the Moslem population in many parts of Palestine.

In England a fresco of the twelfth century is to us a rare and ancient thing. In Palestine, so far back are we carried by history, that Crusading remains rank among the latest. But the explorer has no right to confine himself to any one period. His duty is to bring home everything he can find, and without such exhaustive work the sifting out of the most valuable and most ancient results cannot with safety be undertaken. I spent several days in the hermits’ caves and in the ruined monasteries, copying such frescoes as were distinguishable, and reading the various titles above them. In the middle of the Jericho plain lies Kusr Hajlah, then a Crusading ruin with frescoes bearing the names of Sylvester Pope of Rome, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and John Eleemon. By the character of the writing I was able to fix these paintings as twelfth-century work. When in 1881 I revisited the spot, I found that not a single trace remained of any one of the pictures. Russian monks from Marsaba had settled there, and had rebuilt the monastery. Every fresco had been scraped from the walls, in order, they said, that new and better might replace them. Judging from the existing paintings at Marsaba, it is hardly to be expected that much advance will be made on the quaint style of the figures which represented the Last Supper, or the Apostles robed by angels in resurrection garments of white. I think rather that the monks suspected that the frescoes were of Latin origin; yet, in destroying them, they had obliterated the names of two of the most famous Greek Patriarchs of Jerusalem; but then they also destroyed the representation of Sylvester Pope of Rome. This single instance shows that the systematic exploration of Palestine was undertaken none too soon.

Not only in monasteries and hermits’ caves were these pictures painted. On the north side of the Kelt ravine (the traditional Brook Cherith) there is a ruined monastery of St. John of Choseboth. Here I copied many texts and pictures; and outside the gate there is a wall of rock eighty feet in length, once covered with very large figures, like those which I have seen on the outer walls of Italian churches. The weather had long since destroyed them, but at Mar Marrina, near Tripoli, I afterwards found another cliff cemented and painted in like style. In this case the Greeks had come after the Latins, and instead of scraping off the old work, had begun to paint over it huge figures of the throned Christ and of the Mother of God, beneath which—as though on a palimpsest—I was able to copy a set of pictures representing the miracles performed by some Latin saint or abbot.[33]

Such are the remains preserved by the dryness of the desert air in the vicinity of Jericho. We must now cross to the west side of the watershed, where the country presents a very different aspect. Looking down from the heights of the Judean mountains, you see beneath a strip of low hills, covered in some places with brushwood, but full of villages, and with olive yards along the valley courses and round the stone or mud houses of the hamlets, so many of which preserve the old names of the Book of Joshua. Beyond these foot-hills is the broad plain, here and there rising into sandy downs, but, as a rule, brown in autumn with rich ploughlands, and yellow in summer with ripening grain. In spring the delicate tinge of green, the wide stretches of pink flush from the phlox blossoms, and the great variety of flowers and flowering shrubs, present a strong contrast to the grimness of the desert.

The Shephelah or foot-hills form a district full of interesting sites, and of ruins from the twelfth century A.D. back to the times of Hebrew dominion. Here our discoveries were numerous and important, but I will only refer to two periods of special interest—the time of the Jewish revolt under Judas MaccabÆus, and the time of the first establishment of the Crusading kingdom in Jerusalem.

The history of the heroic brothers who recovered the religious freedom of the Jews by revolting from the Greek kings of Antioch in the second century B.C., is as easy to follow in detail on the ground as is that of David’s wanderings. I have already devoted a short volume to the subject,[34] and have tried to show how the attacks on Jerusalem were made successively by the Greek armies along the roads from the north-west, the west, and the south; how Judas met the foe on each occasion at the top of the narrow passes; how he hurled them back, as Joshua did the Canaanites on the same battle-fields; and how not even the elephants dismayed him. The native town of Judas, Modin—now called Medyeh—is a little village in the foot-hills, where, however, the reported tomb of the Maccabee and his family turned out to be merely a Byzantine monument. The scene of the death of Judas, while he was defending a fourth mountain pass leading from Shechem to Jerusalem, was not known; but we have, I think, been able to identify this important battle-field, where for a time the hopes of the national party seemed for ever to have been crushed.

It is an instructive fact that so long as the Greeks strove to prevail by arms, the puritan movement was never stamped out. When at length the native princes were allowed to reign and to coin money in the native tongue, they became in a few generations as Greek as the Greeks themselves, and finally as hateful to the extreme party of the orthodox as any Greek oppressor.

At the border between the foot-hills and the Philistine plains three Norman castles were built to protect the kingdom of Godfrey and Baldwin against their Egyptian enemies. A little later (in 1153 A.D.) Ascalon was taken, and long remained the great Christian bulwark on the south. Still later, when Richard Lion-Heart was striving to prop up the Latin kingdom, ruined even more by vice and degeneracy than by the fierce attacks of Saladin, the English conqueror spent many months in this region. I had with me in Palestine the chronicle of his expedition, written by Geoffrey de Vinsauf, which is one of the most vivid monographs of the age. It was thus possible to trace every point in his travels; and very few places remain, among the many mentioned in the Philistine plains, which cannot be found on the Survey map. The lists of property of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, and other documents of like kind, were compared, and thus what is to us an early chapter of our history could be worked out on the spot in Palestine. The difficulties and dangers of Richard’s army, how they were troubled by the wind, rain, and hail, which blew down the tents and spoiled the biscuit and the bacon, how the flies, “which flew about like sparks of fire, and were called cincenelles” (mosquitoes), stung the Englishmen till they looked like lepers, and how they suffered from fever and fatigue, we could well understand; and even of the attacks of Saracens we had some experience when one day a party of Bedu on the war-path, mistaking us for their enemies, charged down upon us with flying cloaks and lances fifteen feet in length quivering like reeds.

The walls of Ascalon, so often built, and which Richard raised again from the foundations, we surveyed with difficulty, clambering over the fallen masses of the towers, all of which are mentioned by name in the chronicle—such as the Maiden’s Tower, the Admiral’s, the Bedouin’s, and the Bloody Tower, and Tower of Shields. Yet farther south we explored the little fortress of Darum, which Richard rebuilt, with many others, as garrisons against the Moslems. North of Jaffa, in the Sharon plain, we found the oak wood through which the English in 1191 A.D. marched down from Acre, sorely harassed by the rain of arrows on their armour. Every river and every tower mentioned on that toilsome march are now identified, and the fort of Habacuc, where fell the brave knight Renier of Marun, who was, I believe, an ancestor.

Yet earlier scenes belong to this region, which was the theatre of Samson’s exploits. In the low hills, Zoreah and Eshtaol and the valley of Sorek were already known, but to these we added the site of the rock Etam, where the strong man hid in a cave, which we explored. The tracing of this topography gave us, however, experience of the great caution which the explorer must exercise in sifting the evidence of natives. It had been supposed that the memory of Samson’s history still survived among the peasants of Zoreah. Certainly they all were able to repeat a garbled version of the story, and this excited the greater interest because such tales are extremely rare in occurrence among the villagers, though the Arabs have a fancy for wonderful legends, as we afterwards found in Moab. I was anxious to ascertain if the Samson legend was a truly ancient one, but soon discovered that it was quite modern. The village lands had recently been purchased by a Christian Sheikh from Bethlehem, and it was from him that his tenants learned the Bible story, which they were unable to repeat without converting all the characters into good Moslems and wicked Christians.

In these same foot-hills lies the site of the celebrated Cave of Adullam, on the side of the Valley of Elah, the scene of David’s meeting with Goliah. It was first discovered by M. Clermont Ganneau, whose views were fully borne out by our researches. The cave itself is a small one, blackened by the smoke of many fires, and scooped in the side of a low hill, on which are remains of a former town or village. Beneath the slope is a wide valley, which was full of corn; and the spot is marked by a group of ancient terebinths, like those which gave the name Elah, or “terebinth,” to this important WÂdy. There are other caverns opposite to the Adullam hill, and these are used as stables, while in the cave itself we found a poor family actually living. The name is now corrupted to the form ’AidelmÎa, but the position fully agrees with the Bible accounts, and with the distance from Eleutheropolis (now Beit JibrÎn) noted by Eusebius.

The Philistine plain from Jaffa to Gaza is one of the best corn districts in Palestine. It grows steadily wider to the south, and sweeps round the base of the Hebron hills to Beersheba. The celebrated cities of the Philistine lords are now, with the exception of Gaza, no longer important places. Ekron and Ashdod are villages with a few cactus hedges; Ascalon lies in ruins by the sea; Gath is so much forgotten that its name has disappeared, and the site is still not quite certain. Gaza is, however, a large place, with some trade, and with extensive olive groves. Along this whole coast the sand from the high dunes, which, as seen from the hills, form a yellow wall between the ploughlands and the sea, is always steadily encroaching. It has covered up a great part of the gardens within the walls of Ascalon, and has swept over the little port of Majuma, west of Gaza; but beyond the line of its advance the soil is everywhere fertile, and the villages are numerous.

The Philistine plain seems never to have been long held by the Hebrews. Joshua, Samuel, or Simon the Hasmonean may have conquered its cities, as Richard Lion-Heart afterwards did, but the Egyptian power in Syria in all ages has been first felt in this plain. The natives indeed, in dress and appearance, are more like the peasantry of Egypt than they are like the sturdy villagers of the other parts of Palestine. In times of trouble this region is now much exposed to the attacks of the southern Arabs. Egyptian records show us that the Philistine plain was long held by the Pharaohs, and we have a representation of the siege of Ascalon by Rameses II. In Hezekiah’s reign we learn, from the cuneiform records, that each of the Philistine towns had its own king, and these princes allied themselves with Sennacherib against Jerusalem.

These facts agree with the account of David’s struggles with the Philistines, and give the reason why Israel did not enter Palestine “by the way of the Philistines,” as probably at that time the plain was actually garrisoned by Egyptians.

It is clear from monumental accounts that there was a Semitic population in Philistia at a very early period, but it is not certain that the Philistine race was of this stock. We have Egyptian portraits of Philistines—a beardless people wearing a peculiar sort of cap or tiara. Many scholars believe that the Philistines were of the same stock with the Hittites (who were a Mongolian people), and this may account for the curious fact that the Assyrians speak of the Philistine town of Ashdod as a “city of the Hittites.” In Philistia the name of the Hittites is also probably still preserved in the villages of Hatta and Kefr Hatta. Among the peasantry there are several legends of the Fenish king and his daughter, of his garden, and of the place where she used to spin. I think it is probable that the Fenish was a Philistine, rather than a Phoenician, legendary monarch.

The town of Gaza, standing on a mound above its olive groves, surrounded by the crumbling traces of its former walls, contains several good mosques, one of which is the fine Crusading Church of St. John. Near Gaza, on the south, is a mound called Tell ’AjjÛl, “hillock of the calf,” from a legend of a phantom calf said to have been here seen by a benighted peasant. At this place was discovered a fine statue of Jupiter, 15 feet high, which now stands at the entrance of the Constantinople Museum, where I drew it in 1882. This discovery reminds us that Palestine had also its age of classic paganism, when statues like those of Roman temples were erected. We have, indeed, an account of the temples of Gaza, which existed as late as the fifth century, when the Christians overthrew them and built a church. Venus had here a statue, much adored by the women, and the Cretan Jupiter was known under the name Marnas, which is thought to mean “our lord.” It is probably the statue of Marnas himself that has now been discovered, one of the very few statues of any importance as yet found in Palestine.

The Philistine plain merges on the south in the plateau called Negeb, or “dry,” in the Old Testament. This is the scene of Isaac’s wanderings as described in Genesis, where lie Gerar the city of Abimelech, and Rehoboth and Beersheba. The region was visited late in 1874, when it was at its driest, the spring herbage being all long since burnt up. The Beersheba plains consist of a soft white marl, rising in low ridges, and not unlike some parts of the Veldt or open grazing-land of Bechuanaland, in South Africa. The Negeb still supports a considerable nomad population, and their flocks and herds are numerous. On the east it sinks to the Judean desert, and on the south descends by bold steps to the Wilderness of Sinai. The view from the spurs of the Judean hills near DhaherÎyeh (identified with Debir) is very extensive, ridge beyond ridge of rolling down stretching to the high points on the horizon which mark the passes by which ascents lead from the south.

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DESERT OF BEERSHEBA.
DESERT OF BEERSHEBA.

This region, though generally without water on the surface, possesses several groups of deep and abundant wells, where the herdsmen gather to water the flocks. Among the most renowned are the Beersheba wells, of which there are three, each a round shaft lined with masonry; one is dry. The principal supply is from the largest well, 12 feet 3 inches in diameter, and 38 feet deep to the water in autumn. The smaller dry well is 5 feet in diameter and 40 feet deep. Round these wells, which have no parapet, rude stone troughs are placed, into which the water, drawn up in skin bags, is poured. The water-drawing, to the sounds of Arab shepherd songs, is one of the most picturesque of sights. It used to be thought that the masonry was very ancient, but it only extends to a depth of 28 feet in the largest well, and on one of the stones I found the words, “505 ... Allah Muhammad,” showing apparently that the stonework was at least renewed in the fourteenth century A.D.

Any student who desires really to be able to judge of the social life of the Hebrew Patriarchs should visit the plains of Beersheba. It was here, we are told, that Isaac passed his life. Here Abraham settled after long wanderings through the length of Palestine. Here Jacob was born, and hence he descended into Egypt. It is very notable that Palestine appears in Genesis as a country already full of cities, and in which land could only be obtained by the Hebrew immigrants by purchase from landowners already settled—the Hivites of Shechem and the Hittites of Hebron. In the pastoral plains of Beersheba, however, the wanderers ranged undisturbed even by the Philistines of Gerar. So it is to the present day. The Jordan Valley, to which Lot is related to have taken his flocks, the desert of Judah, where David fed his sheep, the plains near Dothan, and the pastures of Beersheba, are still the grazing-lands of Palestine, where nomadic shepherds range, while the higher lands are held by a settled population. Although we have no monumental records sufficiently early to compare with the narrative of Genesis, we find that the country presented the same aspect when the conquering Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties invaded it. There were then regions held by the nomads, and other regions full of fortresses and open towns.

In the history of the Patriarchs we find described a mode of life just like that of the modern Arab. The great chief or Emir dwelt in his tent among his followers, led them out to war, and allied himself to the neighbouring townsmen, with whose families, however, he scorned to intermarry. The sons of the Emir and his daughters (like Leah and Rachel) tended the flocks and herds, and strove at the wells, where countless beasts awaited their turn. The relation which the Hebrew chiefs bore to the distant paternal tribe beyond the Euphrates reminds us how Syrian Arabs still trace their descent from distant families, with the same tribal name, far off in the Nejed. The stone memorial is still raised by the Bedawi, as Jacob reared his stone of Bethel; and the covenant is still sealed by the eating of bread. Still, too, the Arab hunter brings back savoury venison to the camp, like Esau; and by the wells of Beersheba you look northwards to the same low hills which were before Isaac’s eyes when he went forth to pray in the open field—as the Arab still prays outside his camp—and “beheld the camels coming.” In the early morning, by the light of the rising sun, I have seen the camels, preceded by their giant shadows, coming in troops to the wells, guided by the shepherd-boys, whose music is the same rude pipe on which the ancient shepherds played. I have seen, too, the dark gipsy-like girls, with elf locks, blue robes, and tattooed faces, who tend the sheep as Rachel and Leah (still children) tended those of Laban before they were old enough to be restricted to the women’s side of the curtain, and to follow their mothers to the well.

The visit to Beersheba was not without its adventures. This was the only occasion on which a thief—of many who tried but were discovered by our terriers—succeeded in making his way into the tents. He took with him all our food, and we had to depend on the wild sand-grouse and plovers for our dinner. It was during the fast of Ramadan that this journey was undertaken, and the Moslem guides suffered greatly in consequence; for fasting among the Moslems in Ramadan is a very serious matter, and especially so among the primitive villagers of Judea. Not a scrap of food, not a drop of water, not a whiff of tobacco will then pass the lips of the strict Moslem between sunrise and sundown. I have seen the wrath of the spectators roused when an old man of eighty washed his mouth with water on a day of scorching east wind. We had gone down to explore an underground tank in Hebron, and as he stooped to the water we heard a voice shouting, “Ah! Hamzeh, God sees you!” and the unfortunate elder rose at once in confusion. When the sun sets, a cry goes up throughout the town or village—a shout from the men and a shrill tremulous note from the women—for then it is lawful to break the trying fast. Even children are induced by pious parents to keep Ramadan, and some zealots will continue fasting for ten days beyond the prescribed time. The Moslem year being lunar, and thus never the same year by year in relation to the seasons, it is especially at those times when Ramadan falls in September that this privation is most felt.

Not that I would lead the reader to suppose that all Moslems are thus strict in religious duty. In Islam there is as much scepticism, indifference, outright rejection of religious belief as in Christendom; and history reveals that this has always been so since Islam became a religion.

Among the antiquities of the Beersheba desert there are several rude buildings of undressed chert blocks, which may be almost of any age. It was, however, in the early centuries of Christianity that this region was apparently most fully inhabited.

The hermits who, like Hilarion, came from Egypt and settled in the Holy Land, soon gathered disciples round them; and even against their will monasteries rose by their cells, and a village round the monastery. Pious pilgrims like Antoninus, not content with seeing Palestine, ventured far into the deserts, and down to the miraculous tomb of St. Catherine in Sinai. Thus, in the fourth century, Jerome found the land full of monks and nuns, even in the wilderness; and stories which may have been told to the Arabs by these eremites still linger among them. We have early Christian accounts of Pagan rites among the natives of the Negeb, who still in the seventh century were worshipping Venus at Elusa, and the stone menhirs on Mount Sinai. There is no part of Syria in which the anchorites’ cells are not found, though in modern times they are only represented by the Jericho hermits—Abyssinians and Georgians, who, I believe, only retire to the wilderness during Lent.

Glancing back over this sketch of exploration in Judea, I only note one place of primary interest which has not been mentioned, namely, Bethlehem. It is, however, familiar to every tourist, and nothing new was added by the surveyors to what was already known concerning this city, except that the crests which Crusading knights drew upon the pillars of Constantine’s great basilica were carefully copied.

Bethlehem is a long white town on a ridge, with terraced olive groves. The population is chiefly Christian, and thrives on the manufacture of carved mother-of-pearl shells, and objects made from the bituminous shale of the desert, which pilgrims purchase. The peculiar (and probably very ancient) head-dress of the women, adorned with rows of silver coins, has often been represented in illustrated works.

The main antiquity of the place is the great basilica of Constantine, with its thirteenth-century mosaics and wooden roof. Beneath the choir is the traditional site of the “manger,” which has been constantly shown in the same place for nearly eighteen centuries. The church itself is one of the oldest in the world; and Justin Martyr, in the second century, mentions the cave. Origen also says that “there is shown in Bethlehem the cave where He was born, and the manger in the cave” (Against Celsus, I. li.), so that the Bethlehem cave-stable is noticed earlier than any other site connected with New Testament history. It is the only sacred place, as far as I know, which is mentioned before the establishment of Christianity by Constantine, yet it is remarkable that Jerome found it no longer in possession of the Christians. “Bethlehem,” he says, “is now overshadowed by the grove of Tammuz, who is Adonis; and in the cave where Christ wailed as a babe the paramour of Venus now is mourned.”