NORTH of Heshbon the country rises slightly, and we enter the region surrounding the large ruined city of ’AmmÂn—the Rabbath Ammon of the Bible and the Roman Philadelphia. This was the most important ruin surveyed in Palestine, as regards its antiquarian interest, and the best specimen of a Roman town that I visited, except the still more wonderful ruins of Gerasa, which yield only to Baalbek and Palmyra among Syrian capitals of the second century of our era.

On the slopes below the plateau in this region is the still more interesting ruin of Tyrus, the only dated Jewish building of early age that we possess. Although it had often been visited, we were able to add some interesting architectural details, and to correct a false impression about the great Jewish inscription of five letters here boldly carved on the rock.

Tyrus, now called ’ArÂk el EmÎr, is our one relic of the Jewish architecture of the days of Judas MaccabÆus. The priest Hyrcanus, who fled from his brothers beyond Jordan, committed suicide at this place (where he had lived seven years) on hearing of the approach of Antiochus in 176 B.C. His life was one of adventure and of constant warfare against the Arab or Nabathean tribes of the region. He first made himself a stronghold consisting of numerous caves in two storeys, with an open rock terrace leading to the upper tier, where, among other chambers, he cut a great stable for his horses. We measured this stable, and found mangers for a hundred steeds. Near this fortress he built his great palace, which is now fallen in, except the east wall. The palace was surrounded by a broad moat, and water was brought by an aqueduct from the stream, which here breaks down rapidly towards the Jordan Valley through dense bushes of oleander, which have grown to the size of forest trees. The walls of the palace were of stones six to eight feet in height and fifteen to twenty feet long. Only three courses were required to reach up to the roof. The top course above a narrow frieze was adorned at each corner by rude sculptured figures of lions, which were carved in relief by sinking back part of the face of the stone after it was placed in position.

The details of some fragments of cornice are rude imitations of Greek classic style, but the extraordinary capitals of great pillars belonging to the interior are unlike any that I have elsewhere seen, and they most resemble Egyptian work. They seem not to have been noticed by De VogÜÉ, whose work I have generally found to be very detailed and faithful.

Whether this great palace was ever quite finished seems doubtful. A stone which must weigh about fifty tons lies half-way between the building and the quarry, as though left on the last day when the building was stopped. A deliberate destruction of the walls seems also certainly to have occurred.

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ALPHABETS OF WESTERN ASIA. 900 B.C. TO 500 A.D.

Here, then, we have an ancient dated Jewish inscription, belonging to an age singularly deficient in monumental remains, and to a time when the characters used in writing were slowly changing from the old Hebrew to the later square Hebrew letters. A photograph of these boldly-cut letters shows that some of the great authorities who have discussed it have unfortunately started with an incorrect copy. If we compare the letters with those of other alphabets, we find only one which properly accounts for these forms, namely, the alphabet of the Jewish coins which were struck in the same century in which Hyrcanus lived. The meaning of the text is still doubtful, but its date agrees with the comparison of the letters with those used west of Jordan in the same age.

In spite of the scantiness of our materials, the history of writing in Palestine is being gradually unfolded in a marvellous manner. When we look back on the old theories which made the square Hebrew of our own times an original alphabet, unchanged since the time of Moses, and on the equally crude criticism which denied that writing was practised before about 500 B.C., we become aware of the rapid advance of knowledge. First came the Phoenician inscriptions, for a few of which great antiquity is claimed, though the majority belong to Greek or Persian times. Then the Moabite Stone was found, and the inhabitants of Eastern Palestine were proved to have been acquainted with monumental writing in the ninth century B.C. Then came the Siloam inscription, giving almost an equal antiquity for the alphabet of Jerusalem. To these are added several inscriptions of the second or first century B.C., and quite a number which belong to the earliest Christian age. In this series of alphabets we trace the same steady and gradual change which has differentiated all known alphabets in the world. It would be impossible now to mistake, within fairly narrow limits, the date of such a text as that at Tyrus; and the same reasoning assures us of the age of the important and ancient inscriptions above noticed.

Equally valuable is the light thrown on history by the remains of the Tyrus palace. It belongs to the period just before the revolt of Judas MaccabÆus against the Greeks. We see how strongly the builders were influenced by Greek art, while the sculptures of animals show that they were not limited by the commands of the Law which forbade such representations of living things. It is also interesting to notice that the stones in the wall, which are much larger than those in the Jerusalem Temple, are surrounded by a draft like that employed by Herod the Great. This drafting was a Greek method of finishing the stone. It occurs in the walls of the Acropolis at Athens, and it was used in the second century A.D. by the Roman builders of Gerasa and Baalbek, the stones in this latter case having in a few instances Greek letters for mason’s marks. There is, I believe, absolutely no foundation for the idea that the early Phoenicians used such a finish to their stones. Drafted stones are, it is true, used in Phoenicia, but the oldest occur on structures of Greek character, and the latest in the Crusading walls of Tyre.

It was the spread of this Greek influence in Palestine which led to the revolt of the zealous and orthodox followers of Judas MaccabÆus. The monuments have begun to show us how strong and widely spread was this influence. On the borders of the Egyptian delta Greek cities begin to be known, through the admirable work of Mr. Petrie and others, which give us remains of Greek or semi-Greek art of a time earlier than that of which we speak. Of course the account of Naucratis in Herodotus; the story of the flight of the Jewish high priest Onias to Egypt, and of his opposition temple; and the account of the translation of the law into Greek at Alexandria in the third century B.C., were all well known, as are the chapters in the Book of Maccabees which describe the spread of Greek manners in Jerusalem; but the discovery of existing monuments brings this all more vividly before us; for we rightly attach a far higher value to such contemporary evidence than we do to the modern understanding of ancient literary works, especially when criticism deserts its proper sphere, and begins to invent and to dogmatise.

We know then already, from the monuments, that before the days of the revolt under Judas all the Levantine coast was permeated by Greek influence. Greek coins passed everywhere; Greek pottery is found along the coast; Greek architecture penetrated even into the wilds of Gilead beyond Jordan. The Greek kings of Antioch are said to have left no architectural remains, yet even as far away as southern Arabia the Greek influence extended, and down to the days of Herod the Great it remained one of the great civilising agents in the Levant.

At ’AmmÂn we find remains of later civilisation—of the great age of the Antonines, when all Syria remained for a time peaceful and prosperous; and in this town also exists one of the most remarkable architectural relics of the Sassanian period in Syria. The oldest remains at ’AmmÂn are the dolmens, of which, with other rude stone monuments, there are some twenty in all. Next to these come the old rock-cut tombs, which, from comparison with others, I should suppose to be of the early Hebrew period. The Roman remains are the most important, including two theatres, baths, a street of columns, and remains of what was once a very great temple on the highest part of the acropolis of the city. To this age also belong the magnificent private tombs surrounding the city—towers of well-cut masonry filled inside with well-arranged sarcophagi.

No inscriptions were found on these tombs, though inscriptions occur in ’AmmÂn. From the Greek texts which Sir C. Fellows collected in Lycia we know that these monuments belonged to rich families in Roman times, and that even then the Greek language predominated over Latin in Syria and in Asia Minor. Greek texts of this age also occur at Gerasa and elsewhere side by side with Latin inscriptions. The tomb-towers were under the protection of the Government of the country, and an illicit burial in any of the sarcophagi carved to await the death of the next member of the family, was punished, not only by the curse announced against such violation of a sepulchre, but also by a very substantial fine levied by the state. The tomb-towers round ’AmmÂn show us, therefore, that several noble families must have lived in the town.

The walls of the citadel may be of earlier date, perhaps of Greek origin; for, according to Polybius, Antiochus the Great here besieged Ptolemy Philopater’s forces in 218 B.C. The garrison held out until a prisoner discovered a secret communication with a water supply outside the walls. I was not aware of this statement in Polybius when we were at ’AmmÂn, but it explains a discovery which we then made, and I think there can be little doubt that we found both this water supply and also the secret passage. There is a great cavern in the hill on the north of the citadel, evidently once used as a reservoir for water, the stream which supplied the lower town being at some distance from the Acropolis. In the side of this cavern, high up near the entrance, I found a very narrow passage running away in the direction of the citadel walls. I pursued it as far as possible, but it is choked at the end before emerging above-ground. This cave probably contained the water supply on which the Egyptian Greek forces depended in their struggle against the Syrian Greek forces of Antiochus.

To a later period belongs what I have called a Sassanian or early Arab building. It is well known that Dr. Tristram discovered near the Haj Road, east of Heshbon, the remains of a very fine building, which Mr. Fergusson called the Palace of Chosroes. Whether it was really built during the short period of Persian rule in Palestine preceding the triumph of Islam, will probably not be settled until we have copies of the inscriptions which remain at this palace. I regret that the sudden stoppage of the Survey and the unfriendliness of the Beni Sakhr Arabs made it impossible for me to obtain such copies. It is, however, beyond dispute that the art of the Mashita palace is of Persian origin, or influenced by Persia, and it is perhaps not Moslem work; for whereas in the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem the representation of animal life is absent from the mosaics, the stone carvings of Mashita give us many such forms in their elaborate arabesques.

At ’AmmÂn there is one building, and remains exist of another, which appear very clearly to belong to about the same age with the Mashita palace. The complete building is singularly perfect, though its decorations are unfinished. How it ever came to be described as a Byzantine church it is hard to understand, seeing how well known are the features of Byzantine churches in Palestine. Moreover, there is a ruined cathedral with two chapels at ’AmmÂn itself which are of the Byzantine age.

The building in the citadel is entirely different to any church. It is a square structure, with a central court and four deep alcoves under arched roofs, one on each side of the court. This arrangement is exactly that of some ruined buildings of the Sassanian age in Persia. The form of the arches, the adornment of the walls with arcades in low relief, and other features, are, equally with the plan, common to the ’AmmÂn buildings and to those of the Sassanians in Persia.

This building may, however, have been erected by Persian architects for one of the early Moslem Khalifs of Damascus. No birds, beasts, or other living things occur in the rich details of its stone tracery, which I carefully copied and measured, and of which Lieutenant Mantell took photographs. The building is of high importance for a period of art in the East concerning which very little as yet is known.

It may be noticed in passing that the walls of this kiosque at ’AmmÂn are in a style which throws some light on the history of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem. That building is pronounced by architectural authority to be the work of the Khalif Abd el Melek, just as the Arab chroniclers, nearly contemporary with its building, also tell us, and in accordance with the existing inscriptions; but, as I pointed out in 1878, there are reasons for thinking that the octagonal outer wall was built only in the ninth century A.D. The details of that wall are very like those of the ’AmmÂn building, and this comparison will, no doubt, some day prove instructive, especially if we can ascertain the age of the great Mashita palace in Moab.

There is a very old mosque at ’AmmÂn, with round arches and a short minaret. Unfortunately it is without inscription (save for a later scrawl over the door), and whether it is older than the kiosque may be doubtful, but it shows us that the Moslems built in this town at a very early date. From El Mukaddasy we have a Moslem account of the place as old as the tenth century A.D. He speaks of this very mosque as being near the market-place, and he calls the citadel “Goliah’s Castle,” and apparently alludes to the kiosque as a mosque over the tomb of Uriah. Thus the buildings we are discussing clearly existed in 985 A.D. The town appears to have been then prosperous; living was cheap and fruit plentiful; grain and honey are mentioned by the Moslem geographer, where now the only cultivation is that of a few wretched gardens tilled by Circassian exiles living in the theatre.

The Survey was extended only a few miles north of ’AmmÂn; the region as far as Gerasa I saw in 1882, when accompanying their Royal Highnesses Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales beyond Jordan. The region is extremely picturesque, including the wooded hills of Gilead, the bare heights of ’AjlÛn, and the uplands round Gerasa. It is remarkable that this great city beside its mountain stream seems to have been deserted earlier than ’AmmÂn, although the country near it now contains villages with a settled population, whereas south of Es Salt there are now no villages beyond Jordan, and the Circassians at ’AmmÂn are almost the only inhabitants who do not live in tents. To the antiquary this has been an advantage, since Gerasa remains a purely Roman ruin, only equalled by Palmyra. The area within the city walls at Palmyra (500 acres) was indeed greater than that included within the walls of Jerash (170 acres), but in some respects the architectural remains at the latter date are even of greater importance.

Some very interesting Greek inscriptions once belonging to the early church in Gerasa have been copied by De VogÜÉ, by Rev. R. B. Girdlestone, by Sir Charles Warren, and by myself. They appear to have gradually fallen into decay, so that my own copy is somewhat less complete than those of the text as it existed twenty years before. The longest of these texts is a poem in hexameter, consisting of thirteen lines, of which the eleventh is taken from Homer,[57] and the whole is a Homeric imitation.

The longest inscription that I copied is not written in regular lines, but runs on, the new line of hexameter being in one case divided from the preceding by a well-shaped Greek cross. The forms of the letters, which I very carefully preserved, are those used in Greek Byzantine inscriptions. This text consisted of six lines of poetry, and is written by a certain wrestler, Theodorus, whose soul is in the broad heaven and his body in the earth. The longer text belonged to the church door, and mentions the cross. It may be translated as follows, being one of the most curious of the early Christian inscriptions in Syria:—

The reference is clearly to the establishment of the Christian ritual, and to the abolition of sacrifices in the Pagan temple.

These inscriptions show us that Gerasa was still inhabited in early Byzantine times, and the church stands just south of the great heathen temple. My visit to Jerash only lasted a day, and it was thus not possible to explore the site very completely, but we found nine inscriptions in all, one of which seems to be new, though unfortunately only a fragment.

On the stylobate of the southern temple is a very boldly carved name, perhaps that of Pertinax, which would give a date towards the end of the second century.[58]

The city stood on the sides of an open mountain-valley, and through the midst flowed a stream, which, running south, breaks in a cascade just by the southern wall. The course is fringed with oleanders, but the hill slopes are bare and stony, though covered, when visited, with corn. The whole course of the city walls is traceable, the masonry lying in heaps, having probably been thrown down by the early Arab invaders from the south. Five gates are distinguishable at the ends of the streets, which were regularly laid out at right angles. The main street ran parallel to the stream on the west, and was flanked throughout, for a length of 700 yards, by columns supporting epistylia. On the south this colonnade ends in a peribolus, which has been supposed to be the forum, just in front of the southern temple. Fifty-eight pillars remain in a single oval 300 feet long, all having Roman Ionic capitals, but not all of equal height.

We approached the city from the south, where, nearly a quarter of a mile from the gate, the road is spanned by a Roman arch of triumph, supposed to be not earlier than the time of Trajan. The ground on the side is strewn in places with violated sarcophagi. On the left of the arch is the great Naumachia basin, surrounded by seats for the spectators, and filled by channels from the brook. On entering the town, a temple is found immediately to the left, and behind this is a theatre with twenty-eight tiers of seats, and capable of holding five thousand persons.

The street of columns from the oval forum consisted of pillars, generally about fifteen feet high and five yards apart. It is divided into three sections by tetrapylons where cross streets intersect. Towards the centre of the street the Corinthian order was found, with Ionic capitals in the northern and southern parts. Near the middle was a basilica to the right, where, no doubt, judgments were pronounced, and on the left a propyleum, behind which flights of steps appear to have led up to the great temple, which stood high on the hillside, having pillars thirty-eight feet high and six feet in diameter. North of this temple was another theatre, with sixteen tiers of seats—not an odeum, like the preceding, which had a stage, but probably intended only for gladiatorial shows. So also at ’AmmÂn an odeum with stage, quite as complete as that of the southern theatre of Gerasa, stands close to the larger semicircle, before which is the open area with its vomitoria.

To the right of the street of columns, opposite the northern theatre, and close to the stream, are well-preserved remains of the great baths of Gerasa. In the extreme north-east part of the city, not far from a spring is a third temple, well preserved, and by the spring itself there seems to have been a nymphÆum with three altars. Ruins farther south, east of the brook, are thought to represent a market-place and its stables. There are two ancient bridges over the stream, one close to the central basilica, and just outside the south-east gate are the ruins of another church or chapel. It was interesting to note how the paving of the bridge was laid diagonally (as in the opus reticulatum), and ruts seemingly cut through it to guide the wheels of carts or of chariots. By the basilica also are remains of four porphyry columns, and since no such stone is found anywhere nearer than Egypt or Sinai, we see here, as at ’AmmÂn also and at Tyre, that great labour and expense were devoted to the adornment of the town. I also observed some double columns like those of the Galilean synagogues of the same age, or like the huge granite double monolith at Tyre, probably once belonging to the temple of Melcarth.

The most remarkable fact concerning Gerasa is the absence of historical notices of the city. It already existed in 78 B.C., and is mentioned by Josephus and by Pliny. It was still a place of importance in the fourth century, and there are allusions to the name in early Arab works and in Crusading history. Stephen of Byzantium says that Ariston Rhetor came thence. Origen, Jerome, and Epiphanius knew the place, and there were bishops of the city present at some of the Councils; but beyond this we know nothing, save that which we gather from the inscriptions still existing. So numerous and so magnificent were the Roman cities of the second century of our era, that even the fine buildings of a town as large as ancient Tyre excite no particular notice. So imperfectly was it known, that the old Roman map of the fourth century, which makes the Hieromax flow into the Dead Sea direct, appears to put Gerasa opposite Jericho, and the Persian Gulf immediately east of the city. Yet when we visit the ruins, we find that granite pillars were brought from Egypt to adorn its basilica; that its busy population (said to include descendants of some of Alexander’s soldiers) had their baths, their theatres, their public memorials. An Æthlophoros, become Christian, dedicates a church with Homeric hexameter verses, and the names of Antoninus and perhaps of Pertinax are boldly sculptured on public buildings. Few ruined cities so well attest the far-reaching power of imperial Rome.

The Crusading King Baldwin II., in 1121 A.D., made a raid into this country, and overturned a Moslem fortress near Jerash. The Crusaders had other outposts at Tibneh, at Salt, and on the conical hill of Rubud; but the broad plains of the Hauran, which Baldwin III. endeavoured in vain to conquer, were never wrested from the Sultans of Damascus.

The road to Jordan from Gerasa passes along in sight of the distant castle of Rubud and by the ancient village of Reimun, a well-watered place with ancient tombs. Here, I believe, we should probably place the celebrated Ramoth Gilead, which has, for no reason at all, been identified with Es Salt, a town which takes its name from the old episcopal title Saltus Hieraticus, due to the woods on the hill slopes not far off. From Reimun the path winds down into the beautiful “Valley of the Roebuck” (WÂdy HamÛr), full of picturesque glades. The valley was green with young corn when I visited it, and the stream bordered with oleanders. On the hillsides a dense wood of oaks was topped by dark pines on the higher part of the ridge. Lentisk, arbutus, oleaster, formed its underwood, and here, as on Carmel, the blackbird’s song may be heard. The jay, cuckoo, hoopoe, and tomtit I also found in these woods, with the “murmuring of innumerable doves,” as in the Nazareth oaks.

Among the flowers which I saw in spring on the slopes of Gilead are many of our English species. Clover, ragged-robin, red and white cistus, clematis, crow’s-foot, purple lupins, squills, the pink phlox, the red or blue anemone, cyclamen, corn-flowers, pheasant’s eye, salvia, asphodel (both blue and yellow), vetches, wild mustard, marigold, borage, moon-daisies, cytizus, orchids, and the white broom, Star of Bethlehem, poppies, tulips, and buttercups, all grow in the grassy dells. Mock orange, hawthorn, honeysuckle, and antirrhinum, the arbutus and the lauristinus, are among its shrubs. Nowhere else in Palestine save in the Jordan Valley have I seen such fields of flowers; but the ravines and hill-slopes of the beautiful Sorrento scenery near Naples both in fauna and flora very nearly approach the natural history of Gilead.

These scenes were among the last through which it was my lot to pass in Syria. Hurrying back from Damascus to Jerusalem, I rejoined my companions, and we went down to Jaffa, where we took the northern steamer in order to escape Alexandria by a longer sea-route. Rumours had already reached us of the massacres in Egypt, and my reports concerning the unsettled state of the Levant I found to have been already confirmed by the telegrams which were arriving in England when we returned. The steamer was crowded with refugees, and it was not many weeks later that I again stood in the familiar streets of Alexandria, and saw the city of gutted houses, and the ruins which covered the great square with heaps of stone and of plaster. Thus our explorations may be said to have been continued to the last days of peace, before the Levant became the theatre of historic events.

There is only one district of Palestine which has not been described in this volume, namely, the great plains of the Hauran and the volcanic regions of the Lejah and Jaulan. Full as this region is of rude stone monuments, of Roman towns, of Nabathean and Arab texts scrawled on the rock, of Greek temples and Greek inscriptions, it is yet perhaps less unknown and less interesting than the wild deserts of Moab and of Judah, the oak woods of Gilead, the fastnesses of Hermon, the romantic mountains of Northern Syria, which have here been described. Still it remains a matter of regret to me that the work which was so systematically carried out in other parts of Palestine has not yet been extended over the whole of the Hauran plains.

Such, then, is the present condition of exploration east of Jordan. About a quarter of that region has been surveyed and mapped, and nearly the whole region has been visited by modern trained explorers. Much, however, still remains to be done in the future in this interesting country.

Reference has already been made in the introductory chapter to the map made in this region by Herr G. Schumacher, a younger member of the German colony of Haifa, which has been published by the Palestine Exploration Fund. This map extends eastward of the Sea of Galilee for about twenty miles, and reaches on the north to Banias, and on the south to the region near Abila of Decapolis. An account of the country has also been published from Herr Schumacher’s notes. The curious volcanic region of the Jaulan is included in this area, and the most interesting discoveries, already noted, were the sites of Susieh (or Hippos) and of Kokaba, one of the towns mentioned in connection with the ancient Ebionite sectarians of the second century, A.D.

The unfinished work by De VogÜÉ remains, however, perhaps the most important contribution to our knowledge of this region. He was the first scientific explorer who exploded the popular fallacy of the “giant cities of Bashan,” by proving that not only were the stone towns of the Hauran of very ordinary dimensions, but that the Greek inscriptions on their walls showed them to have been built by Christians of the third and later centuries, A.D. The oldest remains in Bashan are apparently the dolmen groups discovered by Herr Schumacher, which are of the same character with those described further south. In the early Christian period the Ebionites flourished in Bashan, where they converted the invading Arabs who advanced from the south; and it is even said that the Arab king, Amr, erected monasteries as early as 180 A.D. The GrÆco-Roman buildings found in the Hauran belong chiefly to this period when the Arab capital was at Bosrah.

The Hauran is a great plateau stretching east to the isolated Jebel Kuleib, which lies on the borders of the Syrian desert. This plateau presents the chief cornfield of Palestine, and the wheat is thence brought down for export to Acre. The population is in great measure Druze, mixed with Arab and Circassian elements. The water supply is chiefly from wells and cisterns, and for this reason Bashan has always presented great difficulties to military expeditions, and the Crusaders never effected its conquest.

The Greek texts, pagan and Christian, here collected by Waddington, De VogÜÉ, and others, are very numerous, but less interesting as a rule than are the early Arab inscriptions copied by the same explorers. The Nabathean or North Arab texts of the Hauran range from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., and are of great epigraphic importance, showing a population of the same stock then also existing in Petra. Yet further east Mr. Cyril Graham discovered inscriptions and rude sketches executed by another Arab stock which advanced from Yemen about the same period. Some seven hundred of these South Arab texts are now known, and in 1877 their relation to the alphabet of South Arabia was demonstrated by HalÉvy. It was this rising tide of northward migration which a few centuries later broke down the Roman power in Syria at the famous battle of the Yermuk (south-east of the Sea of Galilee), when Islam triumphed over the degenerate Byzantines.