TWO BOOKS ON PALESTINE.* IT is no wonder that Mr.
St. Clair has compiled an interesting
book. His subject is the most attractive in the whole range of archaeology. Not only is Palestine the special land of ruins and buried cities, but it has associations, religious and historical, which transcend those of any other spot in the world. Again, in extent, in number, and in variety, the stone records of the past that encumber the surface of the Holy
Land, or lie hid beneath its soil, have no rivals in the world. Not even the Delta of the Nile can show such an accumu- lation of human memorials. From the rode dolmens and stone circles of Eastern Palestine, to the Gothic castles and churches of the Crusaders, there is an unbroken series of architectural relics. Side by side with the mounds that mark the sites of the Cities of the Plain, of the Canaanitish strong- holds of Lakhish and Eglon, or of the fortresses of Moab and Philistia, stand the stately temples and colonnades of Graeco-Roman temples. Jerusalem itself is a vast object- lesson in history, architecture, and ethnology. The walls of the Temple enclosure, which for strength and grandeur, and for the cunning of the artificers who bevelled the edges of the mighty monoliths that compose them, can vie with any piece of mural workmanship in the world, and the rock-hewn galleries that communicate with the network of pools and cisterns that supplied the city with water, are typical Hebrew works; but they stand surrounded and overlaid by memorials of the various conquerors who, after subduing Judah, were themselves in turn subdued. In Jerusalem, as, indeed, throughout Palestine, the civilisations of the world have been deposited strata upon ;strata. Belgium has been called the cockpit of Europe, but in a far stricter sense was Syria the cockpit of Asia. She has endured "the drums and tramplings " of some twenty conquests, and there hardly an acre of her soil which has not associations of battle and destruction. In most countries, time would have effaced the outward and visible signs of this history.
In Palestine, every scar is visible. In the first place, the bright, dry climate arrests all decay. Then, too, the land is one vast quarry of hard stone, and no King or conqueror was ever tempted to build but in the most enduring of materials.
During the last quarter of a century, the ruins and buried cities of Palestine have been explored, if not thoroughly, yet with a great deal of care and attention. The results of these explorations, it has been the object of Mr. St. Clair to put together in a popular and readable form. His chief material consists of the Reports of the Palestine Exploration Fund, but he has not neglected such other sources of informa- tion as exist. So many of the discoveries recorded in the work before us call for comment and quotation, that it is diffi- cult to know what to choose. Perhaps we cannot do better than extract the account of the marvellous rock gallery which runs from the Virgin's Fountain to the Pool of Siloam, and of the inscription discovered therein :-
" From the Virgin's Fountain, about 320 yards south of the Triple Gate, and on the eastern side of Ophel, a tunnel has been excavated through the hill to the Pool of Siloam. The distance between these two places is not much more than 300 yards, but the tunnel winds about, and its length is 1,708 feet (or 569 yards). . . . . . . An inscription within this tunnel escaped the notice of all explorers until lately, and was not detected even by Warren. The present Pool of Siloam measures about 55 feet north and
• (L) Buried Cities and Bible Countries. By George St. Clair, P.0.5. London : Regan Pant. Trench, and CO. 1891.—(2.) Among the Holy Places: a Pilgrimoge through Patrstine. By the Rev. James Kean, B.D. London: Fisher tnwin. 1891. south by 18 feet east and west, and is about 20 feet deep. At the north end an archway, 5 feet wide, appears, leading to a small vault, 12 feet long, in which is a descent from the level of the top of the pool to the level of the channel supplying it. In the year 1880 one of the pupils of Herr Conrad Schick, the architect of the Church Missionary Society, while climbing down fell into the water, and on rising to the surface noticed the appearance of letters on the wall of the rock. The rock had been smoothed so as to form a tablet about 27 inches square, which contains six lines of writing on its lower portion. The inscription is about 5 yards from the mouth of the channel, and is on the right hand of an explorer entering from the Siloam end. It could hardly be read at first, because a deposit of lime had formed over it. Dr. Guthe removed this by washing the tablet with a weak solution of hydrochloric acid. Major Condor, with the aid of Lieutenant Mantell, expended much labour and patience in taking a ' squeeze,' sitting for three or four hours cramped up in the water in order to obtain a perfect copy, and repeating the experience in order to verify every letter. Conder's squeezes were the basis of the earliest correct representation published in Europe. Professor Sayce, who had already visited the tunnel and made a provisional translation of the text, was now enabled to im- prove it ; and the following is the translation :—` 1. (Behold the) excavation ! Now this is the history of the excavation. While the excavators were still lifting up 2. The pick, each towards his neighbour, and while there were yet three cubits to (excavate, there was heard) the voice of one man 3. Calling to his neigh- bour, for there was an excess (?) in the rock on the right hand (and on the left ?). And after that on the day 4. Of excavating the excavators had struck pick against pick, one against another, 5. The waters flowed from the spring to the pool for a distance of 1,200 cubits. And (part) 6. Of a cubit was the height of the rock over the head of the excavators.' The meeting of the two parties of excavators near the middle of the tunnel accords with Warren's discovery of two false cuttings, one on either side, at a distance of 900 ft. from the Siloam end. The inscription is in ancient characters, very much resembling those on the Moabite Stone, but possessing certain peculiarities. It is probably the oldest bit of Hebrew writing on stone that we possess, and opens out a new chapter in the history of the alphabet. It gives the first monumental evidence of the condition of civilisation among the Hebrews in the days of their kings ; and altogether it is the most important discovery of the kind since the finding of the Moabite Stone."
It is impossible not to be struck by the resemblance between the style of this inscription and the account of mining work to be found in Job. Nothing more vivid can be imagined than the picture of the two parties of excavators who had begun at different ends meeting in the middle. It would be interesting to exhume, say from the Daily Telegraph, the account of the similar incident which took place when the boring of the Mont Cenis Tunnel was completed, and to compare the restraint of the Hebrew version with the verbosity of the English. Still, if the literary honours would remain with the Jews, we moderns keep at any rate the mechanical. It seems that the Hebrew engineers made two bad shots, whereas their European rivals made their " connection " with but an inch or two of variation.
Not less interesting than the actual discoveries of ruins are the instances of successful identifications of Biblical sites. Strange as it may seem at first, the places mentioned in the Old Testament are much easier to identify than the scenes described in the New. The manner in which many of the earliest events of Jewish history can be localised, is little short of marvellous. The explanation of this apparent paradox is, we expect, to be found in the difference between the Greek and Hebrew languages. The former is not specially picturesque, while the latter lends itself with extraordinary facility to what, for want of a better phrase, we must term impressionist landscape-painting. The Hebrew writer puts a touch or two into his description which stamps it at once with reality, and materially assists the task of discovering the actual scenes of the Bible story.
Though much has been done in the way of exploration, still more remains unaccomplished. In particular, there are two things which, if accomplished, might add greatly to our know- ledge. In the first place, the Temple enclosure at Jerusalem wants to be thoroughly explored. Who knows what may not lie hidden under the marble slab in the floor of the Sacred Well P The slab, when struck, gives forth a hollow sound, but no man has ever lifted it. The Arabs say that it covers the month of the abyss of hell ; and an ancient tradition declares that " the Temple of the Ark of the Covenant used to stand over this cave, and that it was afterwards concealed in the cave or below it by Jeremiah, and still lies hidden beneath the sacred rock." It is in no way impossible that, if a search were made, tradition, as so often before in the history of explora- tion, might prove correct. Even more exciting is the thought that no human being has yet penetrated into the
cave of the field of Macpelah, where lies the mummy of Abraham. It is surely a disgrace to Christendom that she does does not insist that the Turks shall permit investigation in both these cases. No real outrage on Mahommedan feeling ought, of course, to be committed; but the insolence which forbids all inquiry should not be tolerated for a moment. If England, Germany, Russia, France, Italy, Austria, and The United States, made a joint demand upon the Porte, the. thing would be accomplished. The difficulty of dealing with the Turks in the matter of exploration suggests, indeed, that the government of Syria might be put altogether on a different footing. Why should not the Holy Land be internationalised, and treated as a "reservation"? Under the rule of an Inter- national Commission, prosperity might return to the fields and vineyards of Judah, while at the same time the various Christian Churches could prosecute undisturbed their re- searches into a history which interests them so profoundly.
The need for improvement in the government of Pales- tine is brought out in the other work under our notice, —Mr. James Kean's account of his tour in the Holy Land. The record of his journey shows how much the country suffers from Turkish misrule. Of the book itself, however, there is no need to say much. Mr. Kean was no doubt profoundly interested in all he saw, but he has not in any marked degree the power of conveying that interest to his readers. In spite of the surpassing attractions of his subject, his book must be pronounced a dull one.
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