IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER
VIII.
Explorations.
Captain Warren—Sergeant
Birtles—Previous researches of Captain Wilson—Summary of
results—What kind of explorers needed—Difficulties—Accumulated
rubbish—Ignorance and bigotry—Amusing instances
—Evasions—Experience of explorers on landing at Jaffa—Gunpowder
vegetating—The donkey-stable—Irritating restrictions—Vexatious
lawsuits—Qualities of native workmen—Descent into the
shafts—Tunnels—Dangers—Perilous
adventures—Accidents—Results—Interesting articles
discovered-—Places verified-—Water-supply of Old
Jerusalem—Solomon and Hezekiah—The Tyropoean Valley—Wilson and
Robinson's arches—Questions waiting to be answered—Red-paint
characters—Their significance—The Moabite stone—Its age and
value [a Kings iii.]—Future discovery.
DURING the portion of March 1869 that we spent in
Jerusalem, we had repeated interviews with Captain Warren, were kindly
permitted by him to descend several of his shafts and to explore his tunnels,
had the design and character of his explorations explained to us, and were
enabled, in some degree, to appreciate the formidable difficulties with which
he had to contend in endeavouring to promote archaeological discovery and to
settle some of the most important questions connected with the topography of
ancient Jerusalem. In meeting in the streets of the city his shrewd and
faithful assistant Sergeant Birtles, followed by a staff of stalwart and
intelligent engineers with their unmistakable British look about them, it was
difficult to repress a wish to go up and shake hands with them, as if they had
been old acquaintances. Indeed, from the first there had been a kindly nod of
recognition exchanged between us, before we had gone through the formality of
being introduced to them by their chief; while the sight of one of their
shafts, with windlass at the top and a few curiously-disposed Arabs loitering
near, made you feel many hundred miles nearer home; and, like one approaching a
goldmine, we could not come within a moderate distance of it without a strong
impulse to rush forward and learn whether there had been any new
discovery.
We shall not pretend to describe the processes of
exploration; for even did we possess engineering skill and a knowledge of
technical language sufficient for the purpose, we are convinced that, without a
very liberal use of diagrams and photographs, it is impossible by mere
description to convey anything beyond the most vague conception of such matters
to a general reader. Our purpose will be gained if we succeed in giving a
correct impression of the importance of the work, and of the nature of the
obstructions so discouraging and irritating to the workers and yet so bravely
and patiently met by them, with a summary estimate of the
results.
Captain Wilson and his associates had already made valuable
contributions to the geographical and antiquarian knowledge of Palestine,
before Captain Warren entered on the inviting field. Not to enumerate many
minor services, he had, at least to the satisfaction of the greater number of
inquirers, identified the site of Capernaum, detected the ruins of Chorazin,
and helped to place among the most certain of modern discoveries, on the
eastern shore of the Galilean lake, the scene of the destruction of the
possessed swine when they ran down a steep place and were drowned in the sea.
He had greatly increased our knowledge of the structure of the ancient
synagogue, correcting the common popular notions on this subject; and had
brought to light some of the most beautiful sculptures on those ecclesiastical
buildings, which appear to have been, in many cases, not simply ornamental, but
suggestive and emblematic. He had surveyed the district of which the Lake of
Galilee was the centre, as well as the important region around Sychar, with its
twin-mountains of Ebal and Gerizim. And he had crowned all his other solid
services to science and Biblical study by preparing the material for a complete
Ordnance Map of Jerusalem - by numerous well-directed excavations in the sacred
city, in which he had guided the course and lightened the work of future
labourers - and especially by discovering the spring of the arch which now
fitly bears his name opposite to that which had previously been discovered by
Robinson on the Moriah side of the Tyropoean Valley, thus completing the
evidence that an ancient bridge had once spanned this ravine and connected the
lower with the upper city.
Important results like these, along with
other causes, awakened the expectation of other and equally valuable results
from further explorations of the same kind in this unexhausted field, conducted
by qualified scientific and learned men who should be stationed for a series of
years in the country, should be amply supplied with all the apparatus and tools
adequate for their work, and have under them a competent number of labourers.
It was all very well, in its own place, that persons like ourselves who were
out on a short furlough, should skim the surface of the land like summer
swallows, and perhaps be able to record some custom among the people, or to
observe some feature in the scenery that would shed new or increased light on a
sentence in the Word of God. But what was needed was thorough and prolonged
investigation that should patiently dig among ruins, decipher inscriptions,
discover the localities of lost towns and villages, and, in short, at length
supply us with the means of knowing the topography of Palestine as well as we
know that of England. We wanted men who should go out with carefully-prepared
questions and unsolved problems from England, determined to have the answer or
the solution ere they returned - men who should do for Jerusalem what Layard
had done for Nineveh and Rawlinson for Babylon, and what Signor Castellani, by
diverting the current of the Tiber, is now proposing to do for Rome. This led
to the formation, in London, in June 1865, of the Palestine Exploration Fund.
The programme of this society was admirably comprehensive, embracing, in
addition to the objects at which we have hinted, the formation of an Ordnance
Map of the Holy Land and of the Sinaitic Peninsula, similar to that which
Captain Wilson had already prepared of Jerusalem. But as all these objects
could not be accomplished or even attempted at once, it was determined to
commence operations in Jerusalem, the natural centre of greatest interest, and
where the most important problems had to be solved. In pursuit of this great
and sacred enterprise, Captain Warren was sent out, and in February 1867 he
appeared in Jerusalem with his mining tools, his scientific instruments, and a
picked band of trained assistants.
This accomplished officer found
himself at once met by difficulties of various kinds, that severely tested even
his sanguine temper and fertility of resource. The experience of Captain Wilson
and others had already in part apprized him that the ancient Jerusalem of which
he was in search - the Jerusalem in which our Lord and his contemporaries had
walked - was fifty feet down below the surface of the modern city, and that, in
some places, it lay buried more than a hundred feet beneath. There were those
who wondered when they read in the newspapers, not long since, that the remains
of the old Roman London had been discovered, in tesselated pavement and other
signs, fifteen feet beneath the London of our own day, in Bishopgate Street.
But the debris that conceals the old Jerusalem, if carried away and massed
together, would form a large mountain of itself. And no wonder; for Jerusalem
has on three occasions undergone general destruction ; and in addition to this,
it has been subjected to seventeen sieges, in which its largest and most
prominent buildings were certain to suffer most. On these occasions, the people
never thought of clearing away the bruised and broken material and obtaining a.
deep and solid base for a new erection. The new houses rose upon the ruins of
the old. We have a remarkable instance of the effect of this in the Tyropoean
Valley, which was once a deep ravine separating Mount Moriah from Mount Zion,
but which has been so filled up by the ruins of centuries tumbling into it,
that its outline is now scarcely traceable. Then the ruins themselves do not
cohere. A few feet below the surface, the debris is almost fluid, and when once
set in motion runs like water, and large stones and broken columns intermingled
with it are certain then to move also, and to dash with terrific force against
the first solid object they touch. It is easy to see how difficult it must have
been to sink deep shafts through such loose and treacherous material, and how
lateral tunnelling through such rubbish must sometimes have almost appeared
like courting destruction.
There was another frequent and vexatious
obstruction in the bigotry and ignorance of the people, and even of the public
authorities. The bigotry is no doubt declining; for had the same attempt been
made even ten years earlier, the opposition would have been much more
formidable and dangerous. Within a period of less than twenty years, the state
of feeling among the Moslem population presented an unpleasantly practical
illustration of the late Isaac Taylor's definition of fanaticism as "enthusiasm
inflamed by hatred." It had been observed that, at a particular period in the
day, the shadow of the great Mosque of Omar fell upon a certain Christian
burying ground. Even the honour and blessing conveyed by so sacred a shadow was
grudged. The public authorities at Jerusalem were strongly urged to have the
Christian cemetery removed to some more distant place, and it required all the
combined influence of the European consulates to prevent a scandalous order to
this effect from being issued.
Later than this, when a firman was sent
forth.giving permission to persons who were not Mohammedans to visit the
interior of the mosques, it was no uncommon saying among the more intolerant
Turks, that while the Sultan might have power to let a Frank enter their
mosques, he had no power to let him out again; and there was an evident
intention, in the first instance, that the knives of wild dervishes and
fanatical dependents on the mosques, should make amends in their own fashion
for relaxed severity of restriction or exclusion.
These things are past
now; but the prejudice and ignorance in which they originated are very far from
having become extinct or inoperative. The exploring party had scarcely landed
at Jaffa when they were met by the obstacle which was to annoy them in so many
forms afterwards. Their innocent theodolites and sextants were pronounced by
the custom-house officers to be warlike stores, and they only escaped seizure
on the vice-consul's undertaking to vouch for them that they were of a peaceful
nature, and not liable to go off! Indeed, the ignorance of the people in some
instances almost exceeded belief. On one occasion, when Captain Warren was
engaged in a most interesting exploration connected with Robinson's Arch, he
found it necessary to use gunpowder for blasting some of the stokes which were
too large and hard for the hammer. Immediately the strange rumour was spread
among the Moslems that these foreigners were about to deposit little lumps of
gunpowder all round the walls of the Noble Sanctuary; that these would grow and
grow until they became barrels, and that then, in about twenty years, when the
powder crop was ripe, they would come back with some machine and blow the whole
place up! Reports of this kind, fostering vague suspicions and fears, produced
much anxiety and trouble, though the ignorance sometimes showed itself in an
irresistibly ludicrous form. One day when a company of picked men were busily
at work in their excavations, they struck in unexpectedly on a donkey-stable in
which the owner happened to be present. The poor donkey-man, startled at the
apparition of so many begrimed faces that had suddenly come upon him as if they
had sprung out of the earth, fled in precipitation, declaring that he was
pursued by Gins or evil spirits ! We can imagine, however, that obstructions of
this nature were not so discouraging to our indefatigable explorers, as were
the exceptions and conditions which accompanied and clogged the Sultan's
permission to excavate. It is plain that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and
the Haram Sanctuary were the places around which the questions of greatest
interest gathered, and that these questions were almost certain to find a
satisfactory solution, were the excavations allowed to be conducted within and
beneath those two sacred structures. But they were sternly prohibited from
opening their shafts within a certain distance of either of them. This was
equivalent to shutting them out entirely from explorations in connection with
the former building, which was, in fact, so encircled by convents that it could
not even be approached; and the Haram, as belonging to the Moslem, was guarded
with a yet intenser jealousy. The only way in which explorations connected with
this second grand centre of interest could be made at all, was to sink shafts
as near as possible to the prohibited distance, and then to approach the Haram
wails by tunnelling underneath.
Even in the case of private properties,
the difficulties were often great. Though ignorant as the beasts that perish
about all matters of science, householders, when asked to sell their houses for
purposes of excavation, were shrewd enough to drive home their advantage and
demand an exorbitant price; and some of them, when asked to yield up portions
of their gardens, did their utmost to get out of the concession a snug annuity.
When we were in Jerusalem, Captain Warren complained to us of a kindred form of
annoyance, which appeared for the time to overtop all the others. His
researches awakened the selfishly litigious spirit. If some rickety house
tumbled down within fifty yards of the mouth of one of his pits, his
excavations got the blame of it, and he was summoned before one of the corrupt
native "cadis" and sued for damages that were stated, of course, at a most
extravagant figure. In some cases the demand was resisted; in others it was
found to be an economy both of time and money to consent to a compromise. But
the very likelihood of such fabricated lawsuits arising from every fresh
opening of the ground, was disturbing in the extreme. Still, these admirable
men took to their work with a will. They knew that the eyes of men of science
and religion were fixed on them from every part of the world, that there were
rich mines of discovery hidden somewhere within the range of their
explorations, and that to help in settling the long perplexed questions of
sacred research, and in shedding new light on the inspired records, was
something indeed worth living for.
In one quarter in which Captain
Warren had probably anticipated some difficulty, he soon found substantial aid,
and incidentally wrought out a conclusion which may be of use when applied in
other directions. He was obliged to depend for the less skilled forms of labour
upon native workmen. And he did not find the Arab to be the intractable
creature that he has so often been described to be. At first, indeed, he was
inclined to take his work by fits and starts, and the intervals of resting were
apt to be much longer than those of working. When any work required plan or
thought, he could not.be trusted alone. The muscles necessary for the clever
handling even of the common wheel-barrow seemed never to have been developed in
him; and when he shivered with cold in winter, he could never be made to see
that hard working was one of the surest and safest ways to bring heat. But when
he found himself paid at the end of the week, not according to the time spent,
but to the work done, he saw the equity of the arrangement, and became
gradually educated into a fair measure of steadiness in toil. For, while the
Arab is slow to believe in goodness, he has a quick appreciation of justice,
and a respect for calm power. Wishing to have some notion of the manner of the
excavations, we obtained leave from Captain Warren to descend two of his
shafts. It was one of our most memorable adventures in Jerusalem; and as we
were utterly new at such work, we suspect we must have looked amusingly awkward
and cautious to those who were looking down upon us from the pit-mouth. Taking
a lighted candle in one hand, we descended by a rope-ladder, which was fixed to
an iron rod driven deep into the ground at the entrance of the shaft. The sides
of the shaft were boarded by planks of wood that had been brought from England
- for Palestine could not even supply this material sufficiently and in a
prepared form; and it rots so quickly, that, in a few months, it needs to have
its place supplied by new boarding. When we were about half-way down, we were
surprised to find that the earth had bulged out in one place, and that the
boarding had cracked and was protruding. It was no easy matter to get past this
on the dangling rope-ladder, and any loss of self-possession would have been
destruction. But we managed at length to wriggle past, and the remaining part
ot our descent was easy. We were received by one of Captain Warren's men at the
bottom; and passing along a tunnel of some length, in which the earth was very
moist and on which drops were constantly falling from the uneven roof, we
descended a second shaft to about eighty feet beneath the surface of the
ground. There was a tunnel leading from this bottom, and we could hear at no
great distance the dripping of water. We were told that one of the tanks or
aqueducts of Old Jerusalem had been discovered in that direction, and throwing
a stone, we heard its sullen plunge into the depths.
We had obtained but
a glimpse, however, of the dangers which those bold explorers were called every
day to face. Showers of stones and streams of loose and treacherous shingle
were common occurrences. In some places the earth was so poisoned by sewage,
that the hands of the workmen broke out into festering sores; in other places
the air was found to be so impure, that the candles refused to burn. On some
occasions, when descending into unexplored vaults, the rope ladder proved much
too short, and they had no choice but, holding by stones on the sides of the
cavern, to climb down over-hands as they best could, sometimes to the distance
of twelve feet At other times, unable to keep their footing on the slippery
soil, they were plunged overhead into an unwelcome bath, unsavoury as well as
cold. In another instance, the water from a periodic spring so increased upon
them, that they were obliged to flee before it; and when it swelled up to
Captain Warren's neck, he could only preserve the candle from extinction by
carrying it in his mouth.
There were two adventures which we must
describe in Captain Warren's own words. He was endeavouring to verify the
conjecture that he had come upon one of the overflow-aqueducts from the Temple
of Solomon, and that there might be a. water-conduit underneath. "We scrambled
along for a long way on our feet, our skulls and spines coming in unhappy
contact with the passage roof. After advancing thus for about 200 feet, we
found that the mud reached higher up, and we had to crawl by means of elbows
and toes. Gradually the passage got more and more filled up, and our bodies
could barely squeeze through, and there did not appear to be sufficient air to
support us for any length of time; so that, having advanced 400 feet, we
commenced a difficult retrograde movement, having to get back half-way before
we could turn our heads round." He thus describes his exploration of the
subterranean passage extending under the Via Dolorosa, from the Convent of the
Sisters of Zion, which had been entered some years before by Captain Wilson: -
"I have examined the hitherto unexplored passage cut in the rock at the
southern end. I got some planks, and made a perilous journey on the sewage for
about twelve feet, and found myself in a magnificent passage cut in the rock,
thirty feet high, and covered by large stones laid across. Seeing how desirable
it would be to trace out this passage, I obtained three doors, and went down
there to-day with Sergeant Birtles. We laid them down on the surface of the
sewage, and advanced along by lifting up the hindermost and throwing it in
front of us." Afterwards, a second subterranean passage, was found, and he thus
describes his examination of a part of it: - " For about seventy-five feet this
passage is a pool of water about six feet deep, the water coming up to about
two feet below the springing. We had to construct a raft, floated with inflated
skins, to enable us to examine this portion of the vault."
These brave
workers, in fact, went to their daily toils " with their lives in their hands,"
and it was impossible that they should always come out scathless. We have seen
it stated that more than fifty accidents took place during the excavations. One
day a labourer would be dragged out crushed and bleeding; another day some one
would be buried in the ruins, and only extricated in time to save his life. The
same spirit was at work in these men as has borne others through the perils of
a forlorn hope, or carried adventurous voyagers to the frozen seas around the
Pole. A yet more sacred enthusiasm glowed in the breasts of some of them. Many
will say that it required discoveries of no common value to reward such
ventures and toils, prolonged until failing health compelled both leaders and
men to desist. But very precious fruits for sacred archaeology have already
been gathered and garnered. In estimating these, it is necessary to remember
that in many instances Captain Warren has helped forward investigations which
he has not completed, but which will enable future explorers to start at the
point at which he left them. In not a few other cases, he has increased the
probability of previous conjectures, and carried us many degrees nearer to the
goal of certainty.
Even his incidental discoveries of articles mainly of
domestic use among the ancient inhabitants of Jerusalem, were something more
than mere things for curiosity to wonder at, as in the house-lamps, the
beautifully coloured glass vases, the stone weights, and the numerous fragments
of pottery. The lamp found among the rubbish under the pavement on the southern
side of the Haram, bearing the inscription, "The light of Christ shines on
all," and which is thought to belong to the third or fourth century, is an
object to linger over with interest. One likes to think of the hands that, two
millenniums back, may have handled that well-preserved "seal of Haggai the son
of Shebaniah." Again, the stone-roller, dug out far down from a heap of
miscellaneous rubbish, is of value to the Biblical student, as bearing on the
question of the structure of the houses in Old Jerusalem. It is of the same
construction in every way as the stone-rollers to be seen on the flat roofs of
the houses in Lebanon at the present day, which are used for the purpose of
keeping the roof smooth, compact, and solid. Such rollers naturally suggest the
existence of flat-roofed houses in Jerusalem in far remote centuries, as the
language and allusions of our Lord in many places imply that they were. Captain
Warren is right in speaking of the whole rubbish around the Haram wall as
"interesting debris;" for it seems scarcely possible to doubt that, were it
examined and searched in detail, as it will be one day, there would be found
many unmistakable fragments and ornaments of the ancient temple, not improbably
even many broken weapons of war. It seems far from improbable that in one
tunnel, whose course he traced, he had come upon the conduit by which the blood
and offal were carried from the temple-altar into the Kidron; and that in
another spacious subterranean passage he had discovered the secret road
mentioned by Josephus, by which Herod conducted troops from the citadel in the
upper quarter of the city, to check disturbance and riot in the open space
before the temple gate; while it is beyond doubt that he has found the true bed
of the Kidron brook thirty-eight and a half feet below the present false bed.
There is ample evidence that even yet the water flows along, and often fills
this true bed, at the rainy season.
This ardent explorer has, in common
with his accomplished predecessor, thrown a flood of light upon the
water-supply of the Jerusalem of the past. In the remains of enormous tanks and
artificial pools, some of them almost having the dimensions of lakes; in the
engineering skill which is shown, at once for the prevention of waste and for
the outflow of surplus water, which their explorations have revealed, we are
enabled to read with new interest and admiration, and also with much clearer
understanding, the condensed references in sacred history to the elaborate
arrangements of Solomon and Hezekiah. It is the strongest testimony to the
science and grandeur of their work, that in all the seventeen sieges to which
Jerusalem has been subjected since the days of her kings, her defenders and
people have never suffered from the want of water. There were many places
noticed by these explorers which had evidently been draw-wells; and the marks
made by the buckets, as they were let down and drawn up, could still be traced.
This subject is very far from being exhausted. There are questions which wait
to be answered, both in reference to the sources of the water and the means by
which it was effectually concealed from the enemy during periods of siege; but
these two men have done more than any others, both to open up this field of
investigation and to cultivate it.
Captain Warren has also made solid
additions to our knowledge regarding the bridge which anciently spanned the
Tyropoean Valley. The entire history of discovery on this subject is indeed a
remarkable example of investigation carried forward, from one step to another,
to an ultimate issue which sets the whole matter at rest. By one traveller a
spring of the arch was discovered on one side of the ravine; by another, a
corresponding spring was discovered on the other side; and then Captain Warren
entered on the field, and not only revised and confirmed the previous
conclusions, but, some fathoms down, discovered, lying in order, on an old
pavement, the stones or voussoirs that had composed the arch. And as he dug
downward to find the original bed of the valley, he came on the unmistakable
fragments of another arch of much greater antiquity. Looking up from the depths
of this valley along the immense stretch of the Haram wall, the view of the
temple must have been a sight of wondrous beauty. Captain Wilson has helped our
conceptions by asking us to imagine a building longer than York Minster
standing on an elevation loftier than that of our highest city towers, and
dazzling, like a glory, in its singular whiteness and purity.
Those
recent explorations have not set at rest the question regarding the site of the
Jewish Temple. But they have done much to narrow the field of inquiry. They
have given the answer to questions which will hasten the answer to the great
question of all. The greater part of the exploratory work has been
accomplished, which is necessary to be made outside the Haram walls. It is now
a settled point that the site of the Temple was somewhere within the boundaries
of the Haram Sanctuary. It is considered almost as certain that the temples of
Solomon, Zerubbabel, and Herod stood on the same site, though Herod, ambitious
of ornament and splendour, may have extended the wings of his temple further in
some directions. And it is difficult to repress the belief, that were men of
the energy and ability of those recent explorers only allowed to bore their
shafts and to drive their tunnels within the Haram area, as they have been
allowed to do around its outer walls, the great archaeological problem would
soon be solved. Captain Warren has indicated as a high probability that these
inquiries, when they are carried out, will fix the site of the ancient Temple
on a position nearly coincident with the Dome of the Rock platform - the
unexplored 600 feet of wall south of the Golden Gate and overlooking the
Kidron, corresponding with what was the eastern side of the holy house; and he
has stated tests by which his opinion may be put to the proof, when once the
space now guarded by Mohammedan exclusiveness is allowed to be pierced by the
rod of Science, and made to let its secret out.
We happened to be in
Jerusalem at the time when the red-paint characters at the south-east angle of
the Haram wall were discovered, some of which our fellow-traveller Mr. Deutsch
declared to be special masons'-marks or quarry-signs. Some weeks afterwards, at
Beyrout, Mr. Deutsch announced to us, on his return from a short excursion to
Tyre and Sidon, that he had found similar characters on the stones of the
substructures of those old Phoenician harbours. The coincidence must be
acknowledged as significant between this and the Scripture statement, that
Phoenician workmen were employed by Solomon in great numbers in preparing
stones for the house which he had resolved to build as the earthly
dwelling-place of Jehovah. In reporting on similar painted marks discovered on
the northeast angle of the Haram wall, Captain Warren called attention to the
evidence which these marks afforded that the stones had been shaped at the
quarry and brought prepared for building. In one instance the paint had run,
and the trickling was upward in reference to the present position of the stone.
Indeed, all the noticeable facts and specialities unite to confirm the inspired
record that " the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready
before it was brought thither."
The design of this chapter has
restricted our observations almost entirely to Jerusalem. But we shall be
carrying out the real intention of our statements if we make a closing
reference to the discovery of the Moabite stone within the borders of the
ancient land of Moab, as a rebuke to the unreasoning impatience of some when
brilliant results do not turn up with every spadeful of earth, and an
encouragement to the prosecution of this great and sacred exploratory
enterprise. That stone, found unexpectedly on the surface of the earth, and
with its inscriptions for the most part in a wonderful state of preservation,
has, in many ways, been an immense gain. It is by some centuries the oldest
Semitic lapidary inscription that has yet been discovered, bearing our thoughts
back nine hundred years before Christ, to the period of the Hebrew monarchy. It
illustrates, to a previously unheard of degree, the history of our own
alphabetic writing. And though, in consequence of mismanagement at the first,
which, if we do not severely blame, we must profoundly regret, we do not now
possess the stone in its original entireness, it is, even in its fragmentary
state, a historic monument of much interest and high value. Written, as it has
been said, from a Moabite point of view, it harmonizes at every part with what
is recorded in 2nd Kings, chap, iii., respecting Mesha, king of Moab. It is
incontestable that it contains the names of Omri, the contemporary king of
Israel, and also of the wicked Ahab; those of several Moabite and Israelitish
towns; those of the idols Chemosh and Moloch; and, above all, that of Jahveh,
or Jehovah, God of Israel. But in addition to the great intrinsic value of this
old monument, the simple fact of its discovery at the time invested it with no
small relative importance. There was a growing disappointment, both among
scholars and the general public that were looking on, that no inscriptions of
any magnitude had yet been found. While miles of inscription of even older date
had been brought to light on the tombs and temples of Egypt and in the palaces
of Nineveh, Palestine and its border-countries seemed to be empty of
palseographical treasures, when this rich record appeared at the seasonable
moment, and led to the natural conclusion that if even the surface of the land
could present such records, more might be hidden underground. Those green
mounds, which every traveller may see in Palestine and in the Lebanon valleys,
in all likelihood preserve ruins which only need the divining-rod of Science to
bring them to the surface, startling expectation, confirming faith, casting new
gleams of light upon many an inspired sentence, and causing " truth," as it
were, " to spring out of the earth, while righteousness looks down from
heaven."
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