A NEW ERA IN PALESTINE EXPLORATION. By ELIHU GRANT, [With 7 plates.] Every indication points to the beginning of new opportunities and new interest in the subject of Oriental research in Western Asia and adjacent lands. It is impossible, of course, to forecast the disturbances which may yet arise but the general disposition of the provinces of the old Turkish Empire bids fair to affect favorably the problems of archeology so far as field-work goes. Exploration in Bible lands leads usually to an increase in our knowledge of all the lands and peoples between Persia and Italy. The study of the subject has always been an aid to an understanding of the civilizations which account for more than half of human history. Language, law, philosophy, geography, ethnology, and sociology have often profited by enquiries which were set on foot, in the first instance, for the sake of a better understanding of the Old and New Testaments. The earlier ages of travel and exploration in Palestine culminated in the excellent publications of Robinson in the middle of the Nineteenth Century. A second period, of the greater excavations, began shortly after that time and now a third seems to have opened under more favorable governmental conditions in the Holy Land. What heartbreaking difficulties were met in that second, or heroic period! The groaning complaints of those scientific venturers who attempted to explore lands held by the Turks may be read in many a volume and article. Besides the complaints rose the wails of observers who saw the native digger evade the law and bring in his illicit finds from rifled tomb and mound to sell to the curious buyer of "antikies." It still remains true, however, that not a tithe of the ruin heaps of ancient cities and villages have been scratched. The chances are so good that when the opportunity opens, one eagerly scans a dozen possibilities, wondering which place will be most rewarding. One blessing which followed from the old system of things, or lack of it, was that in spite of the secret digging of the ignorant vender, most of the precious archives in the dirt were spared until skillful readers of their story could open them. May this benefit continue! From the mounds of Turkestan, Persia, Armenia, Asia Minor, and Syria there is bound to come rich museum material if it can be withdrawn under expert supervision. The shores and islands of the Levant wait in large part for the same skill and conscience quite as much as for funds. Palestine lies right in the center of this vast field of the ancient orient. It is a little country, about the size and shape of the State of New Hampshire. It is now under British control, administered by fair-minded representative of the enlightened colonial policy of the Empire, Sir Herbert Samuel. The terms on which qualified explorers may work in Palestine are plain and are construed so as to forward the work. A Service of Antiquities for Palestine has been organized and the antiquities ordinance of 1920 was published in the Official Gazette. An Archeological Advisory Board has been constituted with membership representing British, American, French, Italian, Jewish, and Moslem interests. This board is consulted when there are applications for permission to excavate, for the regulation of any excavations in or about Jerusalem, for the care of any structures of historical significance and for the discussion of such problems of scientific undertakings as have international aspects. When Jerusalem was entered by the British Army there was found packed in cases a large amount of antiquities which had been gathered during the war. Some of this material seems to have been known of old as museum treasure, while the rest of it is reported as the fruits of recent effort. It is to be placed in a museum in Jerusalem, over 6,000 objects having been catalogued already with that destination in view. Local museums are to be established if possible at other historic places in the land, such as Tiberias, Acre, Askalon, &c. One keeper of museums is to be in supervisory control of all these local collections. At Jerusalem discoveries of a large sculptural and architectural kind will be housed in the Hippicus Tower of the Citadel. Harvard University will continue its investigation of ancient Samaria. Chicago University will have the privilege of digging and examining the remains at Megiddo, while to the University of Pennsylvania has been allotted the important site of old Bethshean. The last mentioned institution began work in June, 1921, under the capable charge of Dr. Clarence S. Fisher. It was reported in the autumn of the year that Doctor Fisher had discovered a large stone stela (pillar) with Egyptian hieroglyphic writing numbering more than a score of parallel lines. Inscriptions have ever been one of the most eagerly sought objects of explorers because of the firsthand testimony which they afford to the life and thought of the ancients as well as their high value for philologists. But inscribed material from Palestine has been very scarce. Thousands of objects of every other meaning have been found, with only a few notable written records so far, but we are likely to see an increase in favor of written material from further exploration. Down at Ain Duk, near Jericho, a Turkish shell dug into the ground and laid bare a portion of a mosaic floor. This has been further excavated, and the building which contained it has been shown to be an old sacred place, perhaps a synagogue. The inscription is in Jewish-Aramaic. It is but nine or ten lines long and is thus translated by S. A. Cook in the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly: Honoured be the memory of Benjamin the Manager, son of Josah. Honoured be the memory of everyone who exerts himself and gave or shall give (?) in this holy place, gold or silver, or any valuable in this Holy Place. Amen. This appeal is the equivalent of a modern exhortation to give generously to the collection. The excavation made by the French School of Archeology shows the ground plan of a group of buildings clustering near the synagogue. Further inscriptions, Jewish and votive in character, have been revealed and many pictures in mosaic which formed the flooring of the nave of the structure. Daniel is represented in the lion's den, and there is a zodiac with appropriate figures and descriptive writing and a large mingled composition of patterns drawn from vegetable, animal, and fantastic designs. (P. E. F. Quarterly, Oct., 1921, pp. 185f and 189.) An inscription was found on the hill Ophel at Jerusalem just before the war, but was not made public until after the war was over. It probably dates from the first Christian century, in the days of Gamaliel and Paul. It seems to refer to the restoration of a synagogue and hostel for foreign Jewish pilgrims coming to Jerusalem. The Jewish freedman who did this belonged to a family which had been benefactors of the holy place on the same site before. His name was Theodotus and he is called the son of Vettenos, a priest and head of the synagogue and son of one who held the same distinction before him; indeed, Theodotus was the grandson of such a dignitary. Theodotus made building repairs and construction of the synagogue for the purpose of the reading of the law and its teaching and further provided rooms and plumbing arrangements for the entertainment of foreign Jewish pilgrims. Dr. Nahum Slousch has found an ancient synagogue near Tiberias, thought to be the Kenista d'Hammata mentioned in the Talmud. A seven-branched candlestick made of marble, besides mosaics and inscriptions, has been found at the site. The Palestine Exploration Fund (London) began actual digging at Askalon in September, 1920, under the superintendence of Dr. John Garstang. Camp was pitched at a spot among the ruins where Roman masonry is to be seen and a systematic collection of all fragments on or near the surface was made at once. The high commissioner came down from Jerusalem and cut the first sod on September 10. Askalon has been in mind as a site for work for many years. In 1911 Dr. Duncan Mackenzie made a visit to the ruins which he described in the Quarterly for January, 1913 (p. 20ff), with a plan of Askalon, by Newton, accompanying the article. The city is on the Mediterranean coast, 15 miles north of Gaza and 30 miles south of Jaffa. It had a busy history from the time of Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV) of Egypt, about 1370 B. C., until 1270 A. D., when Saladin's was the mighty name in those parts. In the Tell el Amarna collection of letters found in Egypt there is one from Yitia of Askalon, whose scribe wrote for him in the fashionable cuneiform of the day. Yitia professes utmost loyalty to his suzerain, says that he is sending tribute to Egypt, and is standing firm as a staunch supporter of the Pharaoh in Palestine. Meanwhile the King of Jerusalem accused the King of Askalon of treachery to Egypt in aiding the hostile Khabiru. The city of Askalon was rebellious and had to be subdued by the Pharaohs Rameses II and Merneptah, who mention it in their inscriptions. The Peoples of the Sea, who may be the stock from which the Philistines sprang, overran the place, and near that period it begins to be a Philistine stronghold hostile to the Hebrews and, later, to the Jews. It figures in the story of Samson (Judges, 14:19) and "Tell it not in the streets of Askalon" wails forth in the Song of the Bow (II Samuel, 1:20). Sennacherib (703 B. C.) mastered it and it is mentioned on the Taylor Prism. The Scythians reached it in their sweeping raids (630 B. C.). Askalon was always a nest of anti-Semitism. Herod the Great was born there, which fact was hurled at him in the taunt that he was a Philistine. He was generous in his building program for Askalon. Lately the excavators have turned up Herod's statue in gigantic size. Through Christian, Arab, and Crusading times the city held important place. A Christian bishop had his seat there. The nearest remains to the exploring party as they squatted on the site would naturally be the youngest, those left on the oft occupied ground by Crusaders, Byzantines, and Arabs. A Crusaders' church has been identified. A Byzantine church of the seventh century shows remains of one apse and three high but roofless walls. Among the few inscriptions found is "an honorific decree in favor of one of Titus' centurions" who, curiously enough, has been identified with the centurion whose name, with companions, had been scratched on the foot of one of the colossi at Thebes, two years before his mention at Askalon, commemorating the fact that at a certain morning hour in April, 65 A. D., the group had heard Memnon salute the Dawn. (Hogarth, as reported in P. E. F. Q., July, 1921, p. 132.) The humblest and yet the surest aid to the historian so far has been the study of the domestic pottery scattered over and through the heap. Experience has taught explorers in Palestine that each successive layer in a mound, representing a corresponding period of life in the olden days, is best labelled by its most common brand of clay pottery fragments. From the earliest population of a site to its latest inhabitants, the quantity of rare, strange types of vases, cups, jars, bowls, etc., used by housewives will be vastly outweighed by a characteristic type of clay vessel most in vogue at any given cultural period. Due to this fact it has been found possible to make a ladder scale of pottery types from earliest times to the latest occupation. Askalon has shown in unusual completeness the possibilities of such a pottery scale, which stands as a test of the various layers of relics turned up, whether these be walls, art objects, or implements. Mr. Phythian-Adams has gone most carefully into the question of the stratification of the débris at Askalon. Six trial sections were cut into the old city. One of the sections proved to be what was sought, an undisturbed succession of occupational strata. This cutting ran through 10 meters of débris and affords a table of contents, more or less, of 2,500 years of Askalon. The excavator has been able to put his finger on the layer in the pile which actually belongs to the Philistines. This measures about 2 meters and indicates successive Philistine occupations, the variation of which from each other is illustrated by finding the remains of a house, latterly of brick, but standing on foundations of stone. Most of the surface at Askalon has been plotted in numbered fields in anticipation of systematic excavation. There are nearly 200 of these. In field 61 a statue of Fortune lay already exposed and another statue, of Victory, was soon uncovered. The ruins of a large marble building after the Corinthian order were cleared, and another statue, called tentatively "Peace", holding a palm branch, along with the lower half of a life-sized Apollo, came to view. The work, interrupted through the winter months, was resumed early in April, 1921. Fifteen expert Egyptians and about 130 common workers were employed. In field 61 the so-called Tycheion, or Temple of Fortune, was excavated. It had been progressively enlarged until it had a breadth of 30 meters. An interesting theater abuts on it in the area numbered 67. Beyond this have been found the lines of a temenos. The foundations of the large building reach down to the Philistine level. The peristyle alone has a length of 77 meters, besides the portico and an apse running southwards. At |