Part 23

I was now fortunately in a position to compare the dimensions, ground-plan, and architectural fragments which were strewn about, with those which distinguish the synagogues already discovered, in regard to whose original character there can be no doubt, as the Hebrew inscriptions and sacred Jewish symbols carved on the lintels prove it. The building measured forty-five feet by thirty-three, which is exactly the measurement of the small synagogue at Kefr-Birim. The columns were exactly of the same diameter. The floor was depressed, and reached by a descent of two steps, which were carried around the building in benches or seats each a foot high, the face of the upper one ornamented by a thin scroll of floral tracery. These features occur in the synagogue at Irbid. There was a single large stone cut into the shape of an arch, which had evidently been placed on the lintel of the principal entrance, like the one which stands to this day over the doorway of the great synagogue at Kefr-Birim. The niches, with the great scallop-shell pattern which distinguishes them, almost exactly resemble those of the synagogue of Kerazeh or Chorazin; while the cornice, which was extremely florid, and not unlike what in modern parlance is called “the egg-and-dart pattern,” though differing in some respects from the cornices hitherto observed, was evidently of the same school of design. The capitals were two feet three inches high, and Corinthian, in the same style and of the same dimensions as those of the small synagogue of Kefr-Birim, and there was the upper fragment of two semi-attached fluted columns, with Doric capitals, the ditto of which is to be found at Irbid. The two columns in situ exactly answer in position those of several of the synagogues, and though the position of the door, which was in the centre of the western wall, was somewhat unusual, this was accounted for by the fact that the building had been excavated from the hillside, so that the top of the east wall, nine feet of which was still standing, was level with the surface of the slope of the hill.

The only convenient entrance was in the wall of the side immediately opposite to it. The name of this most interesting locality was ed-Dikkeh, a spot hitherto unvisited by any traveller. Indeed, if it had been visited, it would have been passed unnoticed, for its antiquarian treasures have only been revealed for the first time a few months ago. The word ed-Dikkeh means “platform,” a name, considering its position, not inappropriate; but I have not been able to identify it with any Biblical site.

The area of ruins apart from those of the synagogue itself was not very large, but the situation was highly picturesque. Half a mile to the north of where we stood the Jordan forces its way through a gorge which I hope some day to explore, while immediately below us it rushed between numerous small islets. Opposite the hills swelled gently back from its western bank, behind us they rose more abruptly to the high table-land of Jaulan, while to the southward stretched the plain of Butêha, with the Lake of Tiberias in the distance.

Meantime the few wild-looking natives who inhabit this remote locality clustered around me, as they watched me measuring and sketching, with no little suspicion and alarm. “See,” said one to another, “our country is being taken from us.” My request for old coins only frightened them the more. They vehemently protested that not one had been found, an assertion which, under the circumstances, I felt sure was untrue; nor did the most gentle and reassuring language, with tenders of backshish—which was nevertheless greedily accepted—tend to allay their fears. I have forgotten to mention what was perhaps the most interesting object of all, and this was the carved figure of a winged female waving what seemed to be a sheaf in one hand, while her legs were doubled backward in a most uncomfortable and ungraceful position. It was on an isolated slab about six inches thick, and two feet one way by eighteen inches the other.

The area of the hillside all around was strewn with the blocks of building-stone of which the town had been built. It had apparently not been a very large place, but as the villagers will probably continue their excavations for their own purposes next summer, it is not at all unlikely that they may bring some more interesting remains to light. I earnestly impressed upon them the necessity of preserving these, promising another visit next year, when I would reward them in proportion to the carvings, coins, or other antiquities they could provide for me; but they listened to my exhortation with such a stupid and suspicions expression of countenance that I did not derive much encouragement from their reluctant consent.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RUINS OF SYNAGOGUES.

Haifa, Feb. 16.—I described in my last letter the discovery of the ruins of an ancient Jewish synagogue at a spot on the east bank of the Jordan, about three miles north of the upper end of the Lake of Tiberias. As the question of ancient Jewish synagogues is one of great interest, in regard to which considerable misapprehension prevails even among archæologists, I may be excused for entering upon a short disquisition upon the subject, as I am not aware that the great light which has been thrown upon it by recent Palestinian research has yet been distributed in a popular form to the general public, and the old and recognized authorities are often misleading. For example, “Smith's Dictionary of the Bible” contains a long article on Jewish synagogues which has hitherto been considered the great authority on the subject, in which I observe that it states under the sub-head “Structure:”

“Its position, however, was determined. It stood, if possible, on the highest ground in or near the city to which it belonged. Its direction, too, was fixed. Jerusalem was the Kibleh of Jewish devotion. The synagogue was so constructed that the worshippers, as they entered and as they prayed, looked towards it.”

This may have been the case in respect of the earlier synagogues, long anterior to the time of Christ, the traces of which have been lost, but in the case of eleven which have been discovered by the officers of the Palestine Exploration Fund, since the above was written, no such rules have been adhered to. These all date either from the time of Christ, or shortly before it, to three centuries after it. We know they were synagogues, and can approximately calculate their dates, from the Hebrew inscriptions found on some of them, and from the emblems with which they were ornamented, such as the pot of manna, the seven-branched candlestick, and other purely Jewish devices. In the cases of these synagogues, many of which I have seen, the builders have by no means selected the most prominent positions; the existing remains have, with two exceptions—at Irbid and at ed-Dikkeh, where the ground would not admit of such an arrangement—their doors on the southern side, so that every Jew entering would have to turn his back on Jerusalem. The ark, if there was one in these synagogues, would necessarily, in that case, be placed at the northern end, and the worshippers would therefore have to pray with their backs to Jerusalem.

We know, besides, how abhorrent to the Jews were the figures of animals, and the popular impression has been that none such were permitted to decorate their synagogues; yet in these synagogues we find them prominently carved in stone in six out of the eleven. The carved figure I found at ed-Dikkeh makes a seventh, and they probably existed in the others and in greater quantities than those already noted, but have been destroyed by the Mohammedans as contrary to their religion. As may be supposed, as they were all built at nearly the same period, there is a great similarity in the architecture of the synagogues recently discovered. It is of an extremely florid and somewhat debased Roman type. In all of them the same class of mouldings is observable. There is a great resemblance in the niches and cornices, while the capitals show some variation, being Corinthian, Doric, and Ionic. There is also a great similarity in the ground plan and in the position of the columns. In the case of a Roman temple these are all in colonnades outside the building, in cases of synagogues they are all within it. There should be no possibility, therefore, of confusing a synagogue with a Roman temple, even though it abounds with Roman architecture; but it is not always so easy to distinguish it from an early Christian church, or basilica, where the columns were also inside. The reason that the architecture of these latter synagogues was so purely Roman in character is to be found in the conditions under which they were built. Shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jewish Sanhedrim was established at Tiberias, under a patriarchate whose authority was recognized by the foreign communities at Rome and in Asia Minor, and large numbers of these came to live in the district, while alms poured into the treasury at Tiberias from all directions. It thus became very wealthy, and the centre of a great Jewish population. It was recognized by the Romans, and by them granted many indulgences, and, during the reign of Antoninus Pius, A.D. 138–161, increased in power and influence.

At the beginning of the third century the Jews were in high favor with the Emperor Alexander Severus, who was even called the Father of the Synagogue, and this name may have been given him from his influence over the erection and architecture of these buildings. It seems, therefore, almost a certainty that the Roman emperors aided and inspired the erection of these synagogues. They were built by Roman labor, for the Jews, being immersed in commercial pursuits, by using Roman workmen, obtained much finer results than we are led to think they would themselves have been capable of. No synagogues of the kind have been found in other countries, though there were many in Babylon and in the colonies of the Jews, and this type has never been perpetuated in later works, while we have seen how many points in their religion were disregarded in their design and ornamentation. We may therefore suppose that they were forced upon the people by their Roman rulers at a time when they were completely submissive to their power, and directly they were able they deserted such pagan buildings as a disloyalty to their religion. It is stated that Rabbi Simon, son of Jochai, is the founder of many of these buildings. Indeed, it is related that he built with his own money twenty-four synagogues in this part of the country. As he was a most fanatical teacher of the law, it is evident that if he erected so many buildings in such violent contradiction to many points of his own religion, he must have done it under great pressure. These synagogues built under Roman auspices were probably only an alternative evil; they had to choose between having them or none at all. With the exception of one on Carmel, and a problematical one at Shefr-Amr, about six miles from Haifa, all the synagogues hitherto found have been within the immediate limits of what was formerly the patriarchate of Tiberias. The fact that the building at ed-Dikkeh would be included in this district is an additional reason for assuming it to have been one of this class of synagogues, and, if so, we should probably be accurate in fixing its date at somewhere in the first or second century after Christ.

From ed-Dikkeh I proceeded under the guidance of the old sheik, who was much pleased at the satisfaction which I evinced at his successful leadership thus far, in an easterly direction to another place, where he assured me that the villagers had also been at work getting out stone during the summer, and had unearthed some more old ruins. Our way led us along the flank of the Jaulan hills, with the plain of the Butêha on our right, and, after a ride of about an hour, we reached a village of huts, in the midst of which was the anticipated excavation. I could not quite expect such another stroke of luck as that which had befallen me at ed-Dikkeh, but yet I had no reason to be dissatisfied. Here, upon a terrace built of large blocks of basalt about five inches in height, I found a curious condition of things. The villagers had laid bare, eighteen inches below the surface of the earth, the cement floor of an old chamber about twenty feet in one direction. I could not tell how far it went in the other, as it was still covered with earth, but where it abruptly terminated it revealed, about eighteen inches beneath, another floor of some building of much older date, across which it had been built diagonally. This floor was of stone. It, too, had been cleared for some distance by the natives, and upon it was standing, at intervals of six feet apart, five solid cubes of stone, measuring two feet each way, which had probably been the foundations or lower stones on which had been placed the pedestals of columns. As this lowest floor was three feet below the present surface of the ground, the top of these stones was one foot below it, and the line of them may have continued, though only five had been uncovered. I have no means of conjecturing what the building may have been. I found many fragments of columns and capitals strewn around among the ruins, which covered a larger area than those at ed-Dikkeh, and which, like them, are a new discovery, though what its results may be must depend very much upon further excavation. I impressed upon the villagers here, as I had already done at ed-Dikkeh, if, in the course of their excavating for stone, they came upon any with inscriptions or pictorial representations, to preserve them; but I felt, as I did so, that my words fell upon deaf or rather unwilling ears. They gazed at me with alarmed stolidity, either not understanding or not caring to understand, and evidently dominated by the fixed impression that my proceedings implied in some way the future ownership of the soil. I looked from here wistfully up a valley, at the mouth of which this ruin was situated, and at the head of which others were reported to exist, but circumstances prevented me at the time from pushing my explorations in this direction. Indeed, travel in this part of the country is attended with many difficulties, some political and some material, among the latter the chief one being, if one is unprovided with a tent, the question of where one is to spend the night. If, on the other hand, one is provided with a tent, it involves a much larger retinue, increased expense, excites even more distrust among the natives, and becomes sometimes dangerous from arousing their cupidity, and this necessitates having guards and escorts, which are the cause of endless quarrels and annoyance, as the more people you have with you the less are you your own master to go where you like, and the more difficult it is to provide for man and beast. It is a choice of evils at best of times, and the worry and discomfort can only be compensated for by good luck in obtaining results, and this is by no means always to be secured, though thus far on this particular journey I had had no reason to complain. I now propose to tempt fate on the highlands to the east of Lake Tiberias, with what success remains to be seen.

A NIGHT ADVENTURE NEAR THE LAKE OF TIBERIAS.

Haifa, February 28.—The tourist who follows the ordinary track of Palestine travel from Jerusalem to Damascus inevitably passes Tiberias. Standing on the flat roof of the convent, where, if he is not one of a Cook's party, he is compelled to lodge, he has a splendid view of the lake and of the precipitous cliffs opposite, which descend abruptly to its margin from the elevated plateau behind, that averages two thousand feet above the level of the lake. That sheet of water being nearly eight hundred feet below the sea-level, the only engineering problem which presents itself to the consideration of the surveyors who have been engaged in tracing a railroad line between Haifa and Damascus is how to ascend from this depression to the highlands above.

The solution of the problem is to be found in a large wide valley called the Wady Samak, which is exactly opposite Tiberias, and up the unknown recesses of which our tourist looks with longing eyes. Practically this wady is a sealed book to the Palestine traveller. To explore it he would have to obtain special permission from the government, with a guard, and be exposed to all manner of extortion from his dragoman, who would take advantage of his ignorance to magnify the dangers and add to the already existing obstacles. Indeed, one of the most singular characteristics of Palestine travel is the close proximity of unknown and unexplored districts to beaten tracks. Just as it often happens in a large city, that in the immediate neighborhood of one of the most frequented thoroughfares there are back slums inhabited by thieves and criminals, into which no respectable person penetrates, so, in Palestine, within ten miles of a place like Tiberias, there are spots as yet untrodden by the foot of the explorer; but these are all to the east of the lake and of the Jordan. Almost every inch of western Palestine has succumbed to the exhaustive researches of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

It was on a gloomy winter afternoon that I found myself skirting the eastern shore of the lake with the view of attacking the mysteries of this interesting valley—interesting from a practical point of view, because I wanted to look at the possible gradients which it might offer for a railway, and still more interesting from an archæological point of view, because I felt sure that in searching for gradients I should find ruins. But the search was undertaken under difficulties. I was without a tent, because my journey partook of the nature of an exploratory dash, and a tent would have been an encumbrance. I was without a guide, because my guide had deserted me in consequence of one of those misunderstandings which are not uncommon between travellers and their guides; but I had two companions, baggage animal and servant, and an amiable soldier, upon whom, in case of trouble, it was supposed we should be able to rely for protection and aid.

Owing to a variety of causes, principally arising from a desire to find ruins where there were none, and to map certain wadys which are incorrectly laid down in the maps, we were about two hours later than we should have been when we reached the mouth of the wady. The clouds were lowering ominously, there had been no sun all day, and now that luminary seemed to have given up the attempt to shine upon us in despair, and to have made up his mind, in a fit of disgust, to retire permanently to rest. I felt, considering the journey up the unknown wady, which we still had to perform without a guide before I could hope to reach a resting-place (I did not look forward to its being much of a sleeping-place), that it had no business to get dark so early. However, it was still broad daylight, and we took our bearings by compass as carefully as was possible, and were encouraged by observing that the track we were on was a broad and well-beaten one, and which, as the formation was white limestone, would show plainly even when it got dark. The valley I knew to be about seven miles long. The village we were bound for, the only village in it or near it, was at its head. We had only to keep going straight up, and the path we were on would surely lead us to it.

This fond delusion I hugged to my soul as we pushed on as rapidly as our wearied steeds, which had been travelling since daybreak, would allow us. The breadth of the valley in a bee-line from one edge of the plateau above us to the other was not less than two miles. It was a broad valley, with many shoulders running into it from both sides, and terraces here and there of cultivated land, the crops the property of wandering Bedouins, who come here in winter to sow them, and come back in spring to gather them. Down the centre of the valley brawled, over a rocky bed, a mountain brook, even in the dryest season a respectable trout stream, and often after heavy rains an impassable torrent. On the present occasion, however, it was behaving itself respectably, and gave us no trouble. It was fringed with oleanders, and here and there received tiny tributaries, which all helped to produce more vegetation than is usual in Palestine valleys, and to enhance the beauty of scenery the natural features of which were strikingly picturesque. As long as it was light I could see natural terraces on the flanks of the valley, up which it would be easy to take the line. Then I saw where long curves must be taken, winding up lateral hollows, through which we could twist the line up the two thousand feet it had to ascend, and lengthen out the seven miles of the wady to a distance which would suffice for the required gradient.

Assuredly when that long-looked-for and much-to-be-desired line is made, the stretch up the Wady Samak will be one of the most romantic and interesting sections upon it, while its well-watered slopes will doubtless tempt the speculative agriculturist or stock-farmer to intrude upon domains now appropriated by a few wandering Arabs, whose scanty flocks might be increased tenfold without consuming half its pasture, and who do not cultivate a tithe of its fertile soil.