Part 28

Jerusalem, June 23.—I was much struck on my way from Jaffa to this place the other day by contrasting the different systems which are resorted to by the varied races of foreigners who are invading Palestine. There is the Jew, with curling ear-locks and greasy gaberdine, and wallet slung over his shoulder, trudging painfully along the dusty road. He has had hard work to slip into the country at all, and has only succeeded probably by means of backshish and a false passport. He has undergone discomfort and privations innumerable to win the privilege, which, to judge by his wan and sickly face, is not likely long to be denied him, of dying in Jerusalem.

As he plods on, leaning wearily on his long staff, he is almost run over by a bright yellow barouche dashing along the road, with four horses, in a style which shows how rapidly Western civilization is striding into the East. It is an English duke “doing” Palestine. He is followed by a motley group of his own country men and women, mounted on horses and donkeys, the women for the most part apparently old maids in straw hats, green spectacles, and veils, while a large proportion of the men are evidently parsons, who wear clerical coats and waistcoats and unclerical pith hats and jack boots. The whole party, consisting of about thirty persons, white with dust, are preceded by an elaborately attired dragoman, whom they are about to follow over the country like a flock of sheep, for they are the last batch of the season of Cook's tourists.

But they were not to be compared for picturesqueness or singularity of appearance with the next _cortège_ which I overtook, and the aspect of which, from a distance, puzzled me excessively. There appeared in front of me a large object of some sort, which was being slowly dragged along by a crowd of people who were evidently not natives of the country. On reaching it I found that it was a huge bell, weighing seven or eight tons, most elaborately ornamented with scriptural and sacred designs in _basso-rilievo_, and which, placed on a truck with low wheels, was being hauled by about eighty Russian peasants, more than half of whom were women. Looking on this singular group of rugged-featured people, with their light hair and Kalmuck countenances, one felt suddenly transported from the hills of Palestine to the Steppes of Southern Russia. The men wore high boots, baggy trousers, long full-skirted coats, tight at the waist, and flat caps, and the women the sombre and dowdy habiliments common to the Russian peasant class. They were all yoked by the breast with ropes to the truck, tugging it slowly but cheerfully along, and when I stopped and tried to stammer out the few words of Russian which I still remembered, they greeted my attempts with loud shouts of laughter, and made explanations which my knowledge of the language was too limited to enable me to comprehend. But my curiosity was destined to be satisfied at a later period on the arrival of this precious burden at Jerusalem. Meantime I could not but regard with interest the eager devotion of these poor people, and especially of the women, who were thus satisfying a religious instinct by exercising the functions of draught animals, and toiling up the road they deemed so sacred to the holy city, which is invested with a higher sanctity to the adherents of the Greek rite than to those of any other Christian communion. I found afterwards that it took them just a week to drag their bell up to Jerusalem, many falling ill by the way, and one dying, and reinforcements had to be sent from Jerusalem to assist them.

Had it not been for the various houses which have been built for the accommodation of travellers the mortality would probably have been greater, but the increase of travel along this road has multiplied the number of rest-houses, and there are now four or five of various degrees of excellence, to say nothing of Greek and Catholic convents, more or less far from the road, to which pilgrims can resort. The new hotel which has just been put up by a German colonist at Ramleh is among the most conspicuous of these improvements; and here, as the place is one of some archæological interest, and I thought the enterprise of my host deserved to be encouraged, I stayed to pass the night.

In the centuries immediately subsequent to the crusades, Ramleh is often mentioned by the old chroniclers, for it was then, as now, a favorite resting-place for travellers and pilgrims on their way between Jaffa and Jerusalem. But it gradually fell into decay, and three hundred years ago, when the traveller Belon was there, he found it almost deserted, scarcely twelve houses being inhabited, and the fields mostly untilled. It is now one of the most go-ahead places in Palestine, containing a population of at least five thousand, and is surrounded by extensive gardens and olive groves, above which the lofty tower erected by the Sultan Bibars, in the thirteenth century, conspicuously rears its graceful proportions.

By far the most interesting spot, however, in the whole of this section of country lies about two miles to the right of the road from Ramleh to Jerusalem, an hour after leaving the former place, which places it as much out of the track of tourists as if it were a day's journey. It is a mound called Tell el-Gezer, at the village of Abu Shusheh. This village is the property of a Mr. Bergheim, a Jew banker of Jerusalem, who owns an estate here of about five thousand acres, from which I may say, _en passant_, that he derives a very large revenue.^[4] Apart from the interest of the fact of a Jew being so large a landed proprietor in Palestine, Abu Shusheh has claims upon our notice which have only recently been discovered, and which to those who have been bitten with the enthusiasm of elucidating the ancient topography of Palestine, and identifying its antique sites, is replete with the highest importance.

Among those who have devoted themselves to the study of Palestine geography and antiquarian research the French savant Monsieur Clermont Ganneau ranks second to none. One of the problems which has for many years excited the interest and curiosity of Palestine explorers was the whereabouts of the ancient city of Gezer. We gather from the Biblical record that this was an important town prior to the arrival and settlement of the Israelites in the country. In the book of Joshua it is classed among the royal cities of Canaan. Its king, Horam, was defeated by Joshua while attempting to relieve Lachish, which was besieged by the Israelites. Later it was included in the territory of the tribe of Ephraim, and assigned to the Levitical family of Kohath. It is mentioned several times during the wars between David and the Philistines, and during Solomon's reign one of the Pharaohs made an expedition against it, which resulted in the capture and burning of the town. It afterwards became part of the dowry of Pharaoh's daughter when she became Solomon's wife, and he rebuilt it. The last we hear of it was in the wars of the Maccabees, when it reappears under the name of Gazara. Taken by assault in the first instance by the Jews, it passed successively into the hands of the two contending parties, who attached equal importance to its possession. John Hyrcanus, the Jewish commander, made it his military residence.

It was during his study of the old Arab geographers that M. Clermont Ganneau came upon the name Tell el-Gezer, and finding that it met all the topographical requirements of the Bible, he went in search of it at Abu Shusheh. Here he found that a mound on Mr. Bergheim's property was known to the natives by that name, though it was too insignificant ever to have figured on any map. On making minute investigation, he discovered, to his delight, a bilingual inscription; the first word, in Greek characters of the classical epoch, was the name of a man, “Alkio,” immediately followed by Hebrew letters of ancient square form, the translation of which was “limit of Gezer.” This settled the question, and the English Palestine Exploration Fund at once sent a special mission to verify Monsieur Ganneau's discoveries. This they did most completely, finding four other inscriptions, besides making a most complete survey of the place. As is not uncommon with such very ancient remains, the first aspect of the spot is disappointing. There are, in fact, no ruins visible, with the exception of a few terraces on the Tell, consisting of large blocks of unhewn stone. The Tell itself, on which part of the city appears to have stood, is a sort of ridge about six hundred yards long, one hundred across, and two hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding rocky valleys. The foundations of the ancient houses may be traced possibly in the numerous rock-cuttings with which the place abounds, but it is difficult to distinguish them from cuttings for quarrying stone on the old method, and certainly many of the cuttings were those of quarriers. There are the remains of what was apparently an old fortress at the eastern end of the Tell, but the most remarkable features are the numerous wine-presses, which number about thirty, some of them in an excellent state of preservation. There are also some tombs, but these are rare and scattered, which is to be accounted for by the fact that this was a Levitical city, within the limits of which no interment was allowed. There are numerous chips of stone, some apparently basaltic, and much broken pottery all over the Tell, and many flints, some of which were worked, have been discovered. While he was building his house, which is just under the Tell, Mr. Bergheim found a deep cistern about forty feet square, lined with small stones and covered with two coats of cement, which was hard and white; the walls were about two feet thick, and it seemed to have a niche in its eastern wall, as though it had at one time been used as a chapel. In the niche a cross was found, painted red, and beneath it a stone altar, which has been removed; but all this points to an early Christian occupation. Mr. Bergheim has since converted the cistern to its original use. He also found a curious idol in hard red pottery. The fellahin say that many of these “dolls,” as they call them, used to be picked up, and were given to the children as playthings. Flint instruments, earthenware weights, and rubbers in composition, for use in cementing cisterns, have been found in ploughing on the Tell, and near its southwest extremity a number of skeletons were discovered, apparently of persons slain in battle; one had a sword-cut on the skull. An aqueduct cut in the rock is also traceable along the hillside.

Altogether the place is a good deal more interesting than it looks at first sight, and had its owner been an antiquary he would doubtless have had splendid opportunities of making a valuable collection. That the spot has always had a semi-sacred character in the eyes of the country people is evident from the traditions which attach to it. One is that the city of Noah stood upon the hill here, and that the deluge came from a place called Et Tannar, which is a cavity with an old well on the east slope of the hill. The modern name Abu Shusheh, or “Father of the Topknot,” is said to be derived from a dervish who prayed for rain in time of drought, and was told by a sand diviner that he would perish if it came. The water came out of the earth and formed a pool, into which he stepped and was drowned. The people, seeing only his topknot left, cried, “Ya Abu Shusheh” (O Father of the Topknot).

It is a pity that, with the exception of the one deciphered by Monsieur Ganneau, the inscriptions are so much effaced that, although certain characters can be made out, they have hitherto defied translation. Some of them appear to approach to the later Hebrew forms, while others bear some resemblance to Cufic.

There are other sites of interest which lie more or less distant from the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, but I had not time to visit them, though the comparatively more advanced state of civilization of this province and the good accommodation to be found on the road would facilitate the explorer's task. On the other hand, the examination of this part of the country has been so thorough that he cannot hope for the rich rewards that are to be found in more inaccessible districts.

[4] Since the above was written Mr. Bergheim has been brutally murdered by the peasants on his estate.

TRADITIONAL SITES AT JERUSALEM.

Haifa, July 20.—It is a melancholy reflection, and one by no means creditable to the Christianity which prevailed in the fourth century after Christ, that the Jerusalem of the present day, the Holy City of the world par excellence, should contain within its walls more sacred shams and impostures than any other city in the world. The responsibility for the gross superstition which prevails in regard to sites and localities mainly rests with the fourth century, and chiefly with the Empress Helena, who was principally instrumental in inventing them, and the Christian churches, especially the Greek and Latin, find it in their interest to foster these transparent frauds, for the enormous pecuniary advantages which accrue from them.

The extraordinary amount of research and investigation of which Jerusalem has been the subject during the last twenty years, the extent of the excavations which have been made, involving an expenditure of about $100,000, and the conscientious impartiality and profound acquirements of the explorers, have demolished the whole superstructure which early and mediæval Christianity had reared upon the credulity of its votaries; and which the churches of the present day, despite all the evidences to the contrary, find it in their interest to perpetuate. Thus it has now been proved to demonstration that, wherever the tomb in which Christ was laid after his crucifixion may have been, it could not have been in the cave over which the gorgeous edifice called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands; for we now know by recent examination the position of the walls which enclosed the city in the time of Christ, though some still deny the correctness of the latest conclusions which have been arrived at. We also know that Calvary, or Golgotha, where he was crucified, was “nigh at hand” to the sepulchre; that Golgotha was “nigh to the city,” and not in it, and that Jesus “suffered without the gate,” and that all tombs, saving those of David and Huldah and eight Jewish kings, were without the walls, while the cave over which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is built is within them. As, however, even the churches do not go so far as to maintain that any tradition had been preserved among Christians during the first three centuries after the death of Christ of his place of burial, they have had to resort to inspiration as the means of its discovery. Some of the early writers maintain that it was the Emperor Constantine himself who was divinely inspired to find it; others that it was his mother, the Empress Helena. This is a trifling discrepancy. Whichever it was, the fact of the inspiration remains, and scientific investigation has, ever since the days of Galileo, been bound to give way before ecclesiastical inspiration and infallibility. So, no matter whatever evidences exist to the contrary, crowds of pilgrims will continue to crawl over those sanctified stones, wearing them hollow with their kisses, as long as the sacerdotal organization of which it is the representative remains to impose upon them its authority.

With considerate ingenuity, and possibly with a view to lightening the labors of the pilgrims as much as possible, the early Church crowded as many sacred stones together under the roof of the holy edifice it could with decency. Thus we have the Stone of Unction, on which Christ's body was laid for anointing, but it was getting so worn that the real stone lies below the marble slab, which, however, answers the purpose for the pilgrims. Close by is the Circular Stone, where the Virgin stood while the body was being anointed; also the stone on which Jesus stood when he appeared to Mary Magdalene, and the stone on which she stood, and the column to which he was bound when scourged; and your devout guide will show you, if you have the patience to attend to him, the exact place where Jesus was stripped by the soldiers, the place where the purple robe was put on him, the place where the soldiers cast lots for his raiment, the rent in the rock made by the earthquake, the place where his body was wrapped in linen cloths, the place where he indicated with his own hand the centre of the world, and so on, _ad nauseam_.

Sometimes another Church commits a burglary and steals some of these stones. The Armenians have been especially guilty in this respect. They have stolen from the holy sepulchre the stone on which the angel sat, that had been rolled away from the door of the sepulchre, which they now display in the chapel of the Palace of Caiaphas; also a piece of the true cross, which was originally discovered under inspiration by Helena, as well as that of the penitent thief, who is now canonized under the name of Dimas. I don't know what authority they have for calling him Dimas, whose reputed birthplace is, for political reasons, going to be converted into another holy place. There is something rather appropriate in the idea of the power that is waiting for a chance to despoil the Turkish empire of Syria erecting a shrine in worship of the penitent thief.

The most remarkable sites are those which illustrate the parables. Thus, pilgrims are shown the window which was the post of observation of Dives, and the stone, now worn by the kisses of the faithful, where Lazarus sat when the dog licked his sores. I asked my guide where the dog was, but he said he was dead, and added, with a smile, “I don't believe any of these things.”

I asked him why not.

“Oh,” he replied, “I'm a Jew.”

After that the glibness with which he pattered off all the Christian traditions was very edifying until my patience was exhausted, and I said, “Well, supposing, as we neither of us believe in any of these invented sites, we go and try and find something that is real.”

He had been in the service of some of the recent Jerusalem explorers, and I afterwards found him an intelligent companion.

It is a striking illustration of Moslem religious toleration, as compared with that shown by Christians in Jerusalem towards Jews, that while this man could accompany me into the Mosque of Omar, that most beautiful and sacred of Mohammedan temples, he was not allowed even to enter the street in which stands the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

So far as Christian rites are concerned, it may, then, be taken as a fact that the interest which attaches to Jerusalem has but a very slender relation to them. The great natural features, of course, must always remain. Bethlehem, Bethany, and the Mount of Olives are as they ever were, but there are two Gardens of Gethsemane, one claimed by the Latins and one by the Greeks. When we descend to more minute details they are either purely mythical or at best only matters of vague conjecture. One of the best illustrations of the purely mythical is Christ's footprint on the rock from which he ascended into heaven, which is a good deal smaller than that of Buddha, which I have also seen on the top of Adam's Peak in Ceylon, or of Jethro, which the Druses showed me in the Neby Schaib.

Among those open to conjecture, the position of Calvary and the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea are points upon which research may still throw light. Every indication goes to show that Golgotha, or Calvary, was a knoll outside the Damascus gate, exactly in the opposite direction to that affixed by Christian tradition, and which would do away with the Via Dolorosa as a sacred thoroughfare, the street shown as that along which Christ bore his cross on his way to execution. It is only probable that Calvary was the ordinary execution ground of Jerusalem, which is called in the Talmud “the House of Stoning” about A.D. 150, and which current tradition among the Jews identifies with this knoll, a tradition borne out by the account of it contained in the Mishnah, or text of the Talmud, which describes a cliff over which the condemned was thrown by the first witness. If he was not killed by the fall, the second witness cast a stone on him, and the crowd on the cliff or beneath it completed his execution. It was outside the gate, at some distance from the Judgment Hall. The knoll in question is just outside the gate, with a cliff about fifty feet high. Moreover, we are informed that sometimes “they sunk a beam in the ground, and a crossbeam extended from it, and they bound his hands, one over the other, and hung him up.” (Sanhedrim vi. 4.) Thus the House of Stoning was a recognized place of crucifixion. It is curious that an early Christian tradition pointed to this site as the place of stoning of Stephen, the proto-martyr. The vicinity has apparently always been considered unlucky. An Arab writer in the Middle Ages pronounces a barren tract adjoining accursed and haunted, so that the traveller should not pass it at night.