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EGYPT AND SYRIA 
 
©iforti 
 
 PRINTED BY HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 

 
 
Pyramid of Kaphra (Cephren) and ancient Eroded Cliff of Pyramid Plateau at Gizeh. 
 (From a Photograph.) 
 
•yg=$ati)!3 of iitHe l&notoleOge. 
 
 VI. 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA 
 
 THEIR PHYSICAL FEATURES 
 
 IN RELATION TO 
 
 BIBLE HISTORY. 
 
 SIR J. WILLIAM DAWSON, C.M.G., LL.D., F.R.S., 
 
 Author of “ Acadian Geology ; ” 
 
 “The Chain of Life in Geological Time;” 
 
 “The Story of the Earth and Man 
 “Fossil Men,” etc. 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 
 
 56, Paternoster Row, and 65, St. Paul’s Churchyard. 
 
OCT 1 18C5 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This work contains the results of observations made 
 in the winter of 1883-4, during which the writer de¬ 
 voted some attention to the less known features of 
 the geology of portions of Egypt and Palestine, with 
 especial reference to the bearing of facts of this kind 
 on Bible History. He believes that his long and some¬ 
 what varied experience as a geological observer will 
 enable him to throw additional light on some of the 
 more difficult questions of Biblical geography, and to 
 present some useful illustrations of the Sacred Scrip¬ 
 tures. 
 
 Rough notes of some of these observations have 
 appeared in the Leisure Hour , but the present work 
 contains a much larger amount of matter, with additional 
 illustrations. 
 
 May, 1885. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. Introduction. The Delta .... i 
 
 ,, II. The Nile Valley. 13 
 
 „ III. The Geography of the Exodus ... 43 
 
 „ IV. Judea and Jerusalem. 63 
 
 „ V. The Jordan and the Dead Sea ... 99 
 
 ,, VI. Prehistoric and Historic Men . . . 123 
 
 „ VII. Past, Present, and Future .... 163 
 

 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Frontispiece. Pyramid of Kaphra (Cephren) and ancient Eroded 
 Cliff of Pyramid Plateau at Gizeh. 
 
 Facing Chapter II. Lower Eocene Limestone and Marly Beds near 
 
 Thebes . . . . . . . 12 
 
 ,, III. Map illustrating the Exodus .... 42 
 
 ,, IV. The Sacred Rock in the Mosque of Omar, Plan 
 
 and Section . . . . . . 62 
 
 ,, V. Section of Black Bituminous Limestone of Neby 
 
 Mousa ....... 9S 
 
 ,, VI. Ascent of the Pass of Nahr-el-Kelb from the 
 
 North, with one of the Tablets . . . 122 
 
 ,, VII. Seti I, King of Egypt, offering a statue of Ma, 
 
 the Goddess of Truth, to Osiris . . . 162 
 
 Figure 1. Head of Kaphra (Cephren) ...... 16 
 
 „ 2. Hyksos Head . . . . . . . . 19 
 
 3. Terraces in Eocene Limestone above Assiout, on Arabian 
 
 side of the Nile ....... 
 
 4. Crystalline Rocks and Nubian Sandstone at First 
 
 Cataract ........ 23 
 
 5. Cretaceous Sandstone and Marl above Silsilis . . 24 
 
 6. Nummulites Gizehensis ...... 25 
 
 7. Relation of the Miocene Sandstone of Jebel Ahmar to 
 
 the Eocene of the base of the Mokattam Hill . 26 
 
 8. Raised Beach at Gizeh . ...... 27 
 
 9. Section at Jebel Attaka ...... 30 
 
 10. Mokattam Terraces from the Nile .... 30 
 
 11. Head of Menephtah ....... 46 
 
 12. View of Migdol and the Sea from the North . . 54 
 
 13. Bird’s-eye View illustrating the Crossing of the Red Sea 57 
 
 14. Section from Jaffa to the Dead Sea .... 66 
 
 15. Sketch Plan of Jerusalem ...... 74 
 
Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Figure 16. Section of the Site of Jerusalem ..... 76 
 
 ,, 17. Cliff and City Wall, at the entrance to the Royal 
 
 Quarries ........ 79 
 
 ,, 18. Front of the ‘ Skull Hill,’near Jeremiah’s Grotto. . 91 
 
 ,, 19. The ‘ Skull Hill’ and Grotto of Jeremiah ... 92 
 
 ,, 20. Door of a Sepulchre, with rolling stone ... 94 
 
 ,, 21. Cretaceous Fossils of Judea . ..... 102 
 
 ,, 22. Section from Jerusalem to Moab, across the Dead Sea . 105 
 
 ,, 23. Ancient Dead Sea Deposits ...... 108 
 
 ,, 24. Hermon and the Plain of Ccele-Syria, from the Road 
 
 over Mount Lebanon . . . . . 118 
 
 ,, 25. Ancient Gravel of Jebel Assart, near Thebes . . 131 
 
 ,, 26. Atelier with Flint Chips at Jebel Assart . . 1 35 
 
 27. Section of Ruined Cavern at the Pass of Nahr-el-Kelb . 147 
 
 28. Arrow or Spear, Nahr-el-Kelb ..... 151 
 
 ,, 29. Fragment of Knife and Hollow Scraper, Nahr-el-Kelb . 132 
 
 ,, 30. Entrance of Cavern, Ant Elias ..... 153 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. THE DELTA. 
 
 In crossing the Mediterranean from Europe to the 
 land of the Pharaohs, the traveller passes from countries 
 historically new to one that is very old. He passes also 
 from a modern zoological and botanical district to one 
 that is much more ancient; but, on the other hand, he 
 enters a country that is geologically more recent than 
 the greater part of Europe. Nothing perhaps more 
 forcibly illustrates the various ways in which things may 
 be new or old. 
 
 The greater part of the Nile valley, and the whole of 
 the Delta, are made up of those formations that belong 
 to the Tertiary or newer period of the earth’s geological 
 history; but when we study the animals and plants of 
 northern and interior Africa, which are those indigenous 
 to Egypt, we find ourselves in presence of types most of 
 which have long disappeared out of Europe, though they 
 occurred there also in past geological ages. 
 
 In like manner, those parts of the world which had 
 been most thoroughly prepared by the long series of 
 geological changes for the residence of the higher 
 animals, are those in which the earliest communities of 
 men established themselves, and where they most 
 increased and multiplied. Hence it happened that the 
 two greatest empires of the Old World grew up on the 
 
 B 
 
3 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 modern alluvial plains of the Nile and the Euphrates, 
 though at later periods the hardier races, nurtured on 
 the older geological formations, have shown themselves 
 able to overcome those accustomed to the easier life of 
 the great fertile river valleys. 
 
 The history of the Jewish people curiously illustrates 
 these facts. Originating in the Euphratean valley, the 
 family of Abraham was transferred to the plains of 
 Mesopotamia and the hills of Palestine. It was then 
 transplanted to the rich fields of Egypt, where it grew 
 and multiplied amazingly. It next underwent a hard 
 discipline on the rocks of the Sinaitic peninsula, and was 
 thence brought back to Palestine, a country remarkable 
 for the great range and variety of its geographical con¬ 
 ditions. Throughout these migrations, the movements, 
 the character, and the fortunes of the people were 
 influenced in multitudes of ways by the physical con¬ 
 ditions of the regions in which they were placed ; while 
 their subsequent history and the character of their 
 civilisation, and even the peculiarities which they now 
 present as an exiled and scattered race, were moulded by 
 the special features of Palestine itself. Hence there is a 
 real connection between Bible history and the physical 
 features of the Bible lands, and, though both are in¬ 
 tensely interesting when separately considered, they are 
 much more instructive when viewed in connection. 
 
 To the voyager approaching from the North, Alexan¬ 
 dria, the great maritime city of Egypt and the queen of 
 the Delta, appears as if floating on the sea, with no appre¬ 
 ciable foundation of land. Its white buildings, its palm- 
 groves, and the varied Oriental garbs and guttural 
 Semitic tongue of the people who swarm out in boats to 
 meet an approaching steamer, at once place the European 
 
INTRODUCTION. THE DELTA. 
 
 3 
 
 traveller in contact with those sights and sounds of the 
 Eastern world which are so very similar even now to 
 what they were in the most ancient times. 
 
 The site of Alexandria was well chosen by the en¬ 
 gineers of Alexander—westward of the driftage of Nile 
 mud, which has blocked so many other harbours on this 
 coast, in shelter of a natural breakwater projecting from 
 the ridge of sand and recent limestone which here fringes 
 the Delta and Lake Mareotis, near the quarries of a soft 
 but useful building-stone, and conveniently placed for 
 tapping the great western branch of the Nile. These 
 natural advantages would have made it a greater and 
 more prosperous city than it.has been but for the inter¬ 
 ference of human passions, aggravated in intensity by the 
 fact that it has always of necessity been a meeting-place 
 of diverse and incongruous national elements. The last 
 example was seen in our own time, and its disastrous 
 effects have not yet passed away. 
 
 Alexandria is too new a city to figure in Old Tes¬ 
 tament history; but it is connected with that early 
 translation of the Bible into Greek which has done so 
 much to make it familiar to European nations; and its 
 great library and university made it a centre of thought 
 and influence in-which the learning and philosophy of 
 the East and West were strangely blended. It furnished 
 to the primitive Church its most eloquent preacher, 
 Apollos, and its religious life was a great factor in the 
 history of the early Christian centuries. Its scholarship, 
 even after the barbarous destruction of its library, was a 
 main source of the science and learning usually attributed 
 to the Arabians of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Alexandria and its people thus connect the Old World 
 of Egypt with the more recent history of Europe; but 
 
4 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 though a modern city in comparison with some others in 
 Egypt, it is historically old. Yet to the geologist its 
 site, and the Delta on the margin of which it stands, 
 are but of yesterday, and the stone of which its public 
 works and its houses are mostly built is also of com¬ 
 paratively modern date. Except the shafts of columns 
 and masses of stone brought down from Upper Egypt, 
 there is nothing here that is not geologically modern. 
 The obelisks that once stood here, and Pompey's Pillar, 
 testified to the stranger of very old crystalline rocks in 
 the interior of the country. Egypt has been robbed of 
 the former, but the latter still remains—a shaft from the 
 distant quarries of Syene, 67 feet in height and 9 feet in 
 diameter, which must have been transported 600 miles 
 from its native rock, and is especially interesting as 
 affording the latest example of the transport of great 
 monoliths in Egypt, its date being about A.D. 302, in the 
 reign of Diocletian. The soft limestone and indurated 
 sand of the vicinity of the city are of late Tertiary age, 
 probably a little older than the advent of man. The 
 mud of the Delta stretching southward of the city is 
 most likely a deposit of the historical human period. 
 
 Let us inquire what this modern date really means, 
 and what is implied in the often-quoted statements of 
 Herodotus, that Egypt is ‘ the gift of the Nile/ and that 
 the Delta is younger than the Egyptian people. The 
 Delta is a triangular plain, having its apex at Cairo, 
 where the narrow valley of the Nile begins to widen out 
 to the north, and its base on the Mediterranean. The 
 distance from the base to the apex of the triangle is a 
 little more than a hundred miles, and the length of the 
 base about a hundred and fifty miles. The western side 
 is formed by the Libyan desert, and the eastern side by 
 
INTRODUCTION. THE DELTA. 
 
 5 
 
 the Arabian desert, both dry and sandy, a little higher 
 than the level of the Delta, and based on somewhat 
 older formations. 
 
 The Delta, being composed of Nile mud brought 
 down by the river, must occupy what once was a bay of 
 the Mediterranean Sea, into the head of which at Cairo 
 the Nile began to pour its muddy deposits. It must 
 have been a shallow bay, with a sandy bottom, for on 
 its seaward margin there are ridges of soft stone com¬ 
 posed of fragments of shells and of sea-sand, which were 
 thrown up by the sea before there was any Delta. 
 Farther, in various parts of the Delta, there are sand¬ 
 banks, which are portions of the old sea-bottom pro¬ 
 jecting above the alluvial deposit, and which are now 
 often occupied by the towns and mud villages of the 
 people. Had the Nile begun to pour its waters into a 
 deep bay, there might have been no Delta, or only one 
 of very small dimensions. 
 
 The way was prepared for this wonderful deposit by 
 previous geological processes of a somewhat remarkable 
 character. Before noticing these, and remarking on 
 their dates, it may be well to premise that the borings 
 hitherto made in the Nile sediment give it a depth of 
 about 60 feet; and, according to Figari Bey, works of 
 man are found to only about half that depth, though at 
 the estimated rate of deposit of one-twentieth of an inch 
 annually, this would give a great historical antiquity to 
 man in Egypt, and would still leave a vast period of 
 accumulation before his arrival. There is, however, 
 good reason to suppose that, though the estimate above 
 stated may be near the truth for modern times, it cannot 
 represent sufficiently that of the earlier history of the 
 river. It applies also to the valley above the Delta, 
 
6 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 rather than to the Delta itself. So far as the latter is 
 concerned, the frequency of bare patches of sand seems 
 to imply that the original surface was somewhat uneven, 
 and that in most places the alluvial deposit is not very 
 deep. The recent borings undertaken with the aid of a 
 grant from the Royal Society of London, give depths 
 not exceeding 40 feet. Below this, as might have been 
 anticipated from the character of the sand-hills already 
 mentioned, the material seems to be sand with rounded 
 grains, like those of the wind-drifted sand of the desert. 
 
 These points being understood, two questions present 
 themselves—When did the Nile begin to deposit sedi¬ 
 ment in the Delta ? and in what condition did it find the 
 area for such deposit? Neglecting for the present 
 previous changes of level, the period immediately pre¬ 
 ceding the introduction of man on the earth, that usually 
 known as the Glacial or Pleistocene age, terminated in 
 the northern hemisphere with a great and very general 
 submergence of the land. At this time the greater part 
 of Northern Africa was probably under the sea, and the 
 portions out of water must have had a very moist and 
 cool climate compared with that which they experience 
 at present. This submergence was succeeded by what 
 Lyell has termed the ‘Second Continental period’ of the 
 later Tertiary age. In this the Mediterranean was smaller 
 than at present, and what is now the Delta was probably 
 an arid region, with a narrow belt of verdure along the 
 Nile of that time, which may have occupied a continuation 
 of its present channel across the area of the Delta, or may 
 possibly have run eastward toward the Red Sea. This old 
 channel, which may have been excavated as early as the 
 Pliocene period, may yet be discovered by boring. 
 
 The Second Continental period was that of the Palaeo- 
 
INTRODUCTION. THE DELTA. 
 
 7 
 
 cosmic, or ‘ Palaeolithic ’ men, or of the ‘ cave-men ’ and 
 ‘river-drift men,’ the men of the ‘Mammoth age’ of 
 Europe and the Lebanon; and it not unlikely coincides 
 with the antediluvian period of history. 1 If man had 
 made his way into Egypt at that time, he probably 
 existed under conditions somewhat different from those 
 of the present day, for there was no Delta, unless in a 
 district now submerged. The Second Continental period 
 was closed by a new submergence, apparently of a very 
 limited duration, though of great extent and locally of 
 some violence. Considerations that are daily growing 
 in cogency tend to identify this submergence with the 
 historical deluge, which, as Lenormant has so well 
 shown, is an event that enters into the authentic history 
 of all the leading races of men, and is no longer to be re¬ 
 garded as pre-historic in any sense. The re-emergence 
 of the land after this event, left the Mediterranean with 
 nearly its present limits, and what is now the Delta 
 became a shallow bay, bordered with sand-banks, and 
 ready to receive the deposits which the Nile began anew 
 to pour down from its distant sources in the mountains 
 of interior Africa, and to distribute in its annual inunda¬ 
 tions. No theory of these deposits can stand for a 
 moment which does not recognise the old excavation 
 of the Nile valley and the remarkable preparations made 
 for the formation of the Delta. 
 
 Now arises the question of historic date, with reference 
 to the time when the formation of the Delta began, and 
 the time when postdiluvian man appeared to take pos¬ 
 session of it. Whatever Egyptologists may make of 
 muddled and uncertain lists of Egyptian kings, many 
 of them evidently unhistorical, or contemporary heads of 
 
 1 A question which we shall have to consider in a subsequent chapter, 
 
8 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 local tribes, the history of Egypt as a nation must begin 
 after the Deluge. Anything previous must relate .to 
 prehistoric times. We may also assume, on the evidence, 
 so ably summed up by Rawlinson, of the convergence of 
 the history of all the ancient nations to a point about 3000 
 years B.C., that the dispersion of men after the great 
 flood is an event that occurred somewhat less than floco 
 years ago. The early colonists who at that time made 
 their way to the Nile valley must have found its con¬ 
 ditions approximately similar to those that exist now, 
 except in regard to the extent and level of the Delta. 
 But we know from the marks left by the inundations of 
 that early time that they were higher than at present, 
 either because of a greater supply of water or because 
 of the bed of the river not being so deeply cut or com¬ 
 pletely levelled as it afterwards became. We also know 
 from the monuments that the early settlements of the 
 Egyptians were on the Upper and Middle Nile, not on 
 the Delta; that the earlier kings were much occupied 
 with works of embankment and drainage; that the 
 Delta, probably because of its lower level and smaller 
 extent, was less important than at present. As their 
 history advances we find their capital moving from Upper 
 Egypt to Memphis, and finally to cities far north on the 
 Delta itself. 
 
 All this corresponds with the conclusion, deducible 
 from the physical conditions, that the process of natural 
 warping by which the Delta was formed began in the 
 early human period, and was proceeding rapidly during 
 the earlier portion of the Egyptian monarchy. It was, 
 however, retarded and brought nearly to a close long 
 before the Christian era by the less amount of the in¬ 
 undation covering the now higher surface, and by the 
 
INTRODUCTION. THE DELTA. 
 
 9 
 
 impossibility of pushing the deposit farther to the north, 
 in the face of the Mediterranean currents and an in¬ 
 creasing depth of water. So it was that Lower Egypt 
 at least was the gift of the Nile, and that in early times 
 the gift was growing in magnitude as the population 
 increased to receive it. 
 
 The early Egyptians who seized upon this rich and 
 promising inheritance were not barbarians. They were 
 industrious and skilful tillers of the soil, and they carried 
 with them from their primitive homes the arts of ante¬ 
 diluvian times, and more especially those of irrigation 
 and construction in wood, brick and stone, which they 
 began from the first to practise in the valley of the 
 great African river. They must have been the better 
 able to do this because of their comparative isolation. 
 Commerce had scarcely begun in the Mediterranean ; the 
 interior of Africa was for the most part an unoccupied 
 solitude ; the Libyan and Arabian deserts were barriers 
 on the right hand and on the left ; and the isthmus of 
 Suez, though it probably connected as at present Asia 
 with Africa, was much narrower than at present. In 
 these circumstances the Egyptians must have multiplied 
 rapidly in their valley, so productive of food, while they 
 had no inducement to emigrate or to engage in foreign 
 wars, and no man’s hand was against them. Thus they 
 began to execute great public works at a very early 
 period, and attained to the standing of a numerous and 
 cultivated people at a time when, as we can gather from 
 the early history of the Asiatic nations, the latter were 
 comparatively unconsolidated. 
 
 To a traveller from the West, the general physical 
 aspect of the Delta, though with differences in detail, 
 recalls the great alluvial plain of the Red River as it 
 
IO 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 appears in Minnesota and Manitoba. The differences in 
 climate, in the arboreal vegetation, in the habitations of 
 the people, and in the people themselves, however, are 
 most striking. The people impress a stranger favourably. 
 Tall in stature, strong of limb, active in gait, industrious 
 in their tillage of the soil, and withal cheerful in aspect, 
 and with well-developed heads, one wonders by what 
 strange combinations of historical circumstances such a 
 people should have been trodden under foot by inferior 
 races of men, and should now be doomed to abject 
 poverty and oppression in a land teeming with all the 
 elements of wealth, and in which the agriculturists, in¬ 
 stead of inhabiting comfortable homes, herd together in 
 groups of mud cabins, destitute apparently of every 
 comfort. 
 
 It is a sad story; but the result is that the fellaheen of 
 to-day are doomed to labour for others rather than for 
 themselves, and to be ‘ servants of servants.’ May the 
 time soon come when, under higher religious education 
 and political influences, they may develop fully the 
 powers inherent in them, and Egypt may again rise to 
 a high place among the nations of the earth! Some¬ 
 thing has already been done in this direction by our own 
 Government, so strangely placed in the position of 
 guiding this long-neglected country; but much more 
 remains to be done, and the elevation of the people is 
 that which alone can give a stable basis for future pros¬ 
 perity. At present the condition of the Egyptian fella¬ 
 heen, in reference to habitations, clothing, occupations 
 and political bondage, very closely represents that of the 
 Hebrew people in the times of their oppression under 
 the great Egyptian kings of the nineteenth dynasty; with 
 this exception, that the Hebrew was the slave of a great 
 
INTRODUCTION. THE DELTA. 
 
 II 
 
 and independent monarch, the modern fellah of a mere 
 viceroy whose power depends on foreign assistance. 
 
 The Delta has important relations to the Bible history. 
 As early as the time of Abraham it seems to have been 
 fully occupied by the Egyptians. The city of Zoan on 
 its north-eastern side was already built, and Heliopolis 
 was probably a centre of the worship of Ra, the sun- 
 god, and of priestly influence. The foreign conquerors, 
 known as the Hyksos or Shepherds, had at this early 
 period founded Zoan, and had established their capital in 
 that city, and had made the Delta the centre of political 
 power for all Lower Egypt; and after their expulsion we 
 find, at the time of the Exodus, the native kings who 
 succeeded them holding their court at Zoan . 1 
 
 The land of Goshen, where Jacob and his sons settled, 
 is a strip of fertile soil extending eastward from the 
 Delta toward the Red Sea, and depending for its fertility 
 on the fact that one of the numerous branches into 
 which the Nile divides in the Delta ran eastward along 
 a slight depression, now known as the Wady Tumilat. 
 In this position the Hebrews had not only a rich agri¬ 
 cultural district, but open pastures on either side, and 
 were in a position to control much of the trade and 
 intercourse of Egypt with the East, and to act as carriers 
 between the former and Palestine and Arabia. It is 
 likely also that in the later days of their sojourn they 
 were extending themselves over other parts of the Delta 
 and supplanting the native Egyptians, and that they 
 thus excited the animosity of the ruling classes and the 
 jealousy of the government. 
 
 1 Compare Numbers xiii. 22, and Psalm Ixxviii. 12. 
 
the bounding cliffs of the Nile Valley. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 CAIRO is at present the great centre of Egyptian life, 
 and the second Mussulman city in the world. It is the 
 successor of old Memphis, and both cities have owed 
 their importance to their position at the point where 
 the long Nile valley enters the apex of the triangle of 
 the Delta, a point well suited to be the centre of political 
 control for both Upper and Lower Egypt. When the 
 Delta was a bay of the Mediterranean, and before the 
 Nile deposits had filled it up, the limestone ridge of 
 Mokattam, rising to an elevation of about 600 feet 
 behind Cairo, was a rocky promontory washed by the 
 sea, and projecting into the bay, as it now projects in 
 like manner into the alluvial plain. Its age is that of the 
 Eocene Tertiary, or about that of the London Clay, and 
 it abounds in fossils, more especially those round discs, 
 shells of humble marine protozoa, known as Nummulites , 
 and which Strabo was informed were petrified beans— 
 ‘Pharaoh’s beans’ (Fig. 6 , p. 25). The point of the 
 promontory, partially separated from the main mountain, 
 furnishes a site for the citadel, at the foot of which the 
 city lies on a level scarcely elevated above the annual 
 inundation. Cairo has no claims to greater antiquity than 
 the Persian conquest of Egypt (b.c. 525), and did not 
 become a place of commanding importance till after the 
 
14 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 Arabian occupation of the country. Why did the ancient 
 Egyptians neglect this beautiful and imposing site, and 
 erect their capital on the opposite side of the river, 
 several miles farther up, and in the midst of the alluvial 
 plain, here about five miles wide, and with the river to¬ 
 wards its eastern side? 
 
 The site of Memphis is just such a slight elevation on 
 the alluvial plain as the modern fellaheen select for 
 their villages, as being more or less above the inundation, 
 and near to the cultivated ground. In primitive times 
 it was no doubt so selected, perhaps at a time when it 
 was not far from the northern limit of the cultivated 
 land of Egypt, and it was adopted by the Egyptian kings 
 as their capital when they moved thus far towards the 
 Delta. Perhaps the traditional connection of the place 
 with the worship of Ptah, the Creator, may have aided 
 in determining the selection. 1 There was besides the 
 facility for constructing defensive ditches round it, and 
 the absence of any dominating height, such as that 
 which commands Cairo, and has placed even its citadel 
 under the guns of besiegers. Besides this, the Egyptians 
 seem to have preferred sites facing the rising sun, and 
 they no doubt had also an eye to the excellent quarries 
 of limestone immediately opposite the site of Memphis, 
 and to the facilities offered by the river and canals for 
 the transport of building material. 
 
 As a city Memphis has utterly perished, for even its 
 stones have been retransported across the river to con- 
 
 1 Ptah was perhaps, in the esoteric system of the Egyptian priests, the 
 Spirit of God, introducing order and life into chaos. The seven Knumu, 
 or architects associated with him in the creative work, probably represent 
 the seven stages of that work, or days of creation, as they appear in the 
 Hebrew and Chaldean records. The bull Apis, the original of the Golden 
 Calf of Hebrew idolatry, was his emblem, and the magnificent tombs of 
 these bulls still exist in the necropolis of Memphis at Sakkara. 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 15 
 
 struct buildings in Cairo. Its necropolis alone remains, 
 the burial-place of the dead population of a dead city. 
 Men-nefers , the strong and beautiful, as the Egyptians 
 formerly called their great city, has given place to El 
 Kaliira , ‘ the Victorious,’ a name commemorative not of 
 Egyptian victory, but of Egyptian defeat by an alien 
 race which in old time was despised by the Pharaohs. 
 
 The necropolis of Memphis, extending for twenty 
 miles along the desert plateau bounding the river and 
 overlooking the city, is the greatest cemetery in the 
 world, and in the Pyramids possesses the grandest of 
 funereal monuments. There, is fortunately no need to 
 describe the Pyramids. In addition to older productions, 
 Petrie’s recent work leaves little to be desired as to their 
 measurements and details. The greatest of them, that 
 of Khufu, even in its present dismantled and ruinous 
 state, is a most impressive structure ; but if we replace 
 in imagination its smooth casing of pure white limestone, 
 its surrounding pavement, walls, and subsidiary buildings, 
 we can easily imagine that it was not only very grand 
 but beautiful in its majestic simplicity when it left its 
 builders’ hands. In its present state one is perhaps 
 most deeply impressed with its evidence' of patient and 
 skilful labour. Its massive stones, carefully squared 
 and accurately laid in durable mortar, and the remains 
 exhumed by Colonel Howard-Vyse of its outer casing 
 of pure white fine-grained limestone, attest the skill of 
 its builders and their honest painstaking work ; while 
 the labour required to quarry and transport this mass 
 of material covering thirteen acres, and 470 feet in 
 height, almost surpasses belief. The Great Pyramid, 
 though the largest, is only one of very many, and some 
 of the smaller ones are constructed of more costly 
 
16 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 material. Its neighbour, the Pyramid of Cephren, had 
 its lower courses built of the red granite from Syene, 
 and the next, that of Menkera, was wholly cased with 
 this expensive material. 
 
 The Pyramids stand on a plateau of Eocene lime¬ 
 stone, elevated about 120 feet above the Nile, and filled 
 
 Fig. 1.—Head of Kaphra (Cephren), the builder of the second Pyramid. 
 From a statue in the Boulak Museum. 
 
 with marine fossils, most of which have been described 
 in Zittel's elaborate memoirs on the geology of the 
 Libyan desert. The same rock occurs on the opposite 
 side of the Nile, but there it rises to a height of 640 
 feet in the Mokattam ridge, though at the foot of this 
 there is a plateau corresponding to that of the Pyramids, 
 and which presents some very interesting features, to 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 17 
 
 be mentioned in the sequel, in connection with the 
 geological structure of the country, and the origin of the 
 valley of the great Egyptian river. 
 
 The first builders of old Memphis must have been 
 immediate descendants of the survivors of the Deluge, 
 and perhaps contemporary with some of them. Mazor, 
 the son of Ham, was not improbably the leader of the 
 first colony that settled on the Nile; and not many 
 generations removed from Ham were the builders of 
 the earlier pyramids. We are curious to know what 
 manner of men were these ingenious and industrious 
 people. We may learn something of this from the 
 specimens in the Boulak Museum, 3 a collection not so 
 large as some Egyptian collections in Europe, but in¬ 
 estimable in value. There we have actual portrait 
 statues of men and women of the earlier Egyptian 
 dynasties, collected in one room, and affording admirable 
 opportunities to study their physique and some of their 
 arts and tastes. These statues are remarkable for their 
 accurate and realistic execution, equally remote from 
 the ideal beauty of the advanced style of Greek sculpture 
 and the conventional style of the later Egyptian art. 
 Their features are sharp and regular, with well-formed 
 heads, large eyes, prominent straight noses, and ex¬ 
 pressive mouths ; and the abundant hair is arranged 
 in numerous strands or plaits. We might accept such 
 a man as Kaphra (Fig. 1), the priest Ra-Nefer of the fifth 
 dynasty, or the lady Nefert of the fourth dynasty, as 
 typical representatives of the Noachidse, the immediate 
 descendants of Noah. The high type of these early 
 people is shown not only by their features but by their 
 
 1 Boulak is a suburb of Cairo, and its Museum is the national one of 
 Egypt. 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 works of art, which are better in point of taste than' 
 those of later periods. Paintings of this earliest age 
 on the walls of tombs, and the hieroglyphic characters 
 in inscriptions, are remarkable for their delicate and 
 truthful execution. One of these, now at Boulak, re¬ 
 presenting two species of wild geese, is so accurate in 
 outline and colour that it might serve for an illustration 
 in a modern book of natural history, yet it is probably 
 the oldest painting known. It i& interesting to think 
 that these statues carry us back probably farther than 
 any others to the infancy of the sculptor’s art in repre¬ 
 senting the human form, and to the actual appearance 
 of the descendants of Noah, at least in the line of Ham, 
 not many generations after the deluge. 
 
 But the next room in the historical series brings us 
 into the presence of a new and different race, that of 
 the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who, in the disturbed 
 and anarchical period that succeeded the early dynasties, 
 invaded and took possession of Egypt, and are said to 
 have held at least the lower portion of the country for 
 500 years. Few monuments exist of these people. 
 They were, perhaps, less given to erecting permanent 
 structures, or perpetuating their appearance in sculpture, 
 than the native kings; but the late Mariette Bey was 
 so fortunate as to secure, in the ruins of Tanis in the 
 Delta, some indubitable representations of them, done 
 in the hard and imperishable black diorite of Upper 
 Egypt. We see at a glance that we are here in the 
 presence of a new race. The faces are broad and flat, 
 with high cheek-bones, wide lower jaw, and prominent, 
 firmly-set mouth. The style of hair and dressing is 
 different ; there is a wide and bushy beard ; and we 
 see, in addition to a kilt with longitudinal stripes, 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 
 and sometimes with what the Scots Highlanders call 
 a philibeg in front, a leopard’s skin thrown over the 
 shoulders as a cloak. The countenance of these people 
 
 Fig. 2.—Hyksos Head, supposed to represent King Apophis or Apepi, 
 perhaps contemporary with Joseph. From a Sphinx from Tanis 
 (Zoan) in the Boulak Museum. (E. D.) 
 
 is decidedly Turanian or Mongol, and, indeed, closely 
 resembles that of the aboriginal races of North America, 
 One of the figures in the Boulak Museum might pass 
 for the portrait of a Chippewa chief. There is no race 
 now in Egypt or Western Asia at all resembling these 
 
20 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 people, unless, as reported, a remnant of it still exists 
 in the marshes of Lake Menzaleh. They are quite 
 distinct from the Hebrew race, whom they must have 
 preceded in the occupation of the Delta. It is no 
 wonder that this stalwart and rough-featured race was 
 repulsive to the refined native Egyptian people, inde¬ 
 pendently of the high-handed oppression attributed to 
 it. It is further interesting to observe that if, as usually 
 supposed, the name Hyksos is compounded of the word 
 Huk or Og, and the tribal name Sos or Suzim, and 
 means ‘ King of the Suzim,’ we have in these statues 
 authentic portraits of representatives of those old pre- 
 Canaanite peoples of Syria, so much dreaded by the 
 Israelites, the Anakim, Zuzim, and Zamzummim, who 
 are mentioned by Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy 
 as having preceded the populations of Palestine existing 
 in his time. We are thus enabled to connect these 
 almost prehistoric populations with the early conquerors 
 of Egypt. They were evidently men of stern and 
 determined character, probably of large stature and 
 great physical power, and more given to war and the 
 chase than to quiet pursuits. 
 
 The Hyksos were expelled by the native Egyptians, 
 who had concentrated their power in Upper Egypt, 
 under Amosis and his successors ; but there must have 
 been some compromise and intermixture, for we do not 
 find in the statues of the succeeding dynasties the pure 
 early Egyptian type. Seti, Rameses II, and other 
 great kings of the ‘ new monarchy,’ which is yet as old 
 as the Exodus, show a mixture of the Hyksos type, 
 and also of the Ethiopian or Nubian, in their features ; 
 and their military and aggressive character seems to 
 tell the same tale; The relations of the Israelites to 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 21 
 
 these successive dynasties raise interesting questions, 
 which we may more fully discuss in their connection 
 with the physical features of Egypt in the chapter on 
 the Exodus. It is only necessary to say here that the 
 circumstances attending the visit of Abraham to Egypt 
 render it likely that the Hyksos were at that time 
 already in Egypt, and that the migration of Jacob into 
 Egypt was connected with their expulsion and removal 
 into Palestine. This view, which is that taken by Sir 
 Erasmus Wilson and other Egyptologists, seems best 
 to harmonise the Egyptian records with the Bible 
 history. 
 
 If we ask the question, What is to be seen to-day of 
 the several races that have occupied Egypt ? the answer 
 may be found in the streets of Cairo, where one may 
 find every type of countenance, from that of the early 
 Egyptian to that of the English army of occupation. 
 Three leading types are dominant. One is that of the 
 Egyptian proper, and in this we often see startling 
 resemblances to the oldest statues at Boulak. Another 
 is that of the Nubian, a negroid style graduating into 
 the genuine Ethiopian. Another is that of the Semitic 
 Arab. Perhaps one may add the Turk—a very mixed 
 race, but when it appears in its purity having some 
 affinity with the Mongoloid type of the old Hyksos. 
 There are, of course, all shades of indefinite intermixture ; 
 and the mixed race is, with the exception of a tendency 
 to diseased eyes, one of good physique and well-formed 
 head, auguring some promise for the future of Egypt 
 in the new era which it may be hoped is dawning on it, 
 under the influence of justice and Christianity. 
 
 In order, however, that we may be able to understand 
 fully the conditions of humanity in the Nile valley, the 
 
22 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 facts of its early human history, and the problems it 
 now presents to the statesman and the philanthropist, 
 it will be well that we should know something of its 
 structure above the Delta, and of the geological changes 
 which, in pre-human times, brought it into its present 
 condition, and caused it to become one of the most 
 peculiar and unique of the dwelling-places of man. 
 
 The Nile valley, above the Delta, consists of a green 
 and fertile alluvial plain, generally from five to eight 
 miles in breadth, all the way to the First Cataract at 
 
 Assouan, which is more than 450 miles from its mouth. 
 This narrow strip of alluvium, in which the river winds 
 from side to side, is bounded on either hand by rising 
 grounds, altogether desert, and often standing in high 
 cliffs of limestone along the sides of the valley. The 
 Nile valley, between the Delta and Assouan, is thus 
 a trench cut through nearly flat rocks, which are prin¬ 
 cipally limestone of Eocene Tertiary date ; but at Silsilis 
 sandstone of somewhat greater age takes the place of 
 the limestone, and at Assouan the river throws itself in 
 a wild cataract over ledges of hard gneiss and granite 
 rocks. 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 2 3 
 
 Taking these rocks in ascending order, or from the 
 older to the newer, the Assouan series is probably 
 Laurentian, 1 or belongs to the oldest known geological 
 formation, the same which constitutes certain of the 
 Scandinavian mountains and of the western islands of 
 Scotland, the nucleus of the Alps, and the Laurentide 
 hills of Canada. The granite and diorite quarried at 
 
 e e 
 
 Fig. 4.—Crystalline Rocks and Nubian Sandstone at First Cataract. 
 a. Laurentian. b. Second crystalline series, c. Nubian Sandstone, d. Dykes 
 of Granite and Diorite. e. Dykes of Felsite and Basalt. 
 
 this place by the Egyptians belongs to great dykes and 
 masses of igneous rock penetrating these ancient beds. 
 Some of the highest and wildest hills at the cataract 
 are, however, capped by a second hard formation, newer 
 than the Laurentian, but still of great geological age, 
 and consisting principally of porphyries and dark slates. 
 
 Next in succession to the old crystalline rocks are 
 thick sandstones, which are seen at Assouan, and thence 
 to Silsileh, where they form a barrier, narrowing the 
 
 1 These older rocks at Assouan appear to constitute two distinct series. 
 The lower consists of gneiss and hornblendic and micaceous (biotite) schist, 
 penetrated by great dykes and veins of hornblendic granite and diorite. 
 The series is of great thickness and nearly vertical. Resting on its edges 
 are hard black slate, fine-grained gneiss, and a peculiar dark-coloured por- 
 phyritic rock. This second series is penetrated by veins of reddish felsite 
 and of basalt, which of course also traverse the lower series. The lower 
 series has distinctly the mineral characters of the Laurentian, the upper may 
 be Huronian. In some places the lower series is deeply decomposed, and 
 the harder dykes and the beds of the upper series form, at Philse and else¬ 
 where, most rugged and grotesque masses and heaps of boulders. 
 
24 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 river and cutting out its alluvial plain, and where they 
 have been largely quarried by the old Egyptians, of 
 whose temples they form the principal material. These 
 sandstones, known as the Nubian sandstones, are of 
 somewhat uncertain age. They are, however, very much 
 
 Fig. 5.—Cretaceous Sandstone and Marl above Silsileh (Silsilis). 
 
 newer than the crystalline rocks above referred to, and 
 are derived from their waste. They may be placed 
 somewhere in the Mesozoic series of geology, and may 
 possibly be as new as the chalk formation, some lime¬ 
 stone and marls representing the upper part of which 
 rest upon them. 
 
 Upon this, and extending all the way to Cairo, where 
 it forms the Mokattam hill, rests the Eocene Tertiary 
 formation, consisting of limestones of different qualities, 
 often abounding in marine fossils. At the time when 
 this was deposited' nearly all Northern Africa was under 
 the sea, as well as much of Western Asia and Southern 
 Europe. In some portions of this period immense 
 numbers of Nummulites were deposited, and these con¬ 
 stitute the predominant material of considerable beds 
 of limestone. At other times small microscopic protozoa 
 produced shells similar to those found in the English 
 chalk and in the ‘ Globigerina ooze ’ of deep soundings 
 in the Atlantic, and this material forms the fine white or 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 2 5 
 
 cream-coloured limestone in which the old Egyptians 
 executed some of their most exquisite sculptures. At 
 other times beds of marl were deposited, and beds of 
 sandy limestone, crowded with fossil shells, corals, crus¬ 
 taceans, and sea-urchins. The succession of these beds 
 and their characteristic fossils have been carefully worked 
 out by Dr. Schweinfurth, of Cairo, and the whole are 
 
 Fig. 6.—Nummulites Gizehensis (var. Lyclli), Gizeh. 
 i. Section showing chambers, i a. Portion magnified. 2 and 2 a. Large 
 specimen. 3. Small specimen. 
 
 admirably exposed in the cliffs and quarries of the 
 Mokattam range near that city, where abundance of 
 characteristic fossils can be obtained from them. 
 
 After the close of the Eocene period these rocks were 
 elevated into land, and became clothed with forests, 
 which, at a later date, were submerged and buried in 
 sand, constituting soft sandstones, since mostly swept 
 away. In some places, however, where hot silicious 
 
z6 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 springs penetrated these sandy beds, they became 
 intensely hard, constituting a sort of quartzite ; and this 
 rock, resisting the action of water, remains as hard masses, 
 which still exist in the Jebel Ahmar and other places, 
 while, where the softer beds have been swept away, the 
 fragments of silicified trees, which curious travellers visit 
 as the ‘ petrified forest,’ remain scattered on the desert. 
 
 There has been much discussion as to the fossil trees 
 of the petrified forests, but the above appears to me 
 their true explanation. I found in the lower beds of 
 Jebel Ahmar fragments of the silicified wood in place, 
 
 Fig. 7.—Relation of the Miocene Sandstone of Jebel Ahmar to the Eocene 
 of the base of the Mokattam Hill. 
 
 x x Supposed Geyser pipes. + Bed with fossil trees similar to those of 
 the ‘ petrified forests.’ 
 
 and some of them in a state which indicated that they 
 were in a state of decay, and not petrified when imbedded. 
 
 At a still later period all these deposits were partially 
 submerged, and were exposed to the wasting action of 
 the sea, which washed away the greater part of the sand¬ 
 stone imbedding the petrified trees, and, as it sunk to a 
 lower level, cut into the Eocene beds, forming great 
 terraces in the Mokattam mass. One of the principal 
 of these is at a height of about 500 feet above the sea, 
 and another at a height of about 200 feet, and roughly 
 corresponding to the pyramid plateau on the opposite 
 side. Dr. Schweinfurth kindly pointed out to me the 
 borings of lithodomous mollusks first noticed by Dr. 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 2 7 
 
 Fraas, and also oysters adherent to the old sea-cliff, 
 and other recent shells in its crevices. Similar appear¬ 
 ances exist at the edge of the pyramid plateau at Gizeh, 
 where, on the side of an isolated cliff, known to the 
 Arabs as Het-el-Orab, or the crow’s nest, there are 
 not only numerous oyster-shells attached to the rocks, 
 
 Fig. 8.—Raised Beach at Gizeb, about 150 feet above sea-level. 
 a. Beach, b. Sand. c. Brown Limestone, d. Clay and Marl. c. Limestone. 
 
 but also an old sea beach with large stones. These facts 
 prove that in the Pleistocene age all this part of Africa 
 was submerged to a depth of more than 200 feet, and 
 this for £l long time, while the higher terrace shows a 
 submergence to the extent of at least 500 feet. There 
 can be no doubt that the raised beaches of the Red 
 Sea and the modern sandstones of the coast of Syria, 
 seen at Jaffa and Beyrout, belong to the same period, in 
 which all the lands at the head of the Mediterranean 
 must have been partially submerged. It would therefore 
 be hopeless to look for evidence of human residence in 
 Eygpt during or anterior to the great Pleistocene sub¬ 
 mergence, with which we are so familiar in Northern 
 Europe and North America, but which evidently extended 
 to Egypt as well. I was much struck with the essential 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 a8 
 
 resemblance of the Mokattam terraces to those with 
 which I have been familiar in the valley of the St. Law¬ 
 rence. The differences are mainly those which depend on 
 a more or less humid climate. From this subsidence the 
 country rose in the Second Continental, or ‘ Post-glacial,’ 
 period to a greater height than at present, and then, 
 after some oscillations, sunk to that position referred to 
 in the preceding chapter, in which the Delta began to 
 be formed. It was no doubt in great part the sand 
 resulting from the waste of the Tertiary sandstones and 
 sandy limestones by the sea that shallowed the great 
 Nile bay in preparation for the Delta. 
 
 We have now completed a rough geological sketch of 
 Egypt, and have prepared the way for discussing, with 
 the aid of the sections given above, the formation of 
 the Nile valley above the Delta. To most people it 
 may seem a trivial question to ask whether a river was 
 before its valley or the valley before the river. But to 
 a geologist any river at once suggests such inquiries, 
 and it would seem that there is the more excuse for 
 this in the case of the Nile, since questions of this kind 
 have been asked respecting it at least as far back as the 
 time of Herodotus. 
 
 If we are to form any intelligent opinion on this 
 subject we must go back some distance in geological 
 time. What may have been the condition of what is 
 now Egypt in that Palaeozoic age in which so large 
 portions of the European formations were deposited, we 
 do not certainly know; but, inasmuch as there is a vast 
 gap in time between the old, probably Laurentian and 
 Huronian, crystalline rocks which appear at Assouan and 
 the Nubian sandstone, their next successors in age, we 
 may reasonably infer that in the long lapse of the 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 29 
 
 Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic ages Northern Africa 
 was in the main a continental area, and may even have 
 possessed a great river approximately corresponding to 
 the Nile. However this may have been, it is certain 
 that so soon as the still nearly horizontal beds of sand¬ 
 stone and limestone which now constituted the sides of 
 the Nile valley had been raised out of the sea in the 
 middle and later Tertiary period, there must have been 
 a discharge of the waters of tropical Africa towards the 
 north, and the existence of the present Nile must have 
 begun. It may have wandered in the first instance some¬ 
 what widely over the flat surface of the country, and 
 probably had at first both lakes and rapids in its course, 
 but it must have been on the whole limited and guided 
 by the previous formation of the region. 
 
 The general features which must have been influential 
 in this are the following:— 
 
 First, a long ridge of old rocks, hard and elevated, 
 extended northward from the African table-land along 
 the west side of the Red Sea, and prevented the water 
 from escaping in that direction. 
 
 Secondly, the existence of this ridge must have so 
 determined the currents of the ocean, as the land was 
 slowly rising, that the softer rocks were more cut away 
 here than farther to the west, thus causing a slight 
 depression between the Libyan table-land and the 
 Arabian hills. 
 
 Thirdly, in the elevation of the sandstones and lime¬ 
 stones out of the sea, certain cracks or faults were 
 developed approximately in two directions, east and west, 
 and north and south; and along these the rocks were 
 more friable than elsewhere; and besides this the slip¬ 
 ping of the beds up and down had caused hard beds to 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 3° 
 
 come opposite soft, in such a way as to produce con¬ 
 siderable inequality in the resisting power of the surface, 
 
 E 
 
 Fig. 9.—Section at Jebel Attaka, near Suez, showing a fault. 
 
 E. Eocene. Cr. Cretaceous, including, a. White Chalky Limestone ; b. Red 
 and Greenish Marl; c. Hard Limestone and Dolomite, with Hippurites, 
 Ostrece, etc. V Position of Quarry, x x Supposed line of Fault. 
 
 obliging any river that might flow over it to take a more 
 or less zigzag course. The evidences of these faults along 
 the Nile valley are quite obvious to a geologist, and 
 some of the more important north and south fractures 
 must have coincided with the position of the river. 
 
 Fourthly, but before the river began to run, while the 
 country was still in great part under the sea, the waves 
 
 Fig. 10.—Mokattam Terraces, from the Nile. 
 
 and currents had already acted upon the surface, cutting 
 away the softer beds where exposed, and leaving the 
 harder portions in relief. The great terrace cut back 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 3 1 
 
 into the Mokattam hill at Cairo, at an elevation of 500 
 feet, is a proof of this denuding action at an early stage 
 of the process, and the lower terrace of 200 feet, in 
 which Fraas and Schweinfurth have found the burrows 
 of lithodomous mollusks, and oysters of modern species 
 attached to the rock, shows its action at a later stage, 
 and probably as recently as the Pleistocene period of 
 geology. 
 
 It may be added that these sea-cut terraces may be 
 traced up the Nile valley as far at least as Silsilis, and 
 show that before the final elevation of the country there 
 must have been a long inland sea, into which the primi¬ 
 tive Nile emptied its waters far to the south of the 
 Delta. But at different portions of the history of the 
 river these conditions must have so varied that, while 
 at one period the Nile must have ended at the head of 
 a long gulf of the sea, extending nearly to the First 
 Cataract, at another it flowed through an elevated desert 
 plain as far north as Alexandria. 
 
 To sum up these conditions of the prehistoric Nile— 
 the character of the valley as we now see it has been 
 determined by the original structure of the country, by 
 the fractures and denudation which it has experienced 
 in times of emergence and submergence, and by what 
 the river itself has done in cutting away and depositing 
 material along its course. 
 
 Before proceeding further, it may be well to fix the 
 relations of these changes to time and to the human 
 period ; and fortunately we are now in a position to do 
 this more certainly than was possible some time ago. 
 When the sea passed over the two-hundred-feet terrace 
 behind Cairo, and washed the terrace on which the 
 Pyramids stand, what is now the Delta was, as already 
 
32 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 stated, a part of the sea, and this must have extended 
 a long way up the Nile valley, as the top of the First 
 Cataract is now scarcely 300 feet above the sea. Some 
 have supposed that the time of this depression was as 
 old as the Miocene Tertiary. From the very fresh con¬ 
 dition of the bored surfaces and the shells attached to 
 them, and the modern character of the species, as well 
 as the nature of the Miocene deposits elsewhere, I am, 
 however, inclined to refer them to a later date, possibly 
 the later Pliocene or early Pleistocene. The subsequent 
 elevation, which threw the sea farther out than its present 
 boundjfty, and brought up the Delta to the condition of 
 a desert plain, must, as stated in a previous chapter, have 
 occurred in the Second Continental or Post-glacial period, 
 corresponding with the antediluvian period of history; 
 and the close of this and the bringing of Egypt to its 
 present level may be approximately fixed by the time 
 required for the formation of the modern alluvial deposit. 
 The thickness of this in the Delta, as proved by the 
 recent borings of Colonel Ardagh and his staff, would 
 appear, as I am informed, to be from 30 to 40 feet in 
 the deeper parts, and from this it diminishes to nothing 
 in approaching the more elevated portions of the old 
 floor of the Delta bay. It may be fair, therefore, to 
 take the average depth of the modern Nile mud at 
 30 feet. The rate of deposit has been estimated at 
 one-twentieth of an inch annually; but this is certainly 
 a minimum estimate, and there is good reason to believe 
 that in earlier times the rate must have been much 
 greater than at present. Taking one-fifteenth as a 
 probable average, we have 54°° years as the time 
 required for the Delta deposits; and consequently the 
 time when the production of the present alluvial plain 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 33 
 
 began. Such a calculation may, indeed must, only 
 roughly approximate the truth, but I feel convinced 
 that no geologist who fairly weighs the facts can arrive 
 at a very different conclusion. We may, in short, fix 
 a date of between 5000 and 6000 years ago as the 
 geological limit for the possible existence of man on 
 the modern alluvial land of Egypt—in so far, at least, 
 as the Delta is concerned. 
 
 We may now notice some of the local features of the 
 valley, and its later history in connection with the agency 
 of man. 
 
 As we ascend the Nile from Cairo to Silsilis, we pass 
 along the alluvial plain, with steep and often precipitous 
 banks bounding it on both sides, and quite abruptly on 
 the east. Owing to the transverse faults already referred 
 to, these cliffs often jut out in bold headlands, deflecting 
 the course of the river, which winds through the alluvial 
 plain, sometimes skirting the base of rocky promontories 
 or running near to the long lines of cliff, at others leaving 
 a broad belt of green alluvial flat on either side, or 
 even dividing to make room for alluvial islands built 
 up by itself. There is no good reason to suppose that 
 any important obstruction of the river by rocky barriers 
 has occurred in this part of its course, though it is possible 
 that landslips from some of the great cliffs on the Arabian 
 side may have determined changes in its channel. It is 
 interesting to observe, however, that points where the river 
 has been obliged to bend in order to avoid rocky pro¬ 
 montories, or to pass close to their bases, have been 
 selected for towns. This is the case with Cairo, also 
 with Assiout, and very markedly with great Thebes 
 itself and other ancient cities in Upper Egypt. At the 
 last-mentioned place, where the greatest bend that the 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 river makes to the east occurs, this is caused by the 
 protrusion from the west of that great spur of the Libyan 
 hills in which the tombs of the kings have been excavated. 
 The early and great prosperity of Thebes, as well as of 
 other ancient cities along this eastern bend, was, however, 
 also due to the fact that here the Nile approaches nearest 
 to the Red Sea, and consequently affords the greatest 
 facilities for access to the mines in the Arabian hills and 
 also to the seaport of Koseir. One cannot help thinking 
 that this old commercial highway had to do with the 
 Egyptian traditions as to the early foundation of Coptos, 
 Abydos, and other cities in that region, and as to the 
 origination in these places of many features of the 
 Egyptian religion. Colonists and ideas from the East, 
 as well as merchandise, may have entered the Nile 
 valley by this route. Such influences must have been 
 especially potent at those times, as during the rule of the 
 Hyksos, when the hostile occupation of Lower Egypt 
 made this the main means of access to the outer world. 
 
 Some of the traditions respecting early changes in 
 the river are explicable by reference to its present 
 operations. Of this nature is the story of the dam said 
 to have been constructed by Menes at Memphis. A 
 few years ago the village of Beni Hassan was on an 
 island, with the principal branch of the Nile to the east 
 of it. Now it is on the mainland, the eastern branch 
 having been quite filled up. Iflacl it been desired to pre¬ 
 vent this, the end might have been secured by forming 
 a dyke of stones in the western channel, in the manner 
 now sometimes done on the Nile. If in the time of 
 Menes Memphis was insular, he may by some such 
 operation have obstructed the channel on the west side, 
 and converted it into a canal. The river at Thebes is 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 35 
 
 at present much less convenient for communication 
 between the two sides than in ancient times. A large 
 quantity of land north of Luxor has been swept away 
 by the river, and an island has been deposited in the 
 middle instead. Had the city continued in its palmy 
 state, this catastrophe could no doubt have been averted 
 by the Egyptian engineers. The work of the Nile in 
 historic times has, however, been mainly that of deposi¬ 
 tion and of making new cuts in its own alluvial deposits. 
 Its work of rock-cutting probably belongs mostly to 
 prehistoric times, or at least to the earlier part of the 
 modern period. The most remarkable operation of this 
 kind is that at the gorge of Silsilis, where the river is 
 less than noo feet wide, and hemmed in by sandstone 
 cliffs at both sides. 
 
 In approaching this place from the north, the high 
 banks of Eocene limestone give place to low broken 
 mounds, belonging apparently to the softer beds of the 
 Lower Eocene and Upper Cretaceous. These are fol¬ 
 lowed by comparatively hard, thick-bedded sandstones, 
 the so-called Nubian sandstones, which have been exten¬ 
 sively quarried by the ancient Egyptians, and constitute, 
 indeed, the principal building stone of the temples of 
 Upper Egypt. These beds form a continuous ridge 
 running transversely to the river, and over which it must 
 in former times have poured in a waterfall or rapid, 
 while banks of old Nile mud to the south, at a much 
 higher level than the modern deposit, indicate that its 
 waters were dammed back. The most remarkable fact, 
 however, is that the ridge of sandstone extends for only 
 a few miles, and that farther up the shore again becomes 
 low. This arises apparently from a line of fault extend¬ 
 ing from east to west, and throwing down the sandstone 
 
 D 2 
 
3 6 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 to the south, as immediately south of it white limestone 
 appears at the level of the river, and must be one of 
 the overlying beds brought down to this level. Thus 
 the Silsilis ridge must have dammed up a wide and 
 long lake, spreading over a large district to the south 
 of it. The rupture of this barrier must have been a 
 slow process, the river cutting gradually through it from 
 north to south ; and the waters held in above would 
 gradually drain out, unless, indeed, the last remains of 
 the barrier might be cut away in some unusual inunda¬ 
 tion or broken by an earthquake shock. In any case 
 the temples of Kom Ombos above the Silsilis dam, and 
 which date from Thothmes III, would appear to have 
 been built after the river had reached its present level, 
 or nearly so. 
 
 The most remarkable example of cutting seen in as¬ 
 cending the Nile is, however, that at Assouan. At this 
 place, as already stated, hard crystalline rocks, appar¬ 
 ently belonging to two distinct formations, both of the 
 Eozoic age, appear in the river bed and surrounding 
 hills. These rocks have been deeply and very unequally 
 eroded by weathering and sea action before the deposi¬ 
 tion of the Nubian sandstone, by which they were 
 eventually covered to a depth of at least one hundred 
 feet. When the Nile began to cut its way through the 
 sandstones its task was similar to that at Silsilis, until it 
 reached the projecting points and ridges of the older 
 rocks, which it was unable rapidly to erode. It then 
 divided into two main branches, running between these 
 hard obstacles. Eventually one of the channels was 
 obstructed at bottom by the hard rocks, and the other 
 being capable of deeper erosion, carried off, as at present, 
 the whole of the waters. The deserted channel remains 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 37 
 
 at the back of the town of Assouan, and is more than 
 fifty feet above the present level of the river in January. 
 Banks of old Nile mud maybe seen in it near Philae and 
 behind Assouan. 
 
 Though the gorge of Silsilis must have been cut in 
 prehistoric times, it does not follow that the cutting at 
 the cataract of Assouan is as ancient. On the contrary, 
 as rivers cut back along their beds rather than down 
 from the surface, it is certain that the cutting of the 
 dam at Silsilis must have preceded that of the First 
 Cataract. So to speak. Father Nilus did not know 
 where his First Cataract was to be till he had cut back 
 to Assouan and cleared off the Nubian sandstone from 
 the hard crystalline rocks. But before this could be 
 done the lake south of Silsilis must have been drained 
 by the cutting of the barrier. It is therefore quite 
 possible that the Egyptian tradition referred to by 
 Herodotus, of the Nile cutting through a barrier within 
 the historic period, may relate to the final cutting of 
 the gorge for the First Cataract and the discharge of 
 water dammed up above that point. 
 
 The Nile can have made little appreciable difference 
 in its bed at the cataract within historic times, and its 
 present cutting action must be very slight. The main 
 effect which it seems to have produced is the boring of 
 round ‘ pot-holes ’ by the revolution of hard stones and 
 sand under the influence of the current, and many of 
 these seem to have been formed at an early period, 
 when it still had a considerable fall over the Nubian 
 sandstone. 
 
 The result of all these complex and long-continued 
 processes is the production of a river valley unique of 
 its kind, and whose beauties grow upon the traveller as 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 3 « 
 
 he becomes more familiar with it. The bare mud of its 
 immediate bank contrasting with the brilliant verdure of 
 its alluvial plains, its graceful palms, its picturesque and 
 often savage precipices, its contrasts of the barest desert 
 and the most exuberant fertility, and of its sombre 
 remains of perished empires and superstitions with 
 modern squalor and struggling life, its strange modes of 
 culture and irrigation—these are but parts of a picture 
 which as a whole no other part of the world presents. 
 
 One other question remains. What was the aspect 
 of the Nile valley in a state of nature? In its cultivated 
 portions all is now so artificial and dependent on man 
 that it is difficult to imagine a natural condition of the 
 Nile. The river, the mud-banks, and the rocks no 
 doubt are as they were ; but what was the condition of 
 the belt of cultivated ground when the first wanderer 
 from the cradle of the human race looked out upon it, 
 perhaps from some hill-top of the Arabian range, and 
 ventured with timorous steps to explore the lower 
 grounds bordering the great river? The higher por¬ 
 tions of the plain were no doubt occupied with dense 
 and tangled forests of palms, tamarisks, acacias, and 
 sycamores, while the swamps were filled with tall reeds 
 and papyrus, and pools were gay with the beautiful pale- 
 blue lotus. This luxuriant vegetation would contrast 
 on the one hand with the arid desert, and on the other 
 with the verdureless mud-flats recently deserted by the 
 water. We may add to the picture crocodiles basking 
 on the fiats or sunning in the shallows, the unwieldy 
 hippopotamus floundering in the waters, antelopes pas¬ 
 turing on the meadows, leopards, wolves, and jackals 
 prowling in the woods and on the margin of the desert, 
 swarms of wild-fowl over the marshes and in the swamps, 
 
THE NILE VALLEY. 
 
 39 
 
 and multitudes of fishes in the waters. It must have 
 appeared on the one hand a solitude terrible in its 
 luxuriance and its monsters, and on the other a perfect 
 garden of the Lord in its riches and fertility. When to 
 this one adds its strange rainless climate, and the 
 periodical inundations of the river, we can readily under¬ 
 stand that such a country might draw out the highest 
 powers and capacities of man in controlling the great 
 river and dealing with a land so strange in its vicissi¬ 
 tudes. On the other hand, one can as easily understand 
 its influence in producing a superstitious veneration for 
 certain natural objects as representatives of Divine power 
 and majesty. 
 
 But whence and in what way did the first Egyptians 
 enter Egypt, and where did they first settle? A very 
 ancient tradition of their own places their first settlement 
 at Thinis or Abydos, where was said to be the tomb of 
 Osiris, who is probably the same with the Mosaic Miz- 
 raim, son of Ham ; and at this place is also said to have 
 been the first seat of the earliest king, Menes, who after¬ 
 wards extended his sway into Lower Egypt and estab¬ 
 lished a capital at Memphis. Abydos stands at the foot 
 of the Libyan chain, in front of- an unusually broad and 
 fertile plain of alluvial soil, where we saw immense 
 fields of beans standing five and six feet in height. It 
 is just where the broad expanse of alluvium extending 
 along the Libyan side of the Nile is narrowed in by that 
 great promontory of the western mountains which lies 
 between it and Thebes, and forces the river to bend 
 abruptly to the eastward, cutting off the alluvial plain. 
 It is opposite the route to the Red Sea at Koseir, and 
 commands the way of access to the Great Oasis on the 
 west. It is, in short, precisely the place where a tribe 
 
40 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 crossing the Red Sea, and penetrating the Arabian 
 mountains from the east, would be sure to effect a first 
 settlement. So far, therefore, these facts give counten¬ 
 ance to the old belief that the first immigrants into 
 Egypt came from the east by way of the Red Sea. 
 This accords also with the importance attached to the 
 ark or sacred boat at this place, as evidenced by the 
 sculptures on the magnificent temples erected here by 
 early Egyptian kings. On the other hand, it may be 
 argued that if the colonists came by the Isthmus of 
 Suez, Abydos is precisely the place where their upward 
 progress along the valley would be likely for a time to 
 pause. In this case, however, such an advanced post 
 would be less likely to be a first seat of government, or 
 to have so much sacredness in the eyes of the Egypt¬ 
 ians. On the whole, therefore, the historical statements 
 respecting Abydos and its geographical position lend 
 probability to that view which supposes the early coloni¬ 
 sation of Egypt to have taken place by way of the Red 
 Sea rather than of the Isthmus, and they also confirm 
 the impression which, as stated in a previous chapter, is 
 produced by other considerations, to the effect that at 
 this early period the Delta was in a condition less 
 favourable for settlement than the Nile valley. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 No event in Egyptian history is at all comparable in 
 interest and importance with the Exodus of the Israel¬ 
 ites, because this event had more influence than any 
 other on the destiny of mankind. Yet the Exodus has 
 no distinct record in what remains to us of native 
 Egyptian history, and we gather what we know of it from 
 the short narratives in the Mosaic books and the geo¬ 
 graphical features to which those narratives refer. 
 
 In so far as the journey of the Hebrews from the Red 
 Sea to Sinai is concerned, little remains to be done with 
 reference to the geographical details. The admirable 
 work of the Ordnance Survey in the Peninsula of Sinai 1 
 has for ever settled all questions respecting the Mount 
 of the Law and the way thither. It has done more than 
 this, for the accurate labours of the scientific surveyor, 
 while they have dissipated multitudes of theories formed 
 by unscientific travellers, have vindicated in the most 
 remarkable manner the accuracy of the narratives in 
 Exodus and Numbers. Every scientific man who reads 
 the reports of the Survey and studies its maps, must 
 agree with the late Professor Palmer that they afford 
 ‘ satisfactory evidence of the contemporary character of 
 the narrative . 5 They prove, in short, that the narrator 
 must have personally traversed the country, and must 
 1 Ord. Surv. Sinai, Southampton, 1869. 
 
44 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 have been a witness of the events he narrates. More 
 than this, they show that the narrative must have been 
 a sort of daily journal, written from time to time as 
 events proceeded, and not corrected even to reconcile 
 apparent contradictions, the explanation of which only 
 becomes evident on study of the ground. 
 
 The labours of the Survey did not extend to the route 
 of the Exodus from Rameses to the Red Sea; and on 
 that portion of it some uncertainty still exists, more 
 especially since the learned Egyptologist, M. Brugsch, 
 has endeavoured to support the theory that Rameses 
 is identical with Zoan, and that the route of the Israel¬ 
 ites lay not to the Red Sea, but along the border of 
 the Mediterranean. Fortunately, the recent discovery 
 by M. Naville 1 of the true site of Pithom at Tel el 
 Maskhuta in the Wady Tumilat, when conjoined with 
 the fact that Pithom was the chief city of the district of 
 Succoth mentioned in the Exodus, and that it was one 
 of the two ‘ store cities,’ or garrison towns, that the 
 Israelites are said to have been compelled to build for 
 Pharaoh in the land of Goshen, has thrown a flood of 
 light on the subject. It marks one stage in the Exodus, 
 and also carries with it the consequence that as Rameses 
 must have been one day’s march or thereabout to the 
 west of Succoth, it also was in Wady Tumilat, but at 
 the western end of it. Certain ruins at the entrance of 
 the Wady Tumilat, hitherto regarded by many as mark¬ 
 ing the site of Pithom, are therefore, in all probability, 
 those of Rameses. Further, as the monuments at both 
 places indicate that Rameses the Great (or Rameses II) 
 was their builder, the view held by the majority of 
 
 1 The Stone City of Pithom, London, 1885. 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 45 
 
 Egyptologists that this king was the Pharaoh of the 
 oppression is confirmed. 
 
 The site of Pithom is distinctly visible from the railway, 
 about twelve miles west of Ismailia, and presents the 
 remains of fortifications and extensive granaries built 
 with crude brick, some portions of which probably date, 
 from before the Exodus, though the site was occupied 
 down to Roman times as the chief town of Succoth and 
 an important frontier post. During the construction of 
 the Sweet-water Canal it was also selected as a principal 
 station, and at present it is occupied by Arabs, who 
 cultivate the ground in its vicinity. It 'possessed a 
 temple erected by Rameses II to the god Ra in his 
 aspect of Turn, in which he represents the setting sun; and 
 certain sculptures connected with this temple exist in a 
 remarkable state of perfection, and are of great interest, 
 as monuments contemporary with the residence of Israel 
 in Egypt, and in transporting and placing which the 
 Hebrew bondsmen were no doubt employed. Some of 
 these monuments have been transferred to the square of 
 Ismailia, and are accessible to every traveller. One of 
 them consists of three sitting figures in Syene granite, 
 rather larger than life. The central one is Rameses 
 himself, and the gods Ra and Turn sit at either side. 
 There is also a monumental stone of the same granite, 
 inscribed with the record of the building of the temple, 
 a monolithic sanctuary and sphinx, cut in the brown 
 quartzite of Jebel Ahmar, and two large sphinxes in the 
 porphyritic diorite of Assouan. All these objects are in 
 the best style of the art of the nineteenth dynasty, and, 
 as set up in one of the chief cities of Goshen, were no 
 doubt badges of the subjection of the Hebrews to the 
 king and of the priestly caste. 
 
46 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 It is interesting to notice that Rameses I. the grand¬ 
 father or grand-uncle of Rameses II, was the founder of 
 a new dynasty, that Seti I and Rameses II, his son, 
 were both constructors of important public works in 
 Lower Egypt, that both earned on great foreign wars, 
 draining the resources of Egypt, and that both were 
 great temple-builders, and devoted to the interests of 
 the priesthood. These facts illustrate the statement 
 
 Fig. 11.—Head of Menephtah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, wearing the 
 double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Boulak Museum. 
 
 respecting a new king who ‘knew not Joseph,’ and afford 
 reasons for the hardness of the bondage to which the 
 Israelites were subjected as a foreign people doomed to 
 compulsory labour. 
 
 Taking it for granted, then, that the time of the 
 Exodus was in the reign of Menephtah, the son and 
 successor of Rameses, that the Wady Tumilat was the 
 land of Goshen, or a principal part of it, and that 
 Rameses and Succoth were in this valley, let us study 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 47 
 
 the geographical conditions of the question as they 
 present themselves on an examination of the district, 
 now very accessible by means of the railway from Cairo 
 to Ismailia and Suez. 
 
 On the east side of the delta of the Nile, about fifty 
 miles north-east of Cairo, a narrow valley of cultivated 
 soil extends eastward, with desert on both sides, for 
 about eighty miles, or nearly as far as Ismailia, on the 
 line of the Suez Canal where this (see Map, p. 43) crosses 
 Lake Timsah. This valley, Wady Tumilat, anciently 
 the land of Goshen, or Gesen, is only a few miles wide 
 at its western end, and gradually narrows towards the 
 east. As the desert sand is, however, encroaching on it 
 from the south, and has, indeed, in places overwhelmed 
 an ancient canal which at one time probably ran near 
 the middle of the valley, it must formerly have been 
 more extensive than at present. Recent surveys also 
 render it certain that this valley once carried a branch 
 of the Nile, which discharged its waters into the Red 
 Sea. This branch, or a canal representing it, must have 
 existed in the time of Moses. At present the valley is 
 watered by the Sweet-water Canal, running from the 
 Nile to Suez ; and though probably inferior to the land 
 of Goshen in its best days, it is still one of the most 
 beautiful districts in Egypt, at least in its western part, 
 presenting wide stretches of fertile land covered with 
 luxuriant crops, numerous cattle and sheep, large groves 
 of date-palms, whose fruit is said to be the best in 
 Egypt, and numerous populous villages ; while it must 
 always have been, what it now eminently is, a leading 
 line of communication between Egypt and the countries 
 to the east. 
 
 The position of this valley accords admirably with the 
 
48 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 scriptural notices of it. It would be the only way of 
 convenient entrance into Egypt for Jacob with his flocks 
 and herds. It was separated to a great degree from the 
 rest of Egypt, and was eminently suited to be the 
 residence of a pastoral and agricultural people, differing 
 in their habits from the Egyptians, and accustomed to 
 the modes of life in use in Palestine. Possibly it may 
 have been thinly peopled at the time, owing to the then 
 recent expulsion of the Hyksos. The wonder is that 
 the Israelites could have been induced voluntarily to 
 leave so fine a country for the desert; and this can be 
 accounted for only by the galling nature of the oppres¬ 
 sion which they were suffering. 
 
 At the date of the Exodus, as we are informed in 
 Psalm lxxviii. 12, the court of Pharaoh was held in 
 Zoan, or Tanis, about thirty miles to the north of the 
 land of Goshen. We know from contemporary Egyptian 
 sources that it was not unusual for the Egyptian kings 
 at this period to reside at Tanis, especially when 
 they had affairs of state in hand with the Semitic 
 peoples in the Delta or with the subject provinces in 
 Western Asia. At the time in question, the disaffection 
 of the Hebrews was itself a good reason for the royal 
 residence being fixed at this place. 
 
 Goaded by oppression and stimulated by the exhorta¬ 
 tions and prophecies of Moses and Aaron, and by their 
 appeals to the traditions of the race, the Hebrew bonds¬ 
 men had assumed an attitude of passive resistance, and 
 had probably gathered in great numbers at Rameses 
 and its vicinity, a most convenient rallying-place^ both 
 for those in the land of Goshen and those scattered over 
 other parts of Egypt. Moses and Aaron passed to and 
 fro between Zoan and Rameses, acting as ambassadors 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 49 
 
 of their people; and it is evident that this state of 
 things continued for some time, neither party venturing 
 to take a decisive step. The reason of this it is not 
 difficult to understand. The king’s chariot force as¬ 
 sembled at or near Zoan commanded the land of Goshen. 
 Any movement of retreat to the east on the part of the 
 Hebrews could be checked by an advance on their flank. 
 The Hebrews therefore could not move without the 
 king’s consent. Knowing this, and knowing also that 
 the beginning of actual civil war might be the signal for 
 rebellion among other subject Asiatic peoples, the king 
 thought it best to temporise. It seems also very 
 probable that the invasions of enemies from the west, 
 which we know occurred in the reign of Menephtah, had 
 obliged him to deplete or remove his garrisons on the 
 eastern side of Egypt, thus giving a comparatively easy 
 means of departure to the Israelites. Some such suppo¬ 
 sition seems necessary to account for the attitude taken 
 up by the fugitives and the policy of the king. In such 
 cases of political deadlock Divine Providence often cuts 
 the knot. It was so in this instance. 
 
 The continued plagues inflicted on Egypt at length 
 produced such discontent among the people that the 
 king was forced to let the Hebrews go. The mandate 
 was no sooner given than it was acted on at once and in 
 haste. No time was to be lost, for if Pharaoh should 
 change his mind he still had the Israelites in his power 
 for two days’ march at least. Beyond that they might 
 hope to be out of his reach. The camp at Rameses was 
 therefore broken up ; and, gathering their countrymen 
 as they passed, and receiving from the Egyptians gifts 
 and contributions in lieu of the property they had 
 to leave behind, the host hurried on to the eastward, 
 
 E 
 
5° 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 executing apparently in one day a march of twelve to 
 fifteen miles. They are said to have reached the district 
 of Succoth, and to have encamped within its limits, 
 probably to the west of Pithom; and there is no more 
 likely place for this encampment than the neighbourhood 
 of Kassassin, where there is abundance of forage and 
 water, and a defensible position, reasons which weighed 
 in our own time with Sir Garnet Wolseley in selecting 
 this as a halting-point in his march on Tel-el-Kebir. 
 Meeting with no molestation or pursuit, they continued 
 their march on the following day, and encamped at 
 Etham, on the edge of the desert, or on the edge of the 
 desert of Etham, at the eastern end of the Wady 
 Tumilat. We learn from Numbers xxxiii. 8 that all the 
 desert east of the present Suez Canal was called the 
 desert of Etham ; and the ‘ edge ’ of this desert on the 
 route followed by the Israelites must have been near 
 the present town of Ismailia, at the head of Lake 
 Timsah, then perhaps truly a lake of crocodiles, as 
 its name imports, and sweetened by the waters of the 
 Nile. 
 
 Probably the encampment was not far from the present 
 Nefish station, a little west of the town of Ismailia ; and 
 it is worthy of note that here the desert presents, in 
 consequence of its slight elevation above the bottom of 
 the wady, a better defined ‘edge'’ than usual. From 
 slight elevations of the desert surface at this place the 
 bold front of Jebel Attaka can be seen in the distance, 
 with the intervening lower range of Jebel Geneffeh, and 
 the green and now partly swampy flat of Wady Tumilat 
 in the foreground. When at Ismailia we rode over this 
 ground, and could imagine the Hebrew leader looking 
 out from the sandhills behind his encampment with 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 51 
 
 anxious eyes, to the east and south, where his alter¬ 
 native lines of march lay, and to the west, whence 
 Pharaoh’s chariots might be expected to follow him. 
 
 At this point the desert portion of the journey direct 
 to Palestine begins ; and here, between Lake Timsah 
 and Lake Ballat, is the highest part of the isthmus and 
 the best road out of Egypt to the east. Here the 
 people would be for the moment safe. Pharaoh could 
 no longer attack them in flank, and if he approached 
 from the west, a few resolute men could hold him in 
 check, while the rest should flee eastward into the 
 desert. 
 
 But here a new and at first sight strange order is 
 given to the fugitives. They are not to go any farther 
 eastward in what seems the direct road to Canaan, lest, 
 as we are told, when opposed by the Philistines—at this 
 time subject to or allied with Egypt—they should not 
 have courage to advance. They are to turn to the 
 south, at right angles to their former course, along the 
 west side of Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes, the latter 
 then probably the northern end of the Yam Suph or 
 Red Sea. This would have the temporary advantage 
 of keeping them for a little longer within reach of 
 water and pasturage, but the great disadvantage of 
 obliging them at some point to the southward to cross 
 the Red Sea, an operation which they might hope to 
 perform if unmolested and with abundance of time, but 
 not otherwise. The explanation given to Moses is that 
 by this movement ‘ God is to be honoured on Pharaoh 
 and his host,’ but in what way is not stated beforehand. 
 
 In executing this apparently retrograde movement 
 Moses appears to have kept in view, as heretofore, the 
 wisest means to protect his people in all events, and 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 without reference to any possible miracle. In moving 
 to the south his flank would again be exposed for a 
 time, but in the course of a few miles he would enter 
 the narrow pass between the elevation known as Jebel 
 Geneffeh and the Bitter Lake, and would again be 
 protected on both flanks against the attack of a chariot 
 force. This position of vantage he might reach in one 
 day’s march, and beyond this he would still be protected 
 for several miles until the flat country opens out into 
 the desert of Suez, and he would again be exposed to 
 attack from the west, and would besides be in a district 
 destitute of water. There can therefore be little doubt 
 that he must have halted somewhere in the narrow plain 
 between Geneffeh and the Bitter Lake, where he could 
 hope for a time to make a stand against his pursuer and 
 wait the development of events. Here accordingly, as 
 we are informed in the narrative, at the close of the 
 day’s march in the evening, the chariots of Pharaoh 
 were seen to be advancing in pursuit. Pharaoh had no 
 doubt watched by scouts the march of the Israelites, and 
 when he learned that they had turned to the south he at 
 once decided to pursue them, interpreting their change 
 of direction as caused by dread of the desert which had 
 ‘shut them in,’ and judging that, hemmed in by the 
 sea, they were entirely at his mercy. 
 
 The full responsibility of his position was now upon 
 the leader of the Exodus. He had, it is true, passed 
 over the perilous open country between Etham and the 
 defile of Geneffeh ; but here he must make a stand. If 
 he could repel the attack of Pharaoh, protected as his 
 flanks were by the sea on one side and the mountains 
 on the other, he might hope to gain time to transport 
 his people over the narrowest part of the sea to the 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 53 
 
 south. But if he failed in this he would be driven into 
 the open and waterless desert to the southward, and 
 would be at the mercy of his foe, unless he could 
 force his march thirty miles farther, and take up a 
 position on the heights of Jebel Attaka, where, however, 
 he would be destitute of water. But the children of 
 Israel were in no mood to fight for their liberty, and 
 it appears from Exodus xiv. that they were prepared 
 rather to surrender and return to Egypt. Moses re¬ 
 monstrated, and assured them that the Lord would fight 
 for them; but it was of no avail, and when he ‘ cried 
 unto the Lord ’ the order was given to plunge into the 
 sea and cross it. The people who would not fight were 
 willing to flee, even into the depths of the sea. They 
 had faith in God as the ruler of nature and as the God 
 of their fathers, though their long bondage had made 
 them cowards as regarded the Egyptians ; and their faith 
 was rewarded by a miraculous passage, in regard to 
 which a ‘strong east wind,’ driving the waters before it, is 
 especially mentioned as a secondary cause. This was 
 in all probability a north-east wind rather than due east, 
 and co-operating with a receding tide, would tend to 
 produce an unusual recession of the waters. But here 
 arise several questions which deserve our attention. Be¬ 
 fore attending to these, however, let us summarise the 
 narratives in Exodus and Numbers, that we may fully 
 understand the movements of the Hebrews and the 
 strategy of their leader, as above described. 
 
 The command to depart was given by Pharaoh ‘ in 
 the night,’ and the people were ‘ thrust out, and could 
 not tarry,’ so that they broke up early the next morn¬ 
 ing. ‘And the children of Israel journeyed from Ra- 
 meses to Succoth, about 600,000 men, besides children ;’ 
 
54 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA, 
 
 and a ‘mixed multitude’ of Egyptian slaves went with 
 them. They ‘ pitched in Succoth,’ that is, within the 
 boundary of that district. ‘They departed from Suc¬ 
 coth, and pitched in Etham, which is in the edge of the 
 wilderness ’ of the same name. But God led them not 
 ‘ the way of the land of the Philistines,’ ‘ lest peradven- 
 ture the people repent when they see war, and they re¬ 
 turn to Egypt. But God led the people about, the way 
 
 Fig. 12.—View of Migdol (Jebel Shebremet) and the Sea from the North, 
 with the range of Jebel Attaka in the distance. From a point on the 
 probable route of the Israelites after leaving Etham. 
 
 of the wilderness of the Red Sea.’ So they were com¬ 
 manded to ‘ turn ’ or ‘ turn back,’ and to march to ‘ Pi- 
 hahiroth,’ which is near the sea ‘between Migdol and 
 the sea,’ or ‘ before Migdol,’ and ‘ over against ’ or oppo¬ 
 site to f Baal-zephon,’ which was probably on the 
 opposite side of the sea. Here it was that the Egyptians 
 came upon them. 
 
 A preliminary question here is as to the cause of the 
 despair of the Hebrews, when they found that they 
 were pursued. The force employed against them was 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 55 
 
 not large. It is stated as six hundred chariots, each 
 probably carrying two men. It must, however, be borne 
 in mind that this kind of force was the most formidable 
 known at the time, and that the Egyptians were accus¬ 
 tomed with it to rout great hosts of half-disciplined and 
 poorly-armed infantry. It was also in all probability 
 only the advance guard of a much larger army, and in¬ 
 tended to bring the Israelites to bay until the Egyptian 
 infantry could close upon them. There was cause there¬ 
 fore for alarm, though Moses had evidently at every 
 stage of the march selected positions suited to give his 
 army, if it may be so called, the greatest possible 
 advantage. 
 
 A still more important question is as to the precise 
 locality where the Hebrews were overtaken, and where 
 the crossing of the sea occurred. It is evident, in the 
 first place, that no important town or city existed at the 
 locality. This is implied in the description given and in 
 the character of the names employed. The place of this 
 great event was so important that care was taken to 
 define it by mentioning three points, presumably well 
 known to the narrator; but this method implies that 
 there was no one definite name for the locality. All the 
 names employed are Semitic, and not Egyptian, except 
 perhaps the prefix ‘ Pi ’ in one of them. Pi-hahiroth 
 may have been a village, but its distinctive character is 
 that of ‘ place of reeds ’—a reedy border of the sea, near 
 the embouchure of fresh water from the Nile, or Sweet¬ 
 water Canal. Migdol cannot have been, as supposed by 
 some, a fortified place. It would have been madness, 
 with Pharaoh in their rear, for the Israelites to have 
 encamped near such a place. It must rather have been 
 a commanding height used, as the name implies, as a 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 56 
 
 watch-tower to command an extensive view or to give 
 signals. Baal-zephon—‘the Lord of the North’—is 
 generally understood to have been a mountain, though 
 both Jebel Attaka and the northern peak of Jebel er 
 Rabah may lay claim to the title. In any case, the 
 place so named by Moses was ‘ opposite ’ to the camp 
 of the Israelites, and consequently across the sea. 
 
 After somewhat careful examination of the country, 
 I believe that only one place can be found to satisfy 
 these conditions of the Mosaic narrative, namely, the 
 south part of the Bitter Lake, between station Fayid on 
 the railway and station Geneffeh. Near this place are 
 some inconsiderable ancient ruins, and flats covered with 
 Arundo and Scirpus, which may represent Pi-hahiroth. 1 
 On the west is the very conspicuous peak known as 
 Jebel Shebremet, more than 500 feet high, command¬ 
 ing a very wide prospect, and forming a most con¬ 
 spicuous object to the traveller approaching from the 
 north. Opposite, in the Arabian desert, rises the pro¬ 
 minent northern point of the Jebel er Rabah, marked on 
 the maps as Jebel Muksheih, and which may have been 
 the Baal-zephon of Moses. Here there is also a basin¬ 
 like plain, suitable for an encampment, and at its north 
 side the foot of Jebel Shebremet juts out so as to form a 
 narrow pass, easy of defence. Here also the Bitter Lake 
 narrows and its shallower part begins, and a north-east 
 wind, combined with a low tide, would produce the 
 greatest possible effect in lowering the water. 
 
 This conclusion I have endeavoured to indicate on the 
 rough map and bird's-eye view accompanying this 
 chapter. It may be further observed as an incidental 
 corroboration that the narrative in Exodus states that 
 
 1 See Ap-endix. 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 57 
 
 after crossing the sea the Israelites journeyed three days 
 and found no water. From the place above referred to, 
 three days’ journey would bring them to the Wells of 
 Moses, opposite Suez, which thus come properly into 
 place as the Marah of the narrative, whereas the ordinary 
 theory of a crossing at Suez would bring the people at 
 once to these wells. They are also said to have journeyed 
 
 for three days in the wilderness of Etham, and then to 
 have come to the wilderness of Shur, or ‘ the wall,’ 
 whereas the wilderness of Shur is directly opposite Suez, 
 and not three days’ journey to the south. The three 
 days’journey from the place of crossing would not be long 
 journeys, the whole distance being about thirty miles; 
 but there was now no reason for haste, and the want of 
 water would not be favourable to long marches. 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 5» 
 
 The question has often been raised whether, at the 
 time of the Exodus, the Red Sea extended farther 
 north than at present. In answer to this it may be 
 stated, in the first place, that the terms of the narrative 
 in Exodus imply, and the geological structure of the 
 country proves, that there must have been a land con¬ 
 nection between Africa and Asia north of Ismailia, at 
 the place which is now the highest point of the isthmus. 
 Further, without entering into details, I may say that 
 there are some geological reasons for the belief that 
 there has been in modern times a slight elevation of 
 the isthmus on the south side, and probably a slight 
 depression on the north side. It seems also certain 
 that in the time of Moses a large volume of Nile water 
 was during the inundation sent eastward toward the 
 Red Sea. There is therefore nothing unreasonable in 
 supposing that, as assumed in this chapter, the Bitter 
 Lakes at the time of the Exodus constituted an exten¬ 
 sion of the sea. Further, such an extension would be 
 subject to considerable fluctuations of level, occasioned 
 by the winds and tides. These now occur towards the 
 head of the sea. Near Suez I passed over large surfaces 
 of desert, which I was told were inundated on occasion 
 of high tides and easterly winds, and at levels which 
 the sea now fails to reach there are sands holding 
 recent marine shells in such a state of preservation that 
 not many centuries may have elapsed since they were 
 in the bottom of the sea. Since my return to England 
 I have found that Professor Hull takes nearly the same 
 view with reference to the condition of the isthmus at 
 the time of the Exodus, which has also been advocated 
 by Ritter. 1 
 
 1 M. Mauriac, as quoted by Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Clay Trumbull, seems 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 
 
 59 
 
 In conclusion of this'part of the subject, a word may 
 be said of the names of the Red Sea. In the Bible the 
 sea crossed by the Israelites is the ‘Yam Suph,’ or sea 
 of weeds . 1 This name I would attribute to the abund¬ 
 ance of the beautiful green water-weed (Ceratophyllum 
 demersum ), which now grows very plentifully at the 
 mouth of the Sweet-water Canal, and was probably 
 much more abundant when a branch of the Nile ran 
 into the narrow extension of the Red Sea now forming 
 the Bitter Lakes. The name Red Sea is of later origin, 
 and seems to have been derived from the colour of the 
 rocks bordering its upper part. The Eocene and Creta¬ 
 ceous limestones assume by weathering a rich reddish- 
 brown hue, and under the evening sun the eastern range 
 glows with a ruddy radiance, which in the morning is 
 equally seen on the western cliffs, while these colours 
 contrast with the clear greenish-blue of the sea itself. 
 Such an appearance would naturally suggest to early 
 voyagers the name ‘ Red Sea.’ 
 
 Another point of inquiry relates to the reasons why 
 the army of Israel did not cross the neck of land 
 
 to think that the fact that the slight elevation at Chaloof near Suez is of 
 Tertiary rock, effectually precludes the idea of its having been under the 
 Red Sea in modern times. But of course such an argument can have no 
 geological weight, since there is no conceivable reason why these, any more 
 than other rocks, should not have participated in the slight and probably 
 gradual elevation which the head of the Red Sea has experienced, and 
 which has apparently continued into historic times. These gentlemen have 
 no doubt been misled by their inability to distinguish between the pheno¬ 
 mena of elevation and those of erosion. 
 
 It is due to the eminent English Egyptologist, Reginald S. Poole, to say 
 that, at least as early as i860, he had anticipated, in his sagacious com¬ 
 mentary on the Exodus in Smith’s Bible Dictionary , these results, which are 
 now rendered so plain by the discoveries of M. Naville and the study of the 
 geographical features of Eastern Egypt. 
 
 1 It has been objected to the use of this name for the Red Sea that in 
 Kings it is applied to the Gulf of Akaba. But it is likely that in later 
 usage it was the name of both gulfs of the sea. 
 
6o 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 between Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes rather than 
 go farther south. A sufficient reason for this may appear 
 to be the command to pass southward to the Red Sea, 
 that God’s purpose with reference to the Egyptians 
 might be fulfilled. But if we look for prudential or 
 strategical reasons in addition, these may be found in 
 the difficulty of crossing at this place in face of an 
 approaching Egyptian army, even if crossing there was 
 practicable, which the considerations above stated render 
 at least doubtful, and in the possible existence of Egyptian 
 garrisons in this part of the isthmus, where at other 
 periods they are known to have been posted. With 
 reference to this last consideration, it has often been 
 overlooked that the King of Egypt was, about this time, 
 obliged to meet a serious invasion of Libyans and other 
 peoples on the west, and that this may have compelled 
 him to withdraw or weaken his garrisons in the east. 
 This would give special facilities to the movement of 
 the Israelites, and was a providential aid in their favour, 
 while the special places in which such weakening or 
 removal had occurred may have acted as a determining 
 cause in certain movements. 
 
 If Ave were to judge from the probable requirements 
 of the circumstances, we might infer that the garrisons 
 ordinarily kept at the fortified cities in Goshen had 
 been removed, that the Philistines, then subject to 
 Egypt, had been entrusted with the guardianship of 
 the highest point of the isthmus, the regular route north 
 of Lake Timsah, and that garrisons had been retained 
 south of that lake, while they had been withdrawn from 
 the eastern side of the Red Sea. In any case, it seems 
 certain that movements of this kind, necessitated by the 
 military exigencies of the time, must have affected the 
 
THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EXODUS. 6 1 
 
 early stages of the Exodus more than is usually sup¬ 
 posed. 
 
 The recent revelations of the Egyptian records give 
 us the right to affirm in this connection that a remark¬ 
 able preparatory provision was made in the providence 
 of God for the deliverance of His people by political 
 and military events altogether beyond their control. 
 The campaigns of Rameses II in Western Asia, ex¬ 
 tended as they were all the way to the banks of the 
 Orontes, must have greatly weakened the Hittites and 
 other nations of Canaan, while at the same time they 
 created depletion and discontent in Egypt itself. The 
 few years of the reign of Menephtah were harassed with 
 the invasions of the Delta, to which reference has already 
 been made ; and though these were repelled, this must 
 have been with much loss to the Egyptians, and the 
 eastern fortresses which held the Israelites in subjection 
 must have been depleted of their garrisons. All these 
 circumstances must have conspired with the increasing 
 severity of the oppression to facilitate the mission of 
 Moses and Aaron. 
 
 I think that the above statements and reasoning may 
 carry to the mind of the reader the same convictions 
 which they produce in my own, that we know now 
 pretty fully the conditions and circumstances of the 
 early stages of the Exodus, and are prepared to appre¬ 
 ciate, more clearly than ever before, the manner in which 
 this great movement, so lasting in its moral and religious 
 consequences for the whole human race, was carried out 
 by the counsels of God and by the leader whom He 
 had raised up. 
 
The Sacred Rock in the Mosque of Omar. Plan and Section. (From a 
 model executed by C. Paulus of Jerusalem.) 
 a. Step on West side. b. Notch in S.W. angle, c. Entrance to cave. 
 d. Smaller opening to the same. e. Round aperture in roof of cave. 
 f. Section of cave, but not showing the irregularities of the roof and sides. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 The coast of Judea is for the most part low, sandy, 
 and uninviting in appearance, but rises here and there 
 into slight elevations, breaking its monotony; while 
 inland of the sandy margin there are green and fertile 
 plains, backed by the rounded masses of the hills of 
 the interior. On one of the coast ridges stands the town 
 of Jaffa. Its white houses, rising one above the other 
 from the beach to the summit of the hill, present a most 
 imposing appearance from the sea, and, with the sur¬ 
 rounding verdure of its orange groves, justify the old 
 name Yafo , ‘ beauty/ A reef of sandstone rock stretch¬ 
 ing in front of it shelters such apology for harbour as it 
 possesses. The voyager who arrives off this ancient 
 port when a heavy sea is setting on the shore, may be 
 thankful when he gets safely to land, even if his ex¬ 
 periences of the narrow, ill-kept, and dirty streets of the 
 town are of the least agreeable character. 
 
 Jaffa, the Joppa and Japho of the Bible, is the old 
 seaport of Jerusalem, and in the palmy days of the 
 empire of Israel must have been a place of much com¬ 
 mercial importance. It was, indeed, the principal port 
 on a long line of coast extending all the way from 
 the frontiers of Egypt to Mount Carmel, and which 
 is remarkably destitute of bays and inlets. This fact, 
 
6 4 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 and the farther circumstance that the ports north of 
 Carmel were held by the Phenicians, contributed in 
 ancient times to isolate Judea from the commerce of the 
 Mediterranean, and to debar the Jews to a great extent 
 from maritime enterprise. There is nothing to indicate 
 that its harbour was ever much better than at present, 
 though the sheltering reef may have undergone some 
 diminution ; and it does credit to the Phenician mariners 
 that they succeeded in landing at this place the rafts 
 of cedar for the building of the Temple and palace of 
 King Solomon. The reader of the Books of Kings and 
 Chronicles will, however, observe the emphasis which 
 King Hiram puts on the landing—‘ I will cause them to 
 be discharged there,’—and the fact that Solomon con¬ 
 tracted for this at the risk of the Tyrian, limiting his 
 own responsibility to the land carriage to Jerusalem. 
 
 Jaffa shares with its more northern rival, Caesarea, 
 the interest of that remarkable interview of Peter and 
 Cornelius, which opened the kingdom of heaven to the 
 Gentiles. The house of Simon, the tanner, where Peter 
 was instructed by a vision that nothing was unclean, is 
 still shown to the traveller; but, like most of the sacred 
 sites of Palestine, it has no certain evidence to authen¬ 
 ticate it. The house is now used as a small mosque, the 
 Moslems having a great penchant to utilise Christian 
 sites. It has a good well in its courtyard, and com¬ 
 mands from its roof a fine view of the sea, one of the 
 physical barriers separating at that time the Jewish 
 from the Gentile world. The house may be that of 
 Simon, but if so, his tannery was probably outside of 
 the town, where the modern tanneries are situated, for 
 Jaffa still produces some leather. In any case the house 
 of Simon is sufficiently suggestive, and it is interesting 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 65 
 
 to think, while standing on its roof, how the West is 
 now paying back its debt to the East, by means of the 
 many noble men and women from Britain and America 
 now working as missionaries in Syria. 
 
 From the higher parts of Jaffa one may obtain a good 
 idea of the physical characters of the maritime plain of 
 Southern Palestine. Along the shore stretch banks and 
 dunes of yellow sand, contrasting strongly with the deep 
 blue of the sea, and shading off on the east into the 
 verdure of the plain. Near Jaffa this is covered with 
 orange orchards, laden in February with golden fruit of 
 immense size, and which forms one of the most im¬ 
 portant exports of the place. To the south the plain 
 spreads into the fertile flats of ancient Philistia, inter¬ 
 spersed in the distance with patches of sand, the ad¬ 
 vanced guards of the great Arabian desert. To the 
 north it constitutes the plain of Sharon, celebrated in 
 Hebrew song, and extends for fifty miles to where 
 Mount Carmel projects its high rocky front into the 
 sea. On the inland side, the plain is bounded first by 
 the rolling foot-hills of the Judean range, the Shephelah 
 or low country of the Old Testament, and then by the 
 hill country proper, which, clothed in blue and purple, 
 forms a continuous range, limiting the view eastward 
 from Jaffa. 
 
 The rock on which Jaffa stands, and which extends 
 undePthe whole of the maritime plain, is a soft sandstone, 
 sometimes traversed with vermicular cylindrical holes, 
 perhaps the work of marine worms, and characteristic 
 of these recent formations not only here but in the 
 isthmus and at Beyrout. The sandstones are sometimes 
 coarse and pebbly, and often contain marine shells of the 
 same species with those still living in the neighbouring 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 sea. The cementing material of 
 the sandstone is carbonate of lime, 
 and, like the similar modern sand¬ 
 stone of Suez, it is sufficiently hard 
 to be used for building purposes. 
 In some places on the road to 
 Ramleh, it is seen to pass into a 
 conglomerate, or pebble-rock, com¬ 
 posed of rounded fragments of the 
 limestone of the hills ; and a boring 
 recently made near Jaffa passed 
 through 53 metres of the sandstone, 
 below which was clay containing 
 marine shells, more especially a 
 species of Cardium. x 
 
 These deposits are mostly of the 
 Pleistocene age, or that which im¬ 
 mediately preceded the advent of 
 man, and they belong to the same 
 series with the similar deposits which 
 extend all the way along the head 
 of the Mediterranean from beyond 
 Alexandria to Beyrout, and which 
 also occur around the Red Sea. 1 2 
 At the time when they were formed, 
 the sea stood 200 feet or more above 
 its present level, and washed the bases 
 of the hills all the way from Southern 
 Judea to the Lebanon, separated Asia 
 from Africa, and extended far up the 
 
 1 My informant was Dr. Paulus of Jerusalem. 
 
 2 Lartet, Fraas,-Schweinfurth. See also Notes 
 by the author, Geol. Mag. of London, 1884. 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 67 
 
 Nile valley. At present these beds form an undulating 
 plain, in many places of great fertility. It is twenty- 
 five miles wide near the frontier of Egypt, twelve to 
 fifteen opposite Jaffa, and runs off to a point at Carmel. 
 Its southern part was the headquarters of the Philis¬ 
 tines, whose frequent wars with the Israelites of the 
 inland hills occupy so large a portion of the Bible 
 history. Along this plain was the great highway from 
 Egypt to the North, traversed alternately by the armies 
 of Egypt and Assyria, which naturally avoided the 
 rugged and impracticable Judean hills. The maritime 
 plain was also a granary for these invading armies, and 
 it still produces much wheat and barley, though large 
 portions of it are neglected and untilled, and the culture 
 carried on is by means of implements as simple and 
 primitive as they could have been in the days of 
 Abraham. In February we found it gay with the 
 beautiful crimson anemone (A. coronaria ), which we were 
 quite willing to accept as the 1 Rose of Sharon,’ while 
 a little yellowish-white iris, of more modest appearance, 
 growing along with it, 1 represented the ‘ lily of the 
 valley ’ of Solomon’s song. 
 
 Ramleh, about twelve miles south-east of Jaffa, occu¬ 
 pies an important position near the inland side of the 
 plain, and at the point where the road from Jaffa to 
 Jerusalem crosses the great main line of communication 
 along the plain from north to south. It is seemingly 
 not a very ancient place, the neighbouring town of 
 Lydda having been its representative in ancient times, 
 and its identification with the Arimathea of the New 
 Testament being uncertain; but it was a place of great 
 importance at the era of the Crusades, and its lofty 
 1 Probably Iris Caucasica. 
 
68 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 campanile, which is not improbably a monument of that 
 time, and was intended as a watch-tower, commands a 
 grand and instructive view of the whole plain from the 
 sea to the hills, and far to the south and north. 
 
 Beyond Ramleh we enter on a country of low hills, 
 and pass from the Pleistocene beds to the Upper Creta¬ 
 ceous limestone, with perhaps some Eocene beds, which 
 here seem to dip gently toward the west, and their 
 outcropping edge constitutes a low ridge, separated from 
 the main body of the hills, which are also of Cretaceous 
 limestone, only a little older, by a valley which here bears 
 the historic name of Ajalon. Standing on the slight 
 escarpment of this ridge—the ancient Shephelah—one 
 can see across this valley to the opening from the pass 
 of Beth-horon in the opposite hills, down which Joshua 
 pursued the Canaanites when he raised the siege of 
 Gibeon after his remarkable night march from Gilgal, 
 and drove the besiegers from the roads to their own 
 strongholds down into the plain—a feat which broke 
 the Canaanite defence in the middle, and placed the 
 whole of the south of Palestine in his hands, opening at 
 the same time his way to the Sharon plain and the sea- 
 coast. This was perhaps the most striking military 
 achievement recorded of Joshua, and it is scarcely ren¬ 
 dered more wonderful by the abnormal prolongation of 
 the daylight for which he prayed, and which the poetical 
 author of the Book of Jasher has recorded in verses 
 which have long formed a stumbling-block to prosaic 
 Western interpreters. 
 
 We now enter on the steep and narrow valleys which 
 lead from the Shephelah to the watershed of the Judean 
 hills on which Jerusalem stands. These hills, rugged 
 though they are, have not been produced by any violent 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 6 9 
 
 fractures of the earth’s crust. The beds of Cretaceous 
 limestone, of which they are composed, constitute a 
 great flat arch or anticlinal, sloping gently to the Medi¬ 
 terranean on the west and to the Jordan valley on the 
 east, and the hills have been cut by the sea and the 
 torrents out of the nearly horizontal limestone beds, as 
 a cameo is cut out of the layers of an agate or of a 
 shell. Thus they present the appearance of successive 
 terraces, meandering along the sides of the valleys, and 
 rising one above another into rounded eminences. The 
 aspect thus given to the hill-sides is of a most peculiar 
 character, and suggests the idea that this natural terracing 
 must have given to the early inhabitants of the country 
 the hint of that system of culture in terraces which 
 prevailed in ancient times, when these now bare and 
 desolate hills were clad with vines and olives. In some 
 places, as near Kolonieh on this road, and at Bethlehem, 
 where this culture still exists in perfection, one can 
 realise the appearance which the country must have 
 presented in the old Hebrew times, and, in connection 
 with the value of the produce of the olive tree and vine, 
 the large population it may have supported. 
 
 The description of the hills on this road given by 
 Dr. Fraas is so graphic that it deserves quotation: 1 
 “ Chalk marls, hard white limestone, and beds of dolo¬ 
 mite alternate with each other and form great steps 
 on the mountain sides, such as I have nowhere else 
 seen in equal beauty. The edges of the beds, three 
 to ten feet thick, stand out like artificial walls, enclosing 
 the hills. Olive trees and shrubbery overhang these 
 natural ramparts, while the softer layers form slopes 
 covered with green herbage, which is still richer in the 
 
 1 A us dem Orient. 
 
7 ° 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 moist hollows.’ It will be observed that this rugged 
 Judean country presents a much more attractive ap¬ 
 pearance to the German geologist than to the ordinary 
 traveller, to whom the hills seem mere irregular masses 
 of stone. 
 
 It is also to be observed, that though on these hills 
 there may be little soil, and that of a stony quality, 
 this soil is of the most fertile character, and especially 
 adapted for fruit trees and vines. The manner in which 
 the German colony at Jerusalem is improving the ap¬ 
 parently hopeless stony country between that place and 
 Bethlehem, and rendering it productive, is a remarkable 
 indication of this. It seems to have been customary in 
 ancient times to store part of the produce of these hills 
 on the ground, as there are everywhere in the ledges 
 and cliffs small caverns excavated or enlarged by art, 
 and which, while too small to have been occupied for resi¬ 
 dence, may have served as places of storage, or possibly, 
 in troublous times, of concealment of the crops. A curious 
 example of this practice occurs in the case of the ten men 
 mentioned by Jeremiah, who said they had wheat, barley, 
 oil, and honey ‘hid in the field,’ and were spared by the 
 tyrant Ishmael on account of these treasures. 
 
 We ascend these hills through narrow valleys, on the 
 sides of which here and there are beds filled with charac¬ 
 teristic Cretaceous fossils. 1 The villages and ruins of 
 old towns are perched on heights, and often at points 
 suited to command the road through the valleys, indi¬ 
 cating the fact that defence was and is of more importance 
 
 1 More especially there are white limestones with Radiolites and large 
 Ostrece and other bivalves. Other beds are filled with shells of the genus 
 Nerincea. These beds seem to correspond with the so-called Radiolarian 
 zone of Fraas in tfie Lebanon, and are well seen half way between Ramleh 
 and Jerusalem. 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 7 1 
 
 than convenience, and reminding us of the wars and 
 raids that have raged along the borders of the hill 
 country of Judea from the times of the old Philistines 
 till the present day. Even now, under that happy union 
 of oppressiveness and imbecility which characterises the 
 Turkish Government, the heavily taxed villager or farmer 
 is obliged to be his own guard and policeman. Every 
 person that one meets on the road is armed with a 
 rifle, musket, pair of pistols or cimetar, or with some 
 combination of these; or, failing any of them, with the 
 round-headed club which, since the days of David, seems 
 to have been the shepherd’s weapon in this country. 1 
 One is at first a little alarmed by the approach of these 
 armed travellers, but we soon find that they are by no 
 means aggressive, and that their arms only express their 
 own fears of attack. 
 
 The hills of the Shephelah rise somewhat suddenly 
 from the plain to heights of about 400 or 500 feet, and 
 then gradually ascend ridge after ridge to the summit of 
 the Mount of Olives, 2,693 feet above the level of the 
 sea ; but this is by no means the maximum height of 
 this great flat-backed ridge, which forms the backbone 
 of Western Palestine. 2 To the south of our line of 
 section it attains near Hebron a height of 3.300 feet; 
 and northward it rises to a still greater elevation in the 
 mountains of Samaria, before it gives off the oblique spur 
 of Mount Carmel to the north-west. Beyond this it 
 sinks into the plain of Esdraelon, to rise again in the 
 hills of Galilee, and farther north to culminate in the 
 great ridge of Mount Lebanon, which ascends to a 
 
 1 The Shaivet, ‘rod’ or ‘sceptre’ of our version—literally a club. See 
 Psalm xxiii, where the word is translated ‘ rod.’ 
 
 2 Measurements by the Palestine Exploration Survey. 
 
72 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 height of 10,000 feet. Throughout all this extent the 
 hills consist of Cretaceous limestone, ridged up in the 
 centre and cut by valleys and ravines at the sides, so 
 that it may be compared to the backbone of an animal, 
 with its ribs spread out at either side. The later Eocene 
 limestones, which are so grandly developed in Egypt, 
 are represented in Palestine only by small patches; and 
 from a comparison of these formations in the Nile 
 valley, in the Red Sea, in Judea, and the Lebanon, I 
 am of opinion that there was an original difference, 
 thicker deposits having taken place in the Cretaceous 
 period in Syria than in Egypt, and precisely the reverse 
 in the Eocene age. 1 Much of the physical difference 
 between the two countries depends on this circumstance. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that this hill country, with 
 the valleys descending from it, and the great Jordan 
 valley to the east, was specially the land of the Israelites 
 in their settlement in Palestine. The empire of David 
 and Solomon was, of course, much more extensive, but 
 it included peoples of other races. The Philistines seem 
 always to have retained their hold of the maritime plain 
 as far north as Jaffa, and the Phenician territory included 
 the greater part of the seaboard north of Carmel, while 
 the Esdraelon plain was a thoroughfare of nations. On 
 the east of the Jordan the possessions of the Hebrews 
 were somewhat precarious, and were limited by Moab 
 and Ammon on the south and Syria on the north. It 
 is also to be observed that the chief seats of the dominant 
 tribes of Judah and Ephraim were on this great ridge of 
 Western Palestine. Another feature of the occupation 
 of Palestine by the Hebrews indicated by modern 
 facts, as well as by the statements in the Book of 
 1 See notes in the Geological Magazine, 1884. 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 73 
 
 Joshua, is that while the Israelites were the landed 
 proprietors and the leading people of the cities, many 
 of the original Canaanites remained as serfs and labouring 
 people, and in the more secluded districts. The fellaheen 
 of the southern districts still resemble Egyptians, and 
 are probably, in great part, descendants of the Philistines. 1 
 Those of Judea have the features of the old Canaanites, 
 as represented on the Egyptian monuments, and are 
 probably of the ancient pre-Mosaic stock, which seems 
 to have repossessed itself of the land on the expulsion of 
 the Hebrews. 
 
 At Jerusalem we are on the summit of the ridge 
 separating the Mediterranean slope from the more abrupt 
 descent to the Dead Sea and the Jordan valley. The 
 surface of the Dead Sea is 1,293 feet below the level of 
 the Mediterranean, while Jerusalem is 2,590 feet above 
 that level, and consequently no less than 3,880 feet above 
 the great depression which lies to the east of it. The 
 city occupies a little promontory, connected on the north 
 with the main table-land of the summit of the hills, and 
 separated on the east and west by deep valleys from 
 the neighbouring eminences. The promontory itself is 
 divided by a furrow, the Tyropean valley, into two 
 unequal portions, so that it may be compared to a 
 cloven-hoof, with one toe longer than the other. The 
 longer or western toe, separated from the adjoining hills 
 by the Gihon or Hinnom valley, is that which is usually 
 identified with the ancient Zion, and on which the greater 
 part of the city now stands, and its southern part must 
 have been the site of the old Jebusite town, which was 
 so strong that it retained its independence till the time 
 
 1 Who were allied to the Egyptians, being derived, according to Moses, 
 from Caphtorim, Gen. x. 14. 
 
74 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 of David. The smaller, or eastern toe, separated by the 
 deep Kedron valley from the Mount of Olives, is that of 
 Moriah and Ophel, and on it stands the quarter known 
 
 Fig. 15.—Sketch plan of Jerusalem. 
 
 a. Zion and old Jebusite city. b. Temple area. c. Ophel. d. Subterranean 
 quarries, e. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, f. Supposed Golgotha. 
 g. Tower of David, h. Tower of Goliath, k. Jaffa Gate. /. Damascus 
 Gate. 
 
 The present wall is indicated by a heavy black line, the old South wall by 
 a dotted line, and the supposed position of the wall of the original 
 Jebusite town by a zigzag line. The Tyropean valley is seen running up 
 the middle of the city, and forking toward the north, and the Damascus 
 gate is nearly opposite the north end. East of the city are the Kedron 
 valley and the Mount of Olives. 
 
 as Bezetha, and the great area of the Mosque of Omar, 
 once the site of Solomon’s Temple. Jerusalem is so 
 near the watershed of the country that while the Kedron 
 brook runs into the Dead Sea, another streamlet, not 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 75 
 
 more than a mile to the west, is one of the heads of a 
 river emptying into the Mediterranean. Geologically, 
 however, it is on the eastern side of the ridge of the 
 hill country, for the beds underlying it all dip eastward. 
 This commanding position, in connection with certain 
 minor topographical details, to be mentioned in the 
 sequel, accounts for its importance as an ancient 
 Amorite stronghold, and also for its selection by David 
 as his capital. The mountains round about Jerusalem 
 were no inapt emblem of security, and when the Psalmist 
 uses them to typify God’s protection of His people, he 
 is not merely indulging in a poetical fancy; for Jeru¬ 
 salem, seated on its rocky ridges and surrounded by a 
 broken country difficult of access and easy to defend, 
 possesses one of the strongest positions of any capital 
 in the world. 
 
 It is remarkable also for its facilities for water supply. 
 In addition to the collection of rain-water in tanks, which 
 is now the principal source of supply, it possesses springs, 
 the waters of which were carefully husbanded and 
 guarded, as in the case of the celebrated Siloam tunnel 
 under the Moriah hill. But the great ancient supply 
 came from the hills to the south, where are immense 
 springs and the magnificent pools of Solomon, whence 
 two aqueducts led to the city, pouring into it a great 
 stream of water at a height sufficient to reach even the 
 upper parts of the town, and to keep the immense pools 
 and cisterns constantly filled. The whole area occupied 
 by Jerusalem is small, and it is very closely built. One 
 can walk around it in an hour, and in its greatest days 
 the city cannot have been more than twice or thrice 
 as large. Its area is now about 200 acres, and the popu¬ 
 lation between 20,000 and 30,000. 
 
7 6 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 The geologist, on inspecting such a site, at once thinks 
 of its original condition and of the causes of the features 
 which it presents. The former is not difficult to realise, 
 for though there has been some filling of hollows with 
 debris and some scarping and walling up of slopes, the 
 relief of the surface is too decided to be easily obscured, 
 and the excavations of Colonel Warren and his colleagues 
 have sounded the depths of most of the masses of 
 rubbish. The clue to the latter is most easily to be 
 found in the dip of the rock, as seen in the great quarries 
 and excavations in the eastern ridge, which show that 
 
 Fig. 16.—Section of the site of Jerusalem, 
 l. Summit of Zion. 2. Summit of Moriah. 3. Mount of Olives, a. Middle 
 Cretaceous limestone, grey, red, white, b. Softer white limestones, includ¬ 
 ing the bed of Malake. c. Upper Cretaceous limestone and marl, with flint. 
 
 we have a general easterly dip, and consequently an 
 ascending series from Zion to the Mount of Olives, the 
 outcropping edges of the harder beds forming the ridges 
 and the cutting out of the softer layers producing the 
 valleys. 
 
 The rock of the Western or Zion hill is a hard, 
 reddish, and grey limestone, much used for building 
 and paving stones, and capable of taking a good polish. 
 It is called Misie stone, that is, hard or resisting. It 
 contains a few fossil shells ( Ammonites , Turritellce , etc.), 
 and belongs, apparently, to the middle part of the 
 Cretaceous system. On this rests the limestone of the 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 77 
 
 Moriah hill, which contains some thick beds of softer 
 white stone of fine texture, and well adapted for the 
 finest purposes of architecture. This is the Malake , or 
 royal stone, employed in the best buildings of ancient 
 Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives consists of still higher 
 members of the formation, limestones and marly beds, 
 with many layers and nodules of flint. In the upper 
 part of this series, farther to the eastward, there are 
 numerous Baculites and other shells and scales of fishes. 
 
 Jerusalem, small though it is, has been the most 
 important city in all the world in connection with the 
 influences emanating from it, and its topography and 
 history have been subjects of interest to numbers of 
 intelligent travellers and explorers from the time of 
 Josephus to the present day. Yet on many of the points 
 raised much difference of opinion still exists. I shall select 
 from these three leading questions, on which the geological 
 structure of the district may throw some light, and which, 
 if satisfactorily answered, may tend to elucidate other 
 difficulties. These are, (i) The great subterranean 
 quarries under the northern end of the city. (2) The 
 rock under the Mosque of Omar, and from which it has 
 been named ‘ the Dome of the Rock.’ (3) The site of 
 the hill called Golgotha, on which our Lord was crucified. 
 
 (1) At first sight it seems singular that, when all the 
 hills about Jerusalem are composed of solid limestone 
 rock, the quarrymen should have sought for building 
 material by burrowing under one of the elevations on 
 which the city stands. But this is readily accounted 
 for by the structure of the several ridges. The hard 
 misie stone of the Zion hill is difficult to extract in 
 large blocks, and somewhat refractory in working, besides 
 being very unequal in colour; the stone of the Mount 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 78 
 
 of Olives is mostly of soft flaky quality of the kind 
 called Kokule} and it is injured by the frequent flinty 
 bands which it contains. It is only under the intervening 
 Moriah ridge and its continuation to the north that 
 there is a thick bed of the pure white Malake ' compact 
 in quality and durable, yet easily worked. This is a 
 finely granular stone, and under the microscope is seen 
 to be composed of grains of fine calcareous sand and 
 organic fragments cemented together. It is not, like 
 some of the limestones of the region, an actual chalk, 
 composed of Foraminiferal shells, but is really a very 
 fine-grained white marble. This stone was probably 
 first quarried in the open air at the northern end of the 
 temple ridge, outside the city wall. Here a great cut 
 has been made entirely across the ridge. It separates 
 the knoll containing the so-called grotto of Jeremiah, 
 from the rock under the city wall, and adds greatly to the 
 strength of the latter, while it must have afforded a very 
 large quantity of good stone. That this work is ancient 
 is, I think, apparent from the fact that this point is the 
 most accessible source of good building stone, and that 
 its excavation gave the only means of defending effec¬ 
 tually the temple ridge from attack from the north. 
 It is true that the wall which stands on this scarped 
 rock is of Saracenic date—in great part at least; but 
 there are portions of it near the Damascus gate of the 
 old jointed masonry peculiar to the ancient Jews, and 
 which must have belonged to the Herodian times at 
 least, if not to those of the Jewish kings. 
 
 The recent unearthing of the ancient foundations of 
 the Kasr Jalud, or tower of Goliath, at the north-west 
 corner of the city, which were kindly pointed out to 
 
 1 Probably equivalent to ‘cake-stone’ or ‘flaggy-stone.’ 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 79 
 
 me by my friend Dr. Merrill, fixes another and most 
 important part of the north wall, and I think con¬ 
 clusively proves that the present north wall of the city 
 is very nearly in the line of that second wall of which 
 Josephus speaks, and which was, to a large extent, the 
 work of Uzziah and Hezekiah. 1 This being granted, 
 we can understand the nature of the great subterranean 
 
 Fig. 17.—Cliff and city wall at’the entrance to the Royal Quarries, 
 showing the dip of the limestone. 
 
 quarries. The ancient workmen, having cut through 
 the ridge outside the city wall, and having also quarried 
 out the grotto of Jeremiah, were obliged to turn to the 
 south to follow the bed of good stone; but here they 
 had to go underground, both to escape the necessity 
 of removing hard and unprofitable material from the 
 surface, and to avoid disturbing the city wall and the 
 buildings within it. They began these excavations 
 
 1 2 Chron.xxvi. 2, and xxxii. 5. 
 
8 o 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 immediately under the city wall, at one of the highest 
 parts of the ridge, and entered by a moderately sized 
 opening, which could easily be walled up, and which is 
 now partly closed by accumulations of earth and modern 
 building. 1 But once underground, their work expanded 
 into wide and lofty galleries, like those of the old 
 Egyptian quarries of Turra; and supporting the roof 
 by pillars of the stone, they excavated a very large area 
 under that part of the town known as Bezetha, and lying 
 to the north of the temple area. The workings follow the 
 bed of valuable Malake stone, which dips east-north-east 
 at an angle of about io°. The mode of quarrying has 
 been the same with that pursued in Egypt, each block 
 of stone being isolated by narrow incisions made all 
 around it. In this way large square blocks were obtained, 
 which required little subsequent dressing, and a very 
 small amount of waste remained in the quarry. It was 
 a tedious but very effectual and economical method, 
 and one specially adapted to the operations of an under¬ 
 ground quarry. This method also illustrates the Scripture 
 statement that the stones of the temple were shaped in 
 the quarry before being brought to the building. 
 
 Blocks partly disengaged show the manner in which 
 the work was done, and remain as if the quarrymen had 
 left their work but yesterday, while the roof and pillars 
 are in most places in so good preservation that the 
 quarry might be reopened at any time with very little 
 expense. A spring at one side of the workings has 
 had a little cistern cut to receive its waters, and looks 
 as fresh as if the old workmen might return to it 
 
 1 These excavations are called Mugharat el Kettan or Cotton Grotto— 
 a name perhaps originating in the radical idea of ‘ covering or hiding,’ from 
 which kettan and cotton are derived. 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 81 
 
 to-morrow. Fragments of their rude clay lamps may be 
 seen near it, and little niches cut to receive them in the 
 wall, to light the men at their work and at their mid-day 
 meal. Nothing has been found in these quarries to in¬ 
 dicate the date at which they were last worked ; but 
 they are probably the caverns in which the wretched 
 remnants of the garrison of Jerusalem are said to have 
 taken refuge after the siege by Titus, and their great 
 extent and the character of the stone show that they 
 were the source of the vast amount of material used by 
 the Jewish kings from the time of Solomon to that of 
 Herod in the construction of their great buildings. 
 
 These quarries are, indeed, sufficiently large to have 
 supplied much more stone than is apparent in all the 
 ancient buildings of Jerusalem, gigantic though these 
 are. 1 They must have furnished those great stones— 
 ‘ stones of ten cubits and stones of eight cubits ’—em¬ 
 ployed in the construction of the temple and in the 
 palace of Solomon, and these stones were suitable, not 
 only for the massive foundations of these buildings, but 
 for ail their finer and more ornamental work. The 
 characters which have been found painted on some of 
 the stones of the retaining wall of the temple are be¬ 
 lieved to be masons’ marks made by Phenician workmen, 
 probably some of those commissioned by King Hiram to 
 assist Solomon in his great works. They probably relate 
 to the dimensions of the stones, which, as we learn from 
 i Kings vii. 9, were delivered ‘according to the measures 
 of hewed stones; ’ and, as this statement is connected 
 with the mention of their great cost, we have a right to 
 infer that they were paid for by the cubic cubit. 
 
 1 It is deserving of note that the great cisterns under the temple area ai e 
 excavated in this same kind of rock. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 The manner in which the stones were extracted from 
 these quarries is not certainly known. The present 
 entrance in the rock outside the wall has been quite 
 large enough for the purpose, but it seems not unlikely 
 that there may have been a ramp or tramway by which 
 stones could be rolled or slid up to the temple area. It 
 would seem difficult in any other way to have moved these 
 stones into their position. The corner-stone of the ‘ great 
 course ’ of masonry at the south-east angle of the temple 
 area is said by Warren to weigh 100 tons, and, though this 
 is exceptional, there are many others nearly as heavy. 
 
 (2) On the highest part of the old temple area, the 
 ‘ Haram,’ or enclosure, as it is now called, and 
 immediately under that great dome, the most con¬ 
 spicuous object in Jerusalem, which covers the so-called 
 Mosque of Omar, is a rough projection of the natural rock 
 enclosed within a railing, and at first sight appearing to 
 be quite an incongruous element in such a structure. 
 It has, however, evidently constituted the determining 
 cause of the erection of the noble building which 
 covers it, and which derives from it the name of ‘ Kub- 
 bet es Sakhra,’ or ‘ Dome of the Rock.’ 1 The rock is 
 simply a portion of one of the harder gray beds of the 
 natural summit of the hill, and consequently has been 
 in its present place before the erection of any buildings, 
 so that it must have been for some reason left intact at 
 the time of the original levelling of the ground for the 
 temple of Solomon—a fact which gives to it great his¬ 
 torical significance. It is approximately semicircular 
 in outline, with the curved side, which slopes downward, 
 on the east and the straight side, which is higher and 
 
 1 Its proper name. It is not really the Mosque of Omar, and it is even 
 questionable if it is a Saracenic building. 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 83 
 
 cut off square, to the west. This corresponds with the 
 general dip of the rock of the ridge. It is about 60 feet 
 in its extreme length and 50 in its greatest breadth, 
 and rises in its highest part a little more than 4 feet 
 above the surrounding pavement. 1 Under the south¬ 
 east portion there is a roughly-hewn chamber of square 
 form excavated in the rock. With this three openings 
 communicate, namely a stairway leading down from the 
 pavement, a small irregular opening near it, and a round 
 hole on top. This cavern is high enough to enable one 
 to stand upright, and its paved floor sounds hollow as 
 if there were an additional cavity below. The direction 
 of the western side of the rock is north-north-west, or 
 parallel to the longest sides of the temple area. The sur¬ 
 face of the rock has evidently been prepared at the west 
 and east sides for building stonework on and against it. 
 The west side is cut down perpendicularly, and has a 
 square notch cut out of the south angle; and above the 
 perpendicular face the upper surface is cut into a de¬ 
 cided shelf sufficiently wide to receive a stone wall. 
 The lower eastern side is less modified, but the semi¬ 
 circular edge is cut even, and has two slight rectangular 
 breaks in its continuous curve ; and on the surface flat 
 spaces and step-like notches are cut into the stone. The 
 entrance to the cave beneath is evidently modern, but 
 the hole near it and the round opening in the top 
 appear more ancient. On the whole, this sacred rock 
 would seem to be an original portion of the natural 
 surface of the ledge, slightly modified by art, and having 
 under a portion of it an old granary or cistern, which 
 was probably excavated before the temple was built. 
 
 Setting aside altogether the superstitious fables at- 
 
 1 4 feet 9 J inches. See Frontispiece of Chapter. 
 
 G 2 
 
8 4 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 tached to this rock by the Moslems, and which are 
 retailed in every description of Jerusalem, it seems 
 certain that it was contained within the courts of the 
 Jewish temple, and that it was left intact when the 
 remainder of the surface was levelled. This would 
 imply that it was a place hallowed by religious asso¬ 
 ciations in the time of Solomon, and intended to be 
 preserved in his temple. Now it seems evident from 
 the Old Testament history that the Solomonic temple 
 was built on the ground acquired by David from Arau- 
 nah the Jebusite, and on which his great sacrifice was 
 offered on occasion of the plague . 1 It is to be observed 
 also that on this occasion David solemnly dedicated 
 this place to the worship of God and as ‘ an altar of 
 burnt-offering for Israel.’ Nothing is more likely there¬ 
 fore than that it continued to be a place of sacrifice 
 from that time, and that it was retained as the site of 
 the altar of burnt-offering in Solomon’s temple. Since 
 this altar had, according to the Mosaic law, to be con¬ 
 structed of unhewn stones, and placed upon the natural 
 surface of the earth, a portion of the rock would be left 
 in its original state, except in so far as it might require 
 to be modified to receive the stones of the altar, and to 
 afford accommodation for any structures surrounding it. 
 This appears to me a much more likely explanation than 
 that which supposes the rock to mark the position of 
 the holy of holies, with respect to which there was no 
 necessary appropriateness in a natural unhewn rock. 
 
 In the Talmudic description of the great altar, as 
 translated by Bishop Barclay and Dr. Chaplin, it is 
 stated that the altar was 33 cubits square at its base. 
 
 1 1 Chron. xxi. and xxii. The cave below may have been the granary of the 
 threshing-floor, and the place where Araunah and his sons ‘ hid themselves.’ 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 85 
 
 It had a cistern or drain below its south-west end, with 
 two holes in the altar above leading to it, and an open¬ 
 ing to allow a man to descend to clean it. There was a 
 sloping ascent at the south side. The unhewn stones 
 of which the altar was built were naturally squared 
 blocks obtained at a place called Beth-cerem. If we 
 suppose the west side of the rock to have coincided 
 with the west side of the altar, and the face of the 
 notch at the south-west side to have marked the limits 
 of its south side, and the sloping ascent to have been at 
 the east and south sides, this would agree very well 
 with the form of the rock, except that the drain is at 
 the south-east side. It would also place the front of the 
 altar toward the west where the sanctuary stood. 
 
 If the Sakhra really represents the great altar of 
 burnt-offering, it fixes approximately the position of the 
 temple and its inner courts. The temple itself, with its 
 lofty porch or propylon, must have greatly resembled 
 those of Egypt, and must have stood toward the west 
 side of the area. In front of the propylon was the 
 great altar, in the middle of the inner court. The whole 
 structure must have occupied the central portions of the 
 great Haram area, which is 15 00 feet long by 1000 feet 
 wide, and was surrounded, in the later temple at least, 
 by lofty colonnades. This great area is a magnificent 
 building site. Its north-western corner is composed of 
 levelled rock. The rest has been filled up to a level or 
 supported on the great series of arches known as So¬ 
 lomon’s Stables, though they are probably of Herodian 
 date. The outer wall is an immense structure of great 
 square stones, built up in some places, as shown by 
 Warren’s excavations, to the height of 120 feet. It had 
 several entrances, some of them ascending by ramps or 
 
86 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 inclines through the great wall and the filling within; 
 and beneath it are immense excavated cisterns, said to be 
 capable of containing ten millions of gallons of water. 
 
 The masonry of the retaining wall of this great area 
 is a magnificent work of hewn stones, with marginal 
 drafts, and beautifully fitted. This is at least the cha¬ 
 racter of its older and lower portions. Every stone of 
 the buildings that once crowned it has been thrown 
 down, and their rubbish lies everywhere against its 
 sides. The buildings now upon it are all of dates no 
 older than the Christian era. Some of the entrances 
 are probably as ancient at least as the Herodian time. 
 The so-called double gate on the south side is one of 
 the most interesting. It opens at the base of the 
 great enclosing wall, and passes upward for 200 feet 
 by two parallel arches, at the end of which were stair¬ 
 ways leading to the surface of the area. In the porch 
 at the entrance of these tunnels is a column strikingly 
 Egyptian in appearance and with a capital of palm 
 leaves, or, as some interpret them, rows of acanthus. 
 This double gate would present great facilities for the 
 entrance and egress of processions or crowds of wor¬ 
 shippers., and brings vividly before us that old time 
 when the tens of thousands of Israel went up to worship 
 here, singing perhaps those beautiful ‘ Songs of Degrees’ 
 which still form the best expressions of many types of 
 religious emotion . 1 There has been much discussion as 
 to the age of the great temple area; but the recent 
 explorations seem to have established the Solomonic 
 age of the whole eastern wall; and, though there are 
 some differences of structure on the south side, there 
 seems no reason to doubt that the substructure actually 
 
 1 Psalms cxx. to cxxxiv.—Songs of ascent or of going up. 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 87 
 
 prepared by Solomon included the whole, or nearly the 
 whole, of the present Haram area, a work comparable 
 in magnitude with the greatest of the Egyptian pyra¬ 
 mids, and superior to them, when considered as the mere 
 foundation of magnificent buildings which have wholly 
 perished, and when taken in connection with the vast 
 contrivances for water supply which exist beneath it, 
 and which were connected originally with the high-level 
 aqueduct conveying water from the springs in the Judean 
 hills south of the great Pools of Solomon. There is, 
 however, no reason to doubt the statement of Josephus 
 that the great plan conceived by Solomon was com¬ 
 pleted by subsequent kings, and that large portions of 
 the wall may have been repaired and rebuilt after the 
 captivity or even as late as the extensive restorations 
 undertaken by Herod the Great. 
 
 If we are right in placing the altar of burnt-offering 
 on the Sakhra, the Temple of Solomon must have stood 
 nearly in the middle of the Haram area, on the same 
 platform which now supports the Mosque of Omar. Its 
 tower-like propylon would thus rise a little to the west 
 of the present dome, and, like it, must have been the 
 most conspicuous object in every view of the city. The 
 courts in front of the temple must have extended 
 nearly to the west wall of the temple area, while, as we 
 learn from the Mishna, wider spaces lay to the south, 
 north and east, the whole of which were, however, prob¬ 
 ably surrounded with the long cloisters of Herod’s 
 temple. We thus, I think, obtain, by starting from the 
 sacred rock as representing the great central altar, a more 
 definite idea of the temple, and one more in accordance 
 with the statements of ancient authorities than on any 
 other view. We also obtain a most interesting identi- 
 
88 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 fication of an old historic site. For, though we cannot 
 certainly affirm that the Sakhra is the rock on which 
 Abraham offered Isaac, we can with the greatest proba¬ 
 bility connect it with the highest point of old Araunah’s 
 threshing-floor, and with that sacrifice of David which 
 first gave to the Temple Hill its character as a place 
 sacred to the worship of God. 
 
 (3) We come now to the most interesting and at the 
 same time one of the most vexed of the questions con¬ 
 nected with Jerusalem, namely, the place of the Cruci¬ 
 fixion and of the Sepulchre of Jesus. On this subject, 
 though I would desire to speak with all caution and 
 diffidence, owing to the limited nature of my oppor¬ 
 tunities for observation, yet as a mere question of 
 topography, I cannot believe that the position of the 
 so-called ‘Church of the Holy Sepulchre’ is consistent 
 with the requirements of the narratives in the Gospels. 
 I am aware that several eminent modern authorities, as 
 Williams, Bovet, Ganneau and Warren, have argued for 
 the genuineness of the site, and have endeavoured to 
 sustain it on topographical grounds ; but they require 
 most unlikely positions of the north wall of the city, and 
 limit its size too much for the population it possessed in 
 the time of our Saviour. I have already shown, on the 
 evidence of the excavations and old walls on the north 
 side, that even in the time of the Jewish kings the site 
 of the Church of the Sepulchre must have been within 
 the city, 1 and though Ganneau has found that there are 
 
 1 Any other position of the north wall of the city between the north-west 
 angle and the ridge east of the Damascus Gate would be most objectionable 
 for defensive purposes, and no remains of any such inner wall have been 
 found. It is also certain that a considerable space north of the present 
 city was covered with buildings and walled in by Herod Agrippa only eleven 
 years after the death of Christ. It follows that in the time of Christ the site 
 of the Holy Sepulchre Church must have been surrounded by the city. 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 89 
 
 old tombs under the church, these are of a style which, 
 as Conder has shown, is entirely different from that of 
 Christ, and belonging to a far earlier date. 1 There is 
 besides abundant evidence that old tombs of this kind 
 existed within the city before the beginning of the 
 Christian era. But the question requires a consideration, 
 first, of the narratives we have in the New Testament, 
 and next, of the existing sites which answer to the de¬ 
 scriptions there given. 
 
 It is evident that the writers of the Gospels had no 
 wish to establish holy places, and hence they have given 
 little attention to details of topography. Yet their short 
 narratives, with subsequent notices in the Epistles, serve 
 to establish certain important points, which are the more 
 valuable since they are mere incidental notices. They 
 inform us that the place of crucifixion was outside the 
 city wall, but nigh to the city; that it was near to a 
 road or roads leading from the city into the country, 
 and therefore in the vicinity of one of the principal 
 gates; that it was an elevated or conspicuous place, 
 though not said to be a hill in the sense in which Zion 
 or the Mount of Olives could be called hills ; that there 
 were gardens or tombs very near to it, or £ in the place,’ 
 and inferentially that it was near to that side of the city, 
 the north side, in which the Prmtorium, or Governor’s 
 palace, and Roman barracks were situated. 2 
 
 These indications are sufficient to show, in connection 
 with the preceding statements as to the original wall of 
 the city, that the present church, as marked in the plan 
 on page 74, cannot occupy the site of Calvary; but they 
 
 1 They are ‘ Kokim ’ tombs, cut endwise into the rock. Ganneau, Wilson, 
 and Conder, Palestine Survey, Jerusalem, pp. 319 et seq. 
 
 2 Dr. Fisher Howe has summed these up with great care in his work on 
 the True Site of Calvary, New York, 1871. 
 
90 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 give little guidance as to the true position, except to indi¬ 
 cate that it was probably on the table-land north of the 
 city, and near to the road leading from that gate, always 
 one of the most important in Jerusalem, which opened to 
 the north near the middle of the city wall, and opposite 
 the end of the Tyropean valley, which bisected the city. 
 The site of this gate is marked by the present Damascus 
 Gate, formerly called the Gate of St. Stephen, because 
 the oldest tradition points to his martyrdom outside of 
 that gate, though another gate on the east side of the 
 city is now called by his name. The Damascus Gate is 
 probably the ‘ old gate ’ of Nehemiah. 
 
 There is, however, one positive indication given by 
 the Evangelists which is- of the greatest significance, 
 and this is the name which they all agree in giving to the 
 place of crucifixion. This name is Golgotha, ‘ the skull,’ 
 and in its Greek form Kranion, translated by the Latin 
 Calvary. Three of the Evangelists translate the name 
 as meaning ‘ skull-place.’ Luke gives it simply as 
 ‘ skull.’ There is no reason to suppose that the name 
 arose from skulls being there, which, indeed, would have 
 been very unlikely, considering the laws and habits of 
 the Jews; and the name is not ‘place of skulls,’ but 
 ‘ skull-place,’ or ‘ skull.’ The most probable reason of 
 the name is that the place was a knoll or rising ground, 
 which by its form suggested the idea of a skull, and so 
 received that name. Now, there happens to be outside 
 the north wall of the city, but near to it, about one 
 hundred yards distant, a knoll of rock of rounded form 
 and covered with shallow soil and grass (the same 
 referred to above as that left by the ancient quarrymen, 
 and containing the so-called Grotto of Jeremiah), which 
 in its form and certain old tombs, which simulate sockets 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 91 
 
 of eyes, has a remarkable resemblance from some points 
 of view to a skull partly buried in the ground. This 
 resemblance has suggested itself to many observers, in¬ 
 dependently of any supposition that it is Golgotha. 
 It is true that such resemblances depend very much on 
 point of view and direction of light. But these con- 
 
 Fig. 18.—Front of the ‘ Skull Hill,’ near Jeremiah’s Grotto. 
 
 This is a very hasty sketch representing the appearance at a time when the 
 light was favourable for developing the two eyes. See other sketch (19). 
 
 ditions, as is well known, add to the effect, for it flashes 
 out upon us suddenly and strikingly when least ex¬ 
 pected ; and it is this that excites the popular imagination, 
 and often gives rise to a name. The rough sketch in 
 Fig. 18 is such an impression produced by a favourable 
 light. The more accurate representation in Fig. 19 
 shows less of the skull aspect, but gives more clearly 
 the topography of the hill, the whole face of which 
 is at this point an artificial cliff, produced by ancient 
 quarrying, though it can be ascended by a gradual slope 
 from the northern and eastern sides. 
 
 Jewish traditions, first ascertained by Dr. Chaplin, 
 and cited by Conder, show that this hill was anciently 
 used as a place of execution, and it is not improbably 
 the place where Stephen the proto-martyr was stoned. 
 
92 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA 
 
 It is now quite unoccupied, except by some Moslem 
 graves. It is further to be observed that this place 
 
 <D t/3 
 
 ^ g 
 
 O QJ 
 ^ rd 
 
 <u 
 
 ta 
 
 c 
 
 *s 
 
 ° o 
 a S 
 ’3 sj 
 
 P. C3 
 
 m 2 c 
 
 fulfils all the other, indications of the Evangelists. It is 
 near to the city, between the ancient roads leading from 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 93 
 
 the Damascus Gate and Herod’s Gate, not distant from 
 the site of the Praetorium, and having gardens and tombs 
 close to it. It is also so situated as to command a view 
 of the whole city and the temple, and of the amphitheatre 
 of surrounding hills, and there is no other place which 
 fulfils all these conditions. I have already referred to 
 the able argument of Dr. Fisher Howe in favour of 
 this site. He quotes Van de Velde, Otto Theniers, 
 Robinson, and others, in support of his view; and I found 
 that my friends Dr. Merrill and Dr. Chaplin of Jeru¬ 
 salem, who are thoroughly acquainted with the topo¬ 
 graphy of the city, were of the same opinion, and it was 
 also adopted by the late General Gordon, who had care¬ 
 fully surveyed the ground, and had caused a model of 
 the hill to be prepared by the sculptor Paulus, which 
 I had an opportunity to examine in his studio. 1 I 
 visited the place several times, and I confess became 
 more and more impressed with the certainty that here, 
 on this now neglected knoll, we have the actual place 
 where the greatest of all historical events, that which 
 more than any other attracts the eyes of all nations 
 to Jerusalem, actually occurred; while the swarms of 
 ignorant but pious pilgrims who annually visit Jerusalem 
 are deceived by a fictitious holy place surrounded with 
 false traditions, tinsel shows, and superstitious ceremonies. 
 Perhaps it is well that, so long as cunning priesthoods 
 make a trade of Christ, they should not be permitted 
 to have the true locality to give colour to their im¬ 
 postures. 
 
 The settlement of the site of the crucifixion would 
 settle that also of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, for 
 John informs us that ‘in the place was a garden,’ and in 
 
 1 See General Gordon’s Reflections in Palestine 
 
94 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 the garden a tomb. Now it so happens that to this 
 day little gardens occupy the level ground at the foot 
 of the skull knoll, and on the borders of these gardens 
 are tombs. One of these, which I visited with Dr. 
 Merrill, on the west side of the hill, and at the edge of 
 a little garden of beans, is of particular interest, as re¬ 
 calling very nearly the probable appearance of the new 
 tomb of Joseph. According to the Gospels, this was 
 
 Fig. 20.—Door of a Sepulchre, with rolling stone, as seen at the so-called 
 ‘Tombs of the Kings.’ 
 
 small, and of one chamber, allowing the body to be 
 seen from the door The door was low, so that one 
 had to stoop to look in, and it was closed by a circular 
 stone arranged to be rolled in a groove so as to open 
 and shut the entrance, like that still in situ at the great 
 ‘ Tombs of the Kings,’ or ‘Tomb of Helena,’ north of Jeru¬ 
 salem. The tomb referred to was a single low chamber 
 excavated in a ledge of rock, with a marble slab now 
 placed on edge to form a bin, but which seems at one 
 time to have stood on stone supports, like a couch. The 
 
JUDEA AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 95 
 
 entrance had no door, and was too large to have been 
 closed by a rolled stone, but there were some signs that 
 it might have been enlarged. It is now obstructed by 
 accumulated earth, which has considerably raised the 
 level of the ground since it was cut. I confess that this 
 neglected tomb was a more impressive memento of 
 that into which Mary, John, and Peter looked on the 
 morning of the resurrection, than the marble-lined and 
 decorated chamber in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 
 But there is no need to search for the actual tomb of 
 Joseph. The pretended shrine satisfies the devout crowds 
 of to-day ; and when a higher type of Christianity shall 
 be revived in these old lands, there will be no need 
 either of empty tombs or gaily decorated shrines to 
 excite devotion. 
 
 The Jerusalem of the present time is a strange and 
 difficult enigma. Not wholly ruined, still inhabited, 
 still a great centre of pilgrimage, it has escaped the fate 
 of many ancient capitals and holy places; yet it is shorn 
 of its former glory, and in its filth and squalor, and 
 destitution of any wealthy class, or of any political 
 status, and in the decay of its ancient buildings and 
 appliances for health and comfort, it is in some sense 
 more than a ruin, while it has become, not a centre of 
 pure religion, but of Moslem and anti-Christian super¬ 
 stition. What is the future of Jerusalem and Judea? 
 That it is expected to have an important bearing on the 
 destinies of the world is evident from the anxiety of the 
 great European nations to obtain a footing in the 
 country. Russia, France, and Germany are rivalling 
 each other in purchasing property, erecting buildings, 
 and otherwise strengthening their hold on Palestine. 
 In this Germany seems at present most successful, by 
 
9 6 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 means of its considerable and prosperous colonies. It 
 is not impossible that the great battle of the Eastern 
 question has yet to be fought on the old lines of the 
 Carmel ridge and the battle-field of Megiddo. In any 
 case, the decay of the Turkish power may open for 
 Syria an era first of fierce contest, and then of progress; 
 and it seems likely that in this the native Christian 
 population now advancing in culture under the influence 
 of missions, and the Jewish people, who are now return¬ 
 ing in considerable numbers, may bear an important 
 part. 
 
 Scripture prophecy points also to a renovation of the 
 old land. When Jesus predicted the ruin and desolation 
 of Jerusalem, and wept over the devoted city, He yet, 
 with evident reference to Old Testament prophecy, adds 
 the words, f Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the 
 Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled . 5 
 The times of the Turkish Gentiles who now tread the 
 city of Jerusalem under foot are apparently near their 
 end, and it remains for those other Gentile nations who 
 are contending for the fragments of Turkey, to consider 
 what their position relatively to the plans of God and 
 the kingdom of Christ shall be, when that fated termi¬ 
 nation of the long oppression of Israel and desolation of 
 the Holy Land shall arrive. 
 
Section of black bituminous limestone of Neby Mousa, magnified, stowing 
 Globigcrina , Tcxtiilarici, etc., with _ their cavities filled with bitumen, 
 which also saturates the intervening matrix, composed of broken bits of 
 Foraminifera and Coccoliths. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 
 
 From the hills that surround Jerusalem one looks 
 down to the eastward on the deepest depression on the 
 surface of our continents—the valley of the Dead Sea 
 and Jordan, only about fifteen miles distant ; and beyond 
 this we see in the highlands of Moab and their con¬ 
 tinuation northward a long range of eastern mountains 
 extending parallel to the Judean hills, and bearing the 
 same relation to the Anti-Libanus range and Hermon 
 which the latter bear to Lebanon. The descent of 
 about 2600 feet from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean 
 is spread over about thirty-five miles. That to the 
 Dead Sea, 1290 feet below the Mediterranean, or 3890 
 feet below Jerusalem, is compressed into less than half 
 the distance, so that the descent from Jerusalem to the 
 Jordan is like that of a mountain side, about the rate of 
 one foot in twenty. 
 
 This great difference of level implies a corresponding 
 difference of climate, and the traveller who descends 
 from Jerusalem to Jericho may pass in a short journey 
 from winter into summer, and from a temperate to a 
 tropical climate. I was informed that in January, 1884, 
 there were snow-drifts 5 feet deep at the Jaffa Gate of 
 Jerusalem, when the Jordan valley was enjoying a mild 
 temperature; and in February we passed from rain, 
 
 H 2 
 
IOO 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 sleet, and cold winds at the Holy City, to a warm and 
 sultry atmosphere at Jericho. 
 
 This is one of those features of Palestine, to which it 
 owes the great variety of its animals and plants, as 
 compared with most other countries of its size. Another 
 reason of this is, that it lies in the route of a multitude 
 of migratory birds passing annually from Asia and 
 Europe into Africa in autumn, and back in the spring. 
 A third reason lies in the fact, at present not fully 
 understood, but which is, I think, proved by the nature 
 of the deposits in the Isthmus of Suez and the desert 
 east of it, 1 that in the Continental period of the Pleis¬ 
 tocene age, of which we shall have more to say in a 
 subsequent chapter, there was a much more ample con¬ 
 nection between Asia and Africa than exists at present. 
 
 The diversities of climate, soil, and aspect in the hills 
 and valleys of Palestine must also have had at all 
 times an influence on the habits and pursuits of its 
 people. We find this even in the time of Joshua, when 
 the Amorites of the hill-country were evidently distinct 
 from the Philistines of the maritime plain and the 
 Canaanites of the Jordan valley and the northern 
 plains. I did not realise, until I had the experience 
 of travelling in Palestine in February, how different 
 in hardihood and endurance, and in requirements as 
 to clothing and shelter, the people of adjacent districts 
 may be, and how much exposure and suffering may 
 have been the lot of those who wandered in sheepskins 
 and goatskins, as many of the poor people of the country 
 do now in winter, and of the ‘ Man of Sorrows,’ Who 
 had not where to lay His head. 
 
 1 See Notes on the Nile Valley, Geological Magazine , 1884. 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. IOl 
 
 The country east of Jerusalem 1 presents a continuation 
 of the same Cretaceous limestones seen in approaching 
 it from the west. They now, however, dip to the east¬ 
 ward, though with many minor undulations, and on the 
 whole it is principally the upper members of the for¬ 
 mation that appear on the Jericho road. They consist 
 largely of white chalky limestones and indurated marls, 
 with numerous bands of dark-coloured flint. These, 
 when folded and arched in the undulations of the strata, 
 and exposed by the weathering of the softer beds, pre¬ 
 sent very conspicuous and grotesque features on the hill¬ 
 sides, and produce multitudes of caves and rock shelters, 
 many of which are used now, as they were in former 
 times, to protect the people and their flocks; and in 
 one of which we were glad to take refuge in a storm of 
 cold rain, along with some men from Bethlehem, clad in 
 sheepskins, and whose fire of blazing and crackling 
 thorns, though somewhat smoky, was very welcome in 
 the circumstances. This was our only experience of cave¬ 
 dwelling ; and our party, with our Bethlehem friends 
 and a few Arabs, gathered around the blazing fire, and, 
 covered with smoke curling over the roof of the cave, 
 presented an appearance which recalled many old stories 
 of Hebrew and Eastern life, and was highly suggestive 
 of the times of the aboriginal troglodytes or Horim of 
 the country. 
 
 Associated with these flinty limestones, and probably 
 overlying them, are white chalky beds identical, in age 
 
 1 I had the advantage of visiting the Jordan valley under the guidance of 
 Dr. Merrill, the American Consul at Jerusalem, to whose kindness I was 
 much indebted during our stay in that city. Our dragoman was David 
 Gimal, a Syrian Christian, who had been in America at the Centennial 
 Exhibition, and who is well read in all the Biblical and historical associa¬ 
 tions of the country. 
 
Fig. 21.—Cretaceous fossils of Judea. 
 
 a. Baculitcs anccps, Lmk. at. Cross section showing septum, b. Turri- 
 tella Adullam, Fraas. c. Nerinea Mamillce, Fr. d. Crassatella Rothii, 
 Fr. e. Ostrea Mertneti, Coq. Background, outline of Ammonites Man- 
 tellii, Sow. 
 
 102 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 and in their containing multitudes of microscopic marine 
 organisms, with the English chalk. Some beds also 
 hold numerous specimens of the long cylindrical shells 
 called Baculites, belonging to a group of marine animals 
 allied to the Nautili, and scales and teeth of fishes. 
 
 In one place the rocky bed of the road was full of 
 Baculites , T so that as we rode over it we could see them 
 under foot. These beds are probably equivalent to the 
 Lebanon beds, so rich in fossil fishes, and undoubtedly 
 
 1 B. anceps. 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 10 J 
 
 belong to the upper members of the Cretaceous forma¬ 
 tion. Strongly contrasting with these chalky limestones 
 are others blackened with bituminous matter, and also 
 containing scales of fishes. One variety of this black 
 bituminous limestone is that out of which inkstands and 
 ornamental articles are carved by the people of Beth¬ 
 lehem, 1 and some of it is sufficiently bituminous to burn 
 with flame, like cannel coal. When examined under 
 the microscope it proves to be a congeries of minute 
 shells and fragments of shells and other microscopic 
 organisms, whose cavities and interstices are partly filled 
 with bituminous 2 matter, constituting a very remarkable 
 kind of rock, which, while easily cut and turned into 
 ornaments, is of great interest and beauty as an object 
 for microscopic study (see Frontispiece to Chapter). It 
 is, in fact, precisely the sort of material that would 
 result from saturating dry chalk with coal-tar, and when 
 long weathered it becomes white and chalky at the 
 surface, so that a mass of it quite white externally 
 reveals an intense blackness when broken. 
 
 These bituminous beds appear in their greatest de¬ 
 velopment near Neby Mousa, but are seen also on the 
 road to Jericho, and must be of great thickness and 
 extent, underlying much of the basin of the Dead Sea 
 and the lower Jordan valley. They are undoubtedly 
 the source of the petroleum exuded from the rocks near 
 the Dead Sea, and which, when hardened, produces the 
 asphalt of this Lacus Asphaltites. They are thus, as we 
 
 1 Usually called, though incorrectly, 1 Dead Sea stone,’ and by the Arabs 
 ‘Hajar Musa,’ or Moses’ stone. 
 
 2 Foraminifera, resembling those of the English chalk. They belong to 
 the genera Globigerina , Textularia, Dentalina , etc. In the interstices of 
 the shells there are myriads of the minute bodies known as Coccoliths, and 
 also small shreds of undecomposed vegetable or animal matter. 
 
104 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 shall see, not improbably connected with the destruction 
 of the Cities of the Plain. 
 
 As to the original source of the bituminous matter, 
 it is no doubt due to the same cause which in other 
 countries has produced petroleum in marine limestones 
 of various geological ages, namely, the decomposition of 
 vegetable and animal matter, probably that of sea-weeds 
 and zoophytes, under water. Such material slowly 
 undergoes a chemical change converting it into crude 
 petroleum ; and this, penetrating the pores and cavities 
 of the rock, remains there until expelled by heat, by pres¬ 
 sure, or by the action of water passing through natural 
 rents or artificial openings. The phenomena are similar 
 to those of the oil regions of America, though occurring 
 here in somewhat newer rocks. 
 
 The arrangement of the beds seen in going from 
 Jerusalem to Jericho appeared to me to be as follows, 
 in ascending order, or proceeding from the older to the 
 newer 
 
 1. Grey mottled and white limestones of Jerusalem 
 and its vicinity, with Ammonites , Tur rite lice, etc. 
 
 2. Limestones and marls, with flinty bands. 
 
 3. Red, white, and green marls and limestones, with 
 gypsum in some places. 
 
 4. Black and grey bituminous beds, with remains of 
 fishes. 
 
 5. Soft chalky limestone, with Baculites , fish, etc. 
 
 This agrees in the main with the sections observed by 
 
 Lartet in the deep ravines of the east side of the Dead 
 Sea. The whole of these beds belong to the age of the 
 English chalk and greensands. 
 
 By the action of the sea in periods of submergence, 
 and by the atmospheric waters, since they became 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 105 
 
 part of the dry land, these rocks have been worn into 
 conical peaks, wall-like cliffs and deep ravines, present¬ 
 ing scenery of a much more wild and striking character 
 than that of the country west of Jerusalem. To an 
 ordinary observer the features of the region might seem 
 to indicate great physical disturbance ; but the pheno¬ 
 mena are merely those of water action on beds of 
 unequal hardness, slightly inclined, and weakened in 
 some places by transverse fractures or lines of fault. 
 
 Ficr. 22.—Section from Terusalem to Moab, across the Dead Sea (after 
 Lartet). 
 
 1. Jerusalem. 2. Level of Mediterranean. 3. Level of Dead Sea. a. 
 Cretaceous Limestone, b. Sandstone, c. Volcanic rock. d. Line of 
 great Fault, e. Fissures giving origin to saline springs. 
 
 As the beds dip to the east, we should naturally ex¬ 
 pect that in and beyond the ‘ Ghor,’ or Jordan valley, 
 newer beds would come in; but, instead of this, we find 
 the cliffs on the east side of the Dead Sea to consist of 
 the Nubian sandstone, a formation older than those we 
 have been studying; and above this, in the hills of 
 Moab, the limestones of Judea are repeated. This fact, 
 as explained many years ago by Lartet, shows that 
 there is a great fracture or series of fractures of the crust 
 of the earth in the valley. The Cretaceous limestones 
 of the Judean hills dipping down to the eastward are 
 suddenly cut off, and the beds of the east side are lifted 
 
106 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 up, so as to bring the underlying Nubian sandstone to 
 the surface (see Fig. 22). 
 
 This great fault extends from south to north, from the 
 Gulf of Akabah, through the Wady Arabah, the Dead 
 Sea, and the Jordan valley to the plain of Ccele-Syria, 
 and in its middle portion, where the greatest depression 
 has taken place, lowers the country far below the sea- 
 level. Whether, as supposed by Lartet, this is one great 
 fracture, or consists of several parallel cracks, may be a 
 matter of doubt; but the leading facts are quite evident. 
 
 The time at which this great depression took place is 
 an interesting question. As the fault cuts the Creta¬ 
 ceous limestones, it must be of later date than that 
 period. The relations of the Eocene formation to the 
 Cretaceous in Egypt and in Arabia and Northern Pales¬ 
 tine would also seem to indicate that it was later than 
 this formation also, so that its date may be placed at 
 least as near our time as the close of the Eocene Tertiary, 
 when, as all the geological data seem to indicate, Pales¬ 
 tine was first elevated above the sea. It is, however, 
 quite possible that the depression may have been 
 deepened at later periods, and more especially at the 
 time when the great volcanic masses of Moab and 
 Bashan were ejected and piled up on the surface of the 
 country. These eruptions occur most extensively on 
 the eastern or upthrow side of the great fault. 
 
 From the time of the formation of this great fracture, 
 it would appear that the basin of the Dead Sea must 
 have been a salt lake dependent on evaporation to re¬ 
 move the waters poured into it by the Jordan and other 
 streams; but the level of its waters must have varied 
 greatly at different times. In evidence of this, we find 
 a succession of terraces of Dead Sea deposits extending 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. IO/ 
 
 around the basin of the sea and far up the Jordan valley. 
 The present shore, at the north end of the sea, consists 
 of clean gravel, largely composed of flints from the 
 neighbouring Cretaceous beds, among which silicified 
 fossil shells may sometimes be found. With these are 
 fragments of limestone and bituminous shale, and upon 
 the shore are many drift-trees brought down by the 
 Jordan. 
 
 Standing on the beach, we see before us the placid 
 waters of this strange lake, blue and clear, but, owing to 
 their great density, having a heavy and oily aspect. 
 The shore on either side is formed of bare but brightly- 
 tinted cliffs, running out in a succession of rugged points 
 into the sea, and capped by grassy peaks and table¬ 
 lands. But flanking these original margins we see suc¬ 
 cessive .flats and terraces of grey marly beds. These 
 are the old deposits of the sea when it was larger than 
 at present, and among them we find gravel layers mark¬ 
 ing beaches similar to the present, but at higher levels. 
 The lowest of these terraces is about 30 feet above the 
 sea. A second attains an elevation of 100 feet, and 
 others have been traced as high as 1400 feet. 1 
 
 The old deposits of the Dead Sea, as seen in the one 
 hundred foot terrace, which is well exposed in the 
 ravines cut by the rains, consist of grey bleached-look- 
 ing marls of various degrees of hardness, including 
 nodules and crystals of gypsum, layers of impure salt, 
 and small concretions of sulphur. 2 Toward the top 
 
 1 See Reports by Prof. Hull to the Palestine Exploration Fund for these 
 facts, as well as for the geology of the southern part of the Dead Sea and 
 the Arabah; also Lartet, La Mer Morte. 
 
 2 Dr Paulus of Jerusalem showed me a collection of these from different 
 parts of the valley. They are probably not direct results of volcanic action, 
 but of the evolution of sulphuretted hydrogen in water. 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 108 
 
 are bands of impure limestone, and these, being harder 
 than the marls, project like shelves in the sides of 
 the ravines, and in isolated masses form flat trencher¬ 
 like tables capping their summits. I may state here 
 that these deposits at the north end of the Dead Sea 
 are evidently similar in kind and origin, though differ¬ 
 ent in degree, from those which in Jebel Usdum, at 
 the south end of the sea, rise to the height of 400 feet, 
 and contain thick beds of rock-salt and gypsum. At 
 the north end, where the principal supply of fresh water 
 is poured in and the evaporation is less, the deposition 
 
 F*g- 2 3 -—Ancient Dead Sea deposits, eroded by the action of the weather. 
 
 of salt is always likely to have been inferior to that at 
 the southern end, south of the Lisan peninsula, which 
 may always have represented a bar or shallow in the 
 lake. Lartet regards the Jebel Usdum deposits as be¬ 
 longing to the Cretaceous period ; but this seems not in 
 accordance with their nature and relations. 1 It is true 
 that gypsum occurs in the Cretaceous beds ; but in the 
 only place where I happened to see it, near the ruined 
 khan between Jerusalem and Jericho, it did not seem 
 to be an original constituent of the beds, but rather a 
 result of waters or vapours containing sulphuric or sul¬ 
 phurous acid penetrating the fissures of the limestone— 
 
 1 See Hull’s Reports and Aloitnl Seir, on this subject. 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 109 
 
 a sort of secondary volcanic phenomenon, analogous to 
 that of the sulphur springs which Dr. Merrill has de¬ 
 scribed in various parts of the Jordan valley. Such 
 phenomena are altogether distinct from those of the 
 Dead Sea deposits, except in so far as similar springs in 
 the bottom of the sea may have supplied the gypsum of 
 the latter. 
 
 The waters of the Dead Sea, though perfectly limpid 
 and inodorous, are eminently unfit for sustaining 
 animal life, not only because of their intensely saline 
 character, but by virtue of the kinds of saline matter 
 which they contain. Their density is stated at from 
 1-162 to 1-253, while that of sea-water at the same 
 temperature is only 1-027. Hence their remarkable 
 power of sustaining the body of a swimmer. The salt 
 which they contain is not wholly or even principally 
 common salt, but is mostly the chloride and bromide of 
 magnesium and calcium, so that they are not merely a 
 strong brine, but rather resemble the mother liquors of 
 a salt-pan left after the common salt has crystallised 
 out. In other words, if the water of the Dead Sea was 
 originally like that of the ocean, it has parted by crys¬ 
 tallisation with most of its salt, and retains chiefly the 
 more soluble substances not easily crystallised. 
 
 These discussions, though perhaps in themselves 
 uninteresting, prepare us to consider the historical ques¬ 
 tions connected with this remarkable lake. Here, in 
 the first place, we must divest ourselves of the super¬ 
 stitious notions attached to the Dead Sea by mediaeval 
 and modern travellers, which have no foundation in 
 nature or recognition in the Bible. 
 
 The Dead Sea, whether seen in the still sunshine or 
 when storm-clouds are driving over it, is a noble and 
 
no 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 impressive sheet of water. Its waters are clear and 
 pellucid, and exceptionally free from any pollution or 
 garbage. No noxious vapours hang over its surface. 
 Its scenery, its mineral springs, its mild winter climate, 
 and the density of its air, might make it now, as in 
 ancient times, a favourite resort of pleasure-seekers and 
 invalids. 1 
 
 There are no volcanic phenomena directly connected 
 with it. It is true that in Tertiary times there have 
 been volcanic vents on its eastern side, but these are 
 long ago extinct, and their products only serve to give 
 additional grandeur to its scenery; while the only sym¬ 
 pathy which the sea has with these is in the mineral and 
 hot springs which occur on its shores, and the earth¬ 
 quakes which occasionally shake this district in common 
 with others in Western Asia. 
 
 The name ‘ Dead Sea’ is modern and unknown to the 
 Bible writers, who name it the ‘ Salt Sea,’ the ‘ Sea of 
 the Plain or Ghor,’ the ‘East Sea;’ and no notions of 
 horror or desolation are associated with it by them. On 
 the contrary, the plain at its northern end is said to 
 have resembled the Garden of the Lord, and Engedi 
 on its western side was celebrated for its vineyards and 
 its beauty. 
 
 But how does this accord with the terrible story of the 
 destruction of the Cities of the Plain, held up in all time 
 as an example to evil-doers? To understand this we must 
 note the topography of the Ghor or depressed Jordan 
 valley in connection with the historical notices in the book 
 of Genesis. It may be affirmed, in the first place, that 
 Sodom and its companion cities were not, as held by 
 later tradition, at the south end of the sea, but at its 
 
 1 Tristram, Land of Israel, well illustrates these points. 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 
 
 Ill 
 
 northern end, 1 and that this must at the time have 
 occupied, approximately at least, its present position. 
 This appears from the name ‘ Cities of the Plain, 5 or 
 Ciccar, that is, of the Jordan valley, or the lower end of 
 it. It is also stated that Abraham and Lot could see 
 this plain from the high ground between Bethel and 
 Hai, whence only the northern end of the Dead Sea is 
 visible. Abraham could not see the cities from Mamre, 
 but he saw their smoke ascending. The most con¬ 
 vincing geographical note, however, is that in Genesis 
 xiv, which describes the invasion of Canaan by the five 
 Eastern kings in the time of Abraham. They are said 
 to have come down on the east side of the Dead Sea, to 
 have defeated the Hivites and Amalekites on the south, 
 and then to have come up by way of Engedi, 2 on the 
 west side of the sea, and to have fallen on the Sodom¬ 
 ites and their allies from the south-west. Thus the Book 
 of Genesis, from which alone we have any contemporary 
 account of these cities, fixes their position. 
 
 The manner of their destruction also connects itself 
 with the locality. We are told that there were ‘ slime- 
 pits,’ that is, petroleum wells, in their vicinity. Now 
 regions of bitumen, like that of the Dead Sea, are 
 liable to eruptions of a most destructive character. Of 
 these we have had examples in the oil regions of 
 America. In a narrative of one of these now before me, 
 and which occurred a few years ago in the oil district of 
 Petrolia, in Canada, I read that a borehole struck a 
 reservoir of gas, which rushed upward with explosive 
 force, carrying before it a large quantity of petroleum. 
 
 1 Canon Tristram has ably supported this view, as has also Dr. Merrill 
 in his work East of the Jordan. 
 
 2 Hazezon-Tamar, which is Engedi, 
 
112 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA, 
 
 The gas almost immediately took fire, and formed a tall 
 column of flame, while the burning petroleum spread 
 over the ground and ignited tanks of the substance in 
 the vicinity. In this way a space of about fifteen acres 
 was enveloped in fire, a village was burned, and several 
 persons lost their lives. The air flowing toward the 
 eruption caused a whirlwind, which carried the dense 
 smoke high into the air, and threw down burning 
 bitumen all around. 
 
 Now, if we suppose that at the time referred to 
 accumulations of inflammable gas and petroleum existed 
 below the Plain of Siddim, the escape of these through 
 the opening of a fissure along the old line of fault might 
 produce the effects described—namely, a pillar of smoke 
 rising up to heaven, burning bitumen and sulphur rain¬ 
 ing on the doomed cities, and fire spreading over the 
 ground. The attendant phenomenon of the evolution 
 of saline waters, implied in the destruction of Lot’s wife, 
 would be a natural accompaniment, as water is always 
 discharged in such eruptions ; and in this case it would 
 be a brine thick with mud, and fitted to encrust and 
 cover any object reached by it. 
 
 The fate of Lot’s wife, as briefly told in Genesis, im¬ 
 plies that she lingered behind until overtaken by the 
 fire and saline ejections, and that when the survivors 
 sought her remains they found only a heap of saline 
 incrustation marking the place where she perished. The 
 term in the original is not a ‘ pillar,’ but a ‘ mound,’ and 
 the former word was probably suggested to the trans¬ 
 lators by the baseless fables which connect Lot’s wife 
 with the pillar-like masses of salt that weather out of 
 the salt cliff of Jebel Usdum—fables which have no 
 foundation in the Bible or in common sense. 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 11 3 
 
 An important note, with reference to the destruction 
 of the Cities of the Plain, appears in the statement in 
 Genesis xiv. that the Vale of Siddirn had bitumen pits 
 or wells, and that these were so abundant or important 
 as to furnish a place of retreat to, or to impede the flight 
 of, the defeated kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. These 
 bitumen pits have disappeared, unless their remains are 
 represented by the singular pits described by Dr. Merrill 
 as occurring near Wady Nimrim. Their existence in 
 the times of Abraham would bespeak a much greater 
 abundance of bituminous matter than that now remain¬ 
 ing ; and it is possible that the eruption which destroyed 
 the Cities of the Plain may have to a great extent ex¬ 
 hausted the supply of petroleum. 
 
 There is no reason to believe that the destruction of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah was connected with any im¬ 
 portant change in the limits of the Dead Sea, though it 
 is highly probable that some subsidence of the valley 
 took place, and may have slightly affected its levels re¬ 
 latively to the Jordan and the sea -, 1 but it would appear 
 from Deut. xxix. 23 that the eruption was followed by a 
 permanent deterioration of the district by the saline 
 mud with which it was covered. It is not likely, how¬ 
 ever, that this referred to a very extensive area; and the 
 deposit produced would be so like to those of the Dead 
 Sea that it would not be easy to distinguish it, unless 
 remains of man or his works were found under it. I 
 fully agree with Dr. Merrill that these remains are to be 
 sought for on the Plain of Shittim, at the north-east corner 
 of the Dead Sea, where, as he informs us, there are still 
 several ancient city sites, some of which may belong to 
 
 1 Evidence as to this might be obtained by carefully taking the levels of 
 the raised deposits on the two sides of the sea. 
 
 I 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 JI4 
 
 the cities in question, which were, however, probably of 
 small size and near to one another. 
 
 The destruction of the Cities of the Plain was used, 
 up to the close of the New Testament canon, as an 
 example of Divine vengeance on sinners; and the Dead 
 Sea itself occupies an interesting place in that noble 
 prophetic vision of Ezekiel, 1 in which he sees the waters 
 of spiritual life flowing forth from the temple at Jeru¬ 
 salem and filling and sweetening the dead sea of human 
 depravity. 
 
 The plain of the Jordan near Jericho consists of fluvi- 
 atile soil, resting on the old deposits of the Dead Sea, 
 which in places rise through it in barren mounds. In 
 many respects it reminds one of the Nile valley, and the 
 cliffs which bound it on the west, though of different 
 geological age, very closely resemble those of Egypt. 
 Such survivors of the Exodus as accompanied Joshua 
 must have been struck with this resemblance, which 
 would no doubt be greater in those times, when the 
 plain was probably well cultivated and studded with 
 date-palms, for Jericho was emphatically the ‘city of 
 palm trees.’ At present nothing could present a more 
 mournful picture of natural fertility going to waste for 
 lack of good government. A few miserable peasants 
 dwell in mud huts on this fine plain and cultivate 
 patches of it here and there, and some equally poor 
 Bedouins pasture their flocks on it, but for the most 
 part it is a waste of thorny bushes and rank weeds 
 growing in wild luxuriance, while streams of water, 
 sufficient to irrigate the whole plain, and which did so 
 in former times, as the remains of aqueducts and old 
 sugar mills show, run idly into the Jordan. The only 
 
 1 Chap, xlvii. 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 115 
 
 consolation is that it is a paradise of wild birds, as the 
 number of beautiful species collected by my friend Dr. 
 Merrill in a day amply testified, as well as those that 
 we started on every side as we rode along. 
 
 In Joshua’s time this plain was the possession of the 
 wealthy and populous city of Jericho, and I have no 
 doubt that the city stood on the now desolate mound 
 near the great fountain called Ain es Sultan, or Elisha’s 
 Fountain, 1 which rises at once out of the rock as a 
 rivulet of clear cold water, and no doubt proceeds from 
 caverns running far into the limestone rocks behind. 
 It is, I think, absurd to connect this fountain with the 
 miracle of Elisha, for the great stream of Ain es Sultan 
 must have been what it is now from the earliest historic 
 times. The miracle of the prophet must have had re¬ 
 ference to one of those smaller springs that issue through 
 the old Dead Sea deposits of the plain, and partake of 
 their saline qualities. 
 
 The mound above referred to is of rectangular form, 
 about 60 feet in height and as many yards in length, 
 with two higher portions at the ends and an elevation in 
 the middle; and it is sufficiently near the fountain to 
 have enclosed it with its wall. On examining some 
 trenches which had been cut in its sides by the officers 
 of the Palestine Exploration Fund, it appeared to be 
 composed of rubbish, at least to some depth, and this 
 constituted two layers, the upper characterised by many 
 fragments of limestone, which did not appear in the 
 lower. In the lower layer I observed remains of sun- 
 dried brick, of which Conder supposes the mound to 
 have been originally built. We also found pieces of 
 lava-millstones, a few fragments of thin iridescent glass, 
 
 1 This is the opinion expressed by Conder in his report on this district. 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 Il6 
 
 broken pottery of coarse quality, univalve shells from 
 the Jordan, and a Pectunculus from the Mediterranean, 
 pierced to be hung as an ornament. There were also 
 many flint chips. Conder notices in his report layers of 
 bituminous matter in the lower part of the mass. These 
 may represent floors or roofs of asphalt used in the 
 construction of the houses. 
 
 If we suppose the lower layer to represent the Jericho 
 of Joshua, it may have been built of brick, while the 
 later city, perhaps that founded in the time of Ahab, 
 was largely of limestone from the neighbouring cliffs. 
 This latter city gave place to a new Jericho of the 
 Roman times, which seems to have been farther south, 
 at the mouth of the Wady Kelt, and at the entrance 
 to the road to Jerusalem along the side of that wady. 
 This was probably the Jericho of our Saviour’s time. 
 Its site is marked by some mounds and stone founda¬ 
 tions. The Moslem village of Riha is situated farther 
 out on the alluvial plain, and is a squalid collection of 
 dirty and ill-kept hovels. The only important building 
 near it is a Russian hospice, which figures in our recol¬ 
 lections as the only place in our Eastern journeying 
 where, wet, weary, and belated, we were churlishly 
 refused shelter. We could scarcely help thinking of the 
 illustration it afforded of the text, ‘ I was a Stranger, and 
 ye took Me not in.’ 
 
 The old Jericho of Joshua’s time, though probably 
 of small dimensions compared with modern cities, was a 
 place of wealth and political importance. With abund¬ 
 ance of water, in a plain of great fertility, opposite the 
 principal ford of the Jordan, and commanding two of 
 the most important passes into the country to the west, 
 it had all the elements of primitive prosperity. Its 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 117 
 
 walls, in all likelihood of sun-dried brick, were probably 
 of great height, constituting rather a citadel for defence 
 than a commodious place of habitation, as it had little 
 of the advantage of natural strength, and its population 
 must have been densely crowded into small space in 
 time of war, as we may gather from the expression 
 ‘ straitly shut in,’ and from Rahab’s house being on the 
 city wall. Its mound-like site, its limited size, and the 
 flat country all around, suit well with the picture of the 
 Israelitish procession marching round it, as recorded in 
 Joshua. We may imagine it as a small town with 
 crowded houses built of sun-dried brick and roofed with 
 asphalt, and surrounded with a lofty brick wall with 
 defensive towers, the whole rising up abruptly out of 
 the plain and enclosing at one side, or between tower¬ 
 like outworks, the great fountain of Ain es Sultan, around 
 which and along the course of the stream were groves 
 of palms, while the gardens and fields of the inhabitants, 
 with their summer huts and shelters, lay all around. In 
 the Roman times circumstances had changed, and the 
 entrance to the main road to Jerusalem had become 
 more important as a strategic and commercial position. 
 Hence perhaps the growth of the new town. After the 
 capture of Jericho, the wall of rock on the west, with 
 but few passes, and these steep and difficult, must have 
 appeared a formidable obstacle to the soldiers of Joshua, 
 and we do not wonder at their discouragement when 
 their first attempt to scale the hills of the Amorites at 
 Ai was defeated. 
 
 Either on that mountain of Nebo, from which Moses 
 had his first and last look of the good land of Canaan, 
 or from any of the higher peaks overlooking the Jordan 
 valley on the west, one can form a very clear idea of 
 
118 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 the general physical features of Palestine. We did not 
 enjoy the privilege of standing where Moses stood, but 
 we saw enough to enable us to realise the prospect 
 which he enjoyed. The eastern range of hills, falling 
 on its further slope into the Syrian desert, begins with 
 the rock fortresses of Edom, and runs north through 
 the limestone plateau of Moab to Gilead, thence to the 
 black basaltic highlands of Bashan, then mounts to the 
 snowy summit of Hermon 9200 feet in height, and 
 runs northward in Anti-Libanus. Along this line of 
 elevated and broken country there is a greater variety 
 
 of rock formation than elsewhere in Palestine. The 
 sandstones of Edom and Moab are proved by their 
 fossils to be of Carboniferous or Permian age. There are 
 Jurassic rocks in Hermon of the age of the English 
 oolites. There are vast masses of Tertiary basalts in 
 Bashan. These rocks were at once the strong frontier 
 of Palestine on the east, and the abode of a hardy, 
 pastoral, and agricultural population. West of this line 
 runs the long deep valley of the Dead Sea and Jordan, 
 gradually rising from the great depth of its southern 
 end to an elevated plain in Ccele-Syria, and including 
 
THE JORDAN AND THE DEAD SEA. 
 
 Il 9 
 
 those portions of the land enjoying the warmest climate 
 along with much fertile soil. Then came the main 
 limestone backbone of the country west of the Jordan ; 
 beginning in the highlands of Judea and the South 
 country, a great natural fortress which, when well held, 
 could always bid defiance to the attacks of enemies, and 
 running north into Samaria and Galilee, though there 
 partially broken by the spur of Carmel and the wide 
 and fertile plain of Esdraelon, and finally culminating 
 in Lebanon with peaks 10,000 feet in height. At the 
 western base of the Judean hills lay the broad plains of 
 Sharon and Philistia, extending to the utmost sea, that 
 sea around which were gathered so much of the commerce 
 and civilisation of the ancient world. 
 
 It has been well said that we cannot find any country, 
 in its situation, productions, and physical features, so 
 well suited to be the abode of the chosen people of God, 
 so well fitted to be a centre whence a higher spiritual 
 life might emanate, so well suited to be the cradle of a 
 literature world-wide in its scope. Has it fully done its 
 part in the world? Does it belong, like so many old 
 countries, to the past, and to the past alone ? This can 
 scarcely be. So long as the Bible, which is so essentially 
 the book of Palestine, is also the book of the civilised 
 world; so long as men are thrilled by its story and 
 its poetry, and listen to the Divine words of Jesus of 
 Nazareth;—so long must Palestine live in the affections 
 of men. The same feelings which impelled Abraham 
 to leave friends and country for its sake, and which 
 urged the hosts of crusaders in the Middle Ages to 
 sacrifice their lives in mistaken zeal for its possession, 
 still live. It is true that it is now ‘ trodden down of the 
 Gentiles,’ under perhaps the worst form of robbery that 
 
120 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 ever existed in the name of a government, and that it 
 is surrounded by a net of political complications which 
 warn all men from meddling with it; but its time and 
 God’s time will surely come. And here I must say 
 one word to Christians interested in Palestine. Its 
 present hope lies not so much in fanciful theories of the 
 national restoration of the Jews as in the cultivation of 
 the native Christian and Jewish populations, among 
 whom the Protestant Missionaries are now working. 
 The best hopes of Palestine rest on its Christian people, 
 and on the spiritual and intellectual elevation of their 
 children now in the schools of the Missionaries. 
 
 Note. —For more detailed information respecting the geological questions 
 discussed in the above chapter I would refer the reader to Lartet, Explora¬ 
 tion Geologique de la Mer Morte ; Huddleston on the Geology of Palestine ; 
 Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, vol. viii; and Hull, Mount Seir, 
 Sinai, and Western Palestine. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
Ascent of the Pass of Nahr el Ivelb from the North, with one of the 
 Tablets. (Sketch by E. D.) 
 
 i|r !t . 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 When one reads in the guide-books that Egyptian 
 kings reigned over a great nation long before the time 
 when Adam is generally supposed to have been expelled 
 from Paradise, it seems useless to look for any properly 
 prehistoric men in Egypt. On the other hand, when 
 we see the statement gravely made that the early 
 civilisation of Egypt implies countless ages of progress 
 from a state of barbarism, we run into the opposite 
 extreme, and conclude that the whole soil of the country 
 must be filled with stone implements and with human 
 bones. In truth, the absurdity of such statements 
 makes us wonder that they meet with so much accept¬ 
 ance, or perhaps rather that such demands should be 
 made by archaeologists on the credulity of the unscien¬ 
 tific public. 
 
 The earliest dynasties of Egyptian kings are known 
 to us chiefly by the facts gleaned from a few tombs 
 and sculptures, and by the traditions of later ages; and 
 even these sources of light fail with respect to the three 
 earliest of Manetho’s dynasties, of which only the names 
 survive. Thus the only evidence of any human existence 
 anterior to these earlier kings is that derived from the 
 occurrence of certain chipped flints, supposed to be of 
 human workmanship, and found in gravel, undoubtedly 
 
124 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 of great age. It will be necessary for us to sift this 
 evidence, and ascertain what it contains of truth, and 
 to what conclusions it legitimately leads. 
 
 It may be well, in the first place, to refer to the 
 statement made in an earlier chapter as to the little 
 antecedent probability that the remains of antediluvian 
 or palaeocosmic man will be found in Egypt. These 
 men lived in the Second Continental or post-glacial 
 period, when Europe and Northern Africa were more 
 elevated above the sea than at present, and when it 
 is probable that Egypt was almost wholly a desert 
 region. If any men had found access to it, and lived 
 along the strip of land by the side of the then rapid 
 and narrow river that represented the Nile, their remains 
 would most likely now be deeply covered with alluvial 
 mud ; while if their habitation was at the river-mouth, by 
 the sea-side, their former abodes would now be under the 
 Mediterranean. There are, however, caverns which man 
 may have haunted, and old deposits of high-level gravel, 
 not unlike those in. which supposed flint implements 
 have been found elsewhere ; but I am not aware that 
 any cavern deposits containing prehistoric human remains 
 have been found, and the gravels have, as yet, yielded 
 no certain evidence. 
 
 We may also notice the fact that Egypt is abundantly 
 supplied with flint in a state suitable for the manufacture 
 of implements. Some of the beds of soft Eocene lime¬ 
 stone are nearly as richly stocked with flint nodules as 
 the white chalk of England and France. They have 
 been produced in these limestones in the same manner 
 as in the chalk, by the secretion of silicious matter 
 included in the soft calcareous mud of which the beds 
 were composed. Where these limestones have been 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 125 
 
 removed by marine denudation, vast tracts of desert are 
 found to be covered with entire and broken flints. In 
 like manner the wadies cut by the mountain torrents 
 are full of flint nodules, and when the limestone is 
 quarried some of the beds have so many flints as 
 seriously to interfere with their economic uses. Some 
 of these flints are brown and opaque, constituting a kind 
 of jasper or chert; others are translucent, and of a grey 
 colour, like ordinary chalk flint. 
 
 There is good reason to believe that these flints were 
 largely used by the ancient Egyptians. Flint picks have 
 been found in some of their mines. They used flint¬ 
 headed arrows for shooting birds and other animals. 
 Flint knives were used for sacrificial and surgical pur¬ 
 poses, and for shaving the head. It is generally believed 
 that much of the fine carving of hieroglyphics and 
 figures in low relief on the walls of tombs was executed 
 with flint tools, and careful study of the worked surfaces 
 with the lens induces me to believe that this is not 
 improbable. Petrie has also shown that for cutting 
 the harder kinds of stones gems set in bronze drills 
 were employed, and for softer stones flint may have 
 been used. In short, we have reason to believe that 
 for several purposes the Egyptians preferred flint, and 
 that for others they used it as a cheap and readily 
 obtained material. 1 At a later date there was an 
 extensive demand for flints for flint-lock muskets, and 
 the trade of manufacturing these is by no means extinct. 
 At Assiout, where there is abundance of good flint in 
 the limestone of the neighbouring mountain, I saw in 
 the market women selling flint flakes, and I was informed 
 
 1 Mariette Bey has given many illustrations of these facts. 
 
126 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 that the fellaheen in this part of the country carry these 
 in their tobacco-pouches with a steel and some vegetable 
 fibre for tinder, and so save the expense of matches for 
 lighting their pipes and cigarettes. I obtained from 
 the tobacco-pouch of an Arab friend at Gizeh one of 
 these ‘ strike-a-lights,’ so much worn by use that it had 
 become deeply concave on one side, and closely resem¬ 
 bled those hollow scrapers found on ancient sites, and 
 believed to be tools for polishing shafts of spears. Flint 
 muskets are still in use by the Bedaween and fellaheen, 
 and the flints which I saw for sale at Assiout, and which 
 could be purchased for one or two piastres a dozen, were 
 fitted to serve for either purpose. The mountain behind 
 this place, which is riddled with the tombs of the inhabit¬ 
 ants of the ancient Lycopolis, excavated in the flint¬ 
 bearing limestones, is in places strewn with flint chips, 
 the result of such manufacture both in ancient and 
 modern times. Dr. Schweinfurth, of Cairo, informed me 
 that the people of the village of Kadasseh, opposite 
 Cairo, are largely employed in making flints. They 
 have hammers of soft iron for the purpose, and are very 
 dexterous in shaping the flints with a few blows, and 
 their village is surrounded with heaps of flint refuse. I 
 afterwards obtained specimens from this place. 
 
 In these circumstances it is evident that the flint flakes 
 strewn over the country, even when found in connection 
 with so-called ‘ateliers,’ cannot be considered as evidence 
 of prehistoric man. Nor is it correct to affirm, as some 
 have done, that chipped flints are found only on the 
 natural desert surfaces, and not on the sites of old towns 
 and similar places. Of course they are much more 
 abundant on the desert surfaces from which flint-bearing 
 beds have been denuded, because this is their natural 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 127 
 
 position, and in this position the broken flints are usually 
 those which have been chipped by the long action of 
 natural processes. One error in regard to this natural 
 breakage deserves notice. It is said to have been caused 
 by the alternate expansion and contraction of the flint 
 from changes of temperature. But flint is not easily 
 broken in this way. I have exposed piles of chalk flints 
 for years to the frosts of a Canadian winter, alternating 
 with rain and mild weather, and though a few good 
 flakes and piercers were produced, this was only from 
 the surfaces already broken, and the number of specimens 
 was small. The actual cause is the pounding of heavy 
 stones borne along by torrents, or driven by surf, and 
 the fragments produced in this way are often very 
 similar to those produced by hammering. Hence the 
 flint splinters and flakes which may be mistaken for 
 works of man are found, not so much on the flat desert 
 surface as in masses of rolled gravel and in the beds 
 of torrents and the sides of steep hills. 1 Where they 
 are found elsewhere it may be suspected that man has 
 had something to do with their manufacture or collection, 
 and this is certainly the case in the vicinity of some 
 Egyptian tombs, and at spots, here and there, where 
 piles of flint chips may be seen scattered round little 
 depressions in the ground, or around a stone on which 
 the workman may have sat (Fig. 26). 
 
 On the ordinary desert surface, it is true, the effects 
 of the weather may sometimes be seen in chipping off 
 little circular flakes from the exposed sides of flint 
 nodules, giving a pitted appearance to the surface, but 
 
 1 In some flint gravels in Kent I have observed certain layers in which 
 broken flints specially abound. These represent surfaces on which severe 
 abrasion has occurred. 
 
128 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 not usually producing larger fractures. The breaking 
 of the countless multitudes of fractured flints that occur 
 in the beds of gravel and on the surface is to be attri¬ 
 buted to mechanical percussion ; and whether this has 
 been the effect of natural impinging of stones on the 
 flints has to be determined by the circumstances of their 
 occurrence, the greater or less regularity and uniformity 
 of their shapes, and their association with other evidences 
 of human residence. Of course, when there is evidence 
 not merely of chipping but of moulding into determinate 
 shapes by pressure of the edges, in the manner in which 
 modern savages give the finish to their weapons, the 
 proof of human agency is very much stronger. 
 
 With reference to conditions of occurrence, it is evi¬ 
 dent that those lying on the surface can give no evidence 
 as to antiquity, except that derivable from their more 
 or less weathered character; but this differs in different 
 kinds of flint. The best evidence of great age would be 
 that available with reference to certain caves in Syria, to 
 be noticed in the sequel—namely, their occurrence in 
 stratified deposits known on other evidence to be of 
 certain definite geological ages. This test is less easily 
 applied to the gravel deposits, especially when they con¬ 
 tain no fossils. 
 
 Now in Egypt nearly all the flint flakes known occur 
 at the surface of the ground, or covered merely with 
 modern mud or rain-wash. I can find only one instance 
 of their occurrence in beds probably of some antiquity. 
 This is the well-known discovery by General Pitt Rivers 
 of flakes supposed to be of human workmanship in a 
 bed of gravel near Thebes, in which, owing to its hard¬ 
 ness and the subsequent cutting of a ravine across it, 
 the Egyptians had at a very ancient period excavated 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 129 
 
 tombs. 1 Such gravel is undoubtedly prehistoric, and if 
 actual flint implements have been found in it, it proves 
 the residence of man in Egypt at a period greatly 
 earlier than that of Menes, the alleged founder of the 
 Egyptian monarchy. Before visiting Egypt I read this 
 most interesting paper; but though the author had 
 evidently given much attention to the subject, it was 
 also evident that he had overlooked some important 
 facts which would at once suggest themselves to a 
 geologist, and had taken for granted some things for 
 which a geologist would expect proof. I therefore took 
 the first opportunity to visit and examine the locality 
 which he has so well mapped and described. 
 
 The well-known valley of the Tombs of the Kings at 
 Thebes is a gorge or wady cut into the Eocene lime¬ 
 stone, which here rises abruptly to a height of 700 feet 
 above its bed on either side. The strata are horizontal, 
 but where the wady occurs there has been an east and 
 west fracture, along which the limestone has become in 
 places a brecciated mass, and which has given origin to 
 the cutting of the wady. The bottom of the valley is 
 covered with a bed of fragments of the harder lime¬ 
 stones and of flint nodules; and so violent are the 
 torrents which occasionally traverse it in winter storms, 
 that wide furrows as much as 4 feet deep have been 
 cut through the mass, and stones as large as 2 feet in 
 diameter are rolled before the waters. This has oc¬ 
 curred in modern times, and I saw places where the 
 paths made by rolling aside the large stones had been 
 again obstructed by them. I may state here that occa¬ 
 sionally rain pours in deluges on the hills of Egypt and 
 
 1 Journal of Anthropological Institute, vol. xi. p. 382. See also a paper 
 by the author, Transactions of Victoria Institute, May, 1884. 
 
 K 
 
130 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 produces frightful torrents. I saw many evidences of 
 this, and at Jebel Attaka, on the Red Sea, in a per¬ 
 fectly desert country, I observed a place where a road 
 embankment made to a quarry used in the construction 
 of the Suez Canal had been cut across by a torrent and 
 large stones rolled to one side. A trustworthy and 
 intelligent man, long resident at Koorneh, and well ac¬ 
 quainted with the Bab el Molook, the Gate of the Kings, 
 as this valley is called, pointed out to me examples 
 of this torrential action dating within his own ex¬ 
 perience. 
 
 At present these torrents in the Bab el Molook only 
 suffice to drift materials to the mouth of the gorge, but 
 at some previous time—probably when the valley was 
 steeper and less deeply excavated, when for a limited 
 time there was an unusual torrential force, and when the 
 waters flowing from it poured either into a broader Nile 
 or into the sea itself—a great mass of similar matter was 
 projected from it in a fan or delta, known as Jebel 
 Assart, and which is about a mile in length and a 
 quarter of a mile broad, while its highest part is about 
 25 feet above the alluvial plain. At a later time a 
 coulee , or wady, has been cut through this mass by the 
 floods from the valley, which still occasionally fill it after 
 violent storms, and drive large stones before them. The 
 sides of this cut show good sections of the gravel, which 
 is consolidated by calcareous infiltration, so as to con¬ 
 stitute a soft conglomerate. The gravel is composed of 
 partially-rounded pebbles and blocks of limestone and 
 broken and entire flints, agreeing in this respect with the 
 recent gravel now in the main valley; and some of the 
 blocks are quite as large, being occasionally 2 feet in 
 their longest diameter, though this size is rare. General 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 X 3 X 
 
 Rivers has noticed the stratified character of the gravel, 
 and that it contains a band of hardened mud. I found, 
 however, that in some of the deeper sections there are 
 several such bands, and that the material is entirely 
 different from the mud of the Nile, being sandy and 
 calcareous, and mixed occasionally with small stones 
 and broken flints. It is merely a product of the less 
 violent driftage from the valley, spread out in water in 
 the intervals between the coarser deposits. In some 
 
 Fig. 25.—Ancient Gravel of Jebel Assart near Thebes, with bands of 
 hardened loam and sand. 
 
 places it has been cemented into a stone quite as hard 
 as the softer varieties of the Eocene limestone. I 
 searched in it carefully for fossils, but found only some 
 faintly-marked branching cavities, which may represent 
 roots or aquatic plants. 
 
 That this bed of gravel is of very old date is evi¬ 
 denced by the fact that the Egyptians have excavated 
 tombs in it in the same manner as in the neighbouring 
 hills. Many of these now stand open in the little wady, 
 some entire, and others with their roofs fallen in ; and it 
 
1 3 2 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 is evident that when they were cut the gravel was as 
 hard as at present. Independently of this, its character, 
 position, and material show that it was deposited in 
 water or afterwards submerged, and that it consequently 
 belongs to a period antecedent to the present geo¬ 
 graphical conditions of the country, and therefore dating 
 from the Pleistocene, or Post-glacial, rather than the 
 recent period. No geologist can, I think, doubt that 
 its deposition and consolidation are altogether anterior 
 to the establishment of the Egyptian monarchy. At 
 the same time, though this gravel is ancient, its actual 
 deposition need not have occupied a long time, but 
 probably was sudden and paroxysmal. 
 
 Now in this gravel, and some distance below its sur¬ 
 face, General Pitt Rivers finds flakes of flint which he 
 regards as of human workmanship, and which he has 
 figured and described in the Journal of the Anthro¬ 
 pological Institute. The antiquity of the beds being 
 undoubted, the whole question at issue turns on the 
 validity of this inference, and I am sorry to say that, 
 after the most careful scrutiny, and the collection of large 
 numbers of the flakes, I cannot follow with any con¬ 
 fidence the learned author in his opinion as to their 
 origin. The following reasons, I think, are sufficient 
 to show that they may be natural rather than artificial. 
 
 None of them are implements, properly so called, or 
 even definite flakes struck off from cores likes those 
 found in the bone caverns of Syria and on the surface 
 in some parts of Egypt. On the contrary, they are chips 
 of all shapes, and such as could not be referred to any 
 definite purpose. If found in association with human 
 remains, they might be supposed to have been selected 
 for use, as likely as to have been made. While count- 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 133 
 
 less multitudes of broken flints exist in the gravel, not 
 one in a thousand has a form which could enable it 
 to be useful to man in any way, and from such flakes 
 there is every gradation to perfectly shapeless frag¬ 
 ments. In the natural debris recently swept down the 
 ravine the forms are much the same, though it is 
 evident that these have been broken by modern tor¬ 
 rential action. While I was engaged in extracting 
 flakes from the old gravel, I employed my guide in 
 collecting them in the recent torrential stuff, and his 
 specimens would certainly have been considered by any 
 enthusiast in flints as better than mine. Not only have 
 many of these modern flints been well chipped and 
 furnished with ‘ bulbs of percussion,’ but by rolling to¬ 
 gether they have even been crenulated on the edges, so 
 as to resemble scrapers. In short, the evidence for pre¬ 
 historic man afforded by the Theban gravel is no better 
 than that which is afforded by the broken flints now 
 being chipped by the torrents. 
 
 I attach no great importance in this discussion to the 
 so-called ‘ types ’ of flint flakes and implements. Rude¬ 
 ness of form is no evidence of age. The rudest possible 
 chips may have been formed in the production of good 
 implements, and very rude implements were used by 
 cultivated nations for agricultural and other purposes, 
 and even for sculpture and for surgical operations. On 
 the other hand, there is a precision of form and definite¬ 
 ness of adaptation which distinguishes artificial forms of 
 any kind from those which are accidental or natural. I 
 have elsewhere 1 expressed the results, in respect to this 
 point, of much study of American stone implements, and 
 my conclusions have been confirmed by the examination 
 
 1 Fossil Men a?id their RIodern Representatives, 1880. 
 
!34 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 of the fine collections at St. Germains and of the oldest 
 flint knives in the Syrian caves. 
 
 With regard to the precise geological age of the fan 
 or mound of gravel at Jebel Assart, I am inclined to 
 refer it approximately to the same date with the raised 
 beaches with modern oysters (Ostrea Forskali) near 
 Cairo, and on the side of a hill called Het el Orab, 
 near the Pyramids of Gizeh. At the latter place there 
 is a consolidated gravel beach, made up mostly of frag¬ 
 ments of the neighbouring rocks, some of them with 
 oysters attached, or in their interstices. There are no 
 broken flints in this gravel, because the beds of the old 
 coast at this point do not afford them, but the gravel is 
 in the same condition, and has been subjected to de¬ 
 nudation of like character, as it now.,overhangs with an 
 abrupt surface a valley of considerable depth. Both 
 deposits may in any case be referred with some proba¬ 
 bility to the Pleistocene period, and most probably to 
 the period of submergence with cold and moist climate 
 which preceded the Second Continental or Post-glacial 
 age. 
 
 That flints have been worked at Thebes long subse¬ 
 quent to the deposition of the gravel at Jebel Assart, 
 I saw evidence in a very distinct ‘atelier’ on the top of 
 the bed. It was a small depression in the soil with a 
 large stone at one side, and quantities of flint chips 
 lying around. The chips were all shapeless, like those 
 left by the modern makers of gun-flints, but their 
 weathered surfaces showed that they are of considerable 
 antiquity. Such places for the making of flint imple¬ 
 ments within the historic period abound in Egypt, and 
 have been described by Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Jukes 
 Browne, Mr. R. P. Greg, Professor Haynes, and others. 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 1 35 
 
 One of the most interesting localities of this kind is 
 that at the baths of Helouan, near Cairo. At this place 
 the desert surface of the lower terrace skirting the Turra 
 cliffs is not very abundantly supplied with flint nodules. 
 They are indeed more rare than is usual in such places. 
 At one spot, however, a short distance south-west of 
 the town of Helouan, chipped flints are found in some 
 abundance on the surface. They are principally elon¬ 
 gated and slender flakes, and are evidently of human 
 workmanship. The place where they occur is, however, 
 full of fragments of burned brick, and of limestone from 
 
 the quarries behind, and there are also some remains of 
 superficial graves. The place is thus evidently the 
 site of a village, possibly connected with the use of the 
 sulphur springs in the Greek or Roman period. The 
 connection of the flint chips with the village is as 
 obvious as that of the bricks, and it is probable that its 
 people, like those of Kadasseh at present, were makers 
 of flint implements, which, judging from their prevalent 
 form, were intended to be used as small knives, piercers, 
 etc., or possibly for carving on limestone slabs. Arrows 
 and spear-heads have been found at this place ; and 
 I saw specimens of these after my return to Britain, 
 more especially in the collections of the Edinburgh 
 
1 3 6 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 Society of Antiquaries ; but I was not so fortunate as to 
 find any, and I imagine they must be rare. This He- 
 louan atelier is an example of many evidently belonging 
 to historical times. 
 
 Professor Sayce has, I believe, suggested that the 
 flint knives of Helouan and similar places may have 
 been the work of rude Nubian tribes, who took pos¬ 
 session of portions of the Nile valley in the decline 
 of the Roman power; but there seems little reason 
 to doubt that there was a sufficient demand for 
 such implements during the whole period of Egyptian 
 history to cause their manufacture to take place at 
 certain spots where the circumstances were favourable. 
 It seems singular that Helouan is a place where flints 
 are naturally scarce, though silicified wood abounds on 
 the rising ground behind; but the material could easily 
 be obtained in the inland cliffs, where also there were ex¬ 
 tensive quarries, from which fresh, unweathered material 
 could be procured. Before leaving this subject it is inter¬ 
 esting to note that the only instances recorded in the 
 Bible of the use of flint implements are closely connected 
 with Egypt, and refer to the performance of the rite of 
 circumcision with flint knives (Exod. iv. 25, Josh. v. 2). 
 
 It would thus appear that the only Egyptians we 
 know anything of are those of the historical period, and 
 these, we must believe, migrated into Egypt not as 
 barbarians, but in possession of all the knowledge and 
 artistic skill of that long antediluvian age of which their 
 immediate ancestors were the survivors. The use of 
 the more important metals, the building of cities and 
 ships, the tillage of the soil, and the domestication of 
 animals, were all acquisitions of the antediluvian age. 
 These the primitive Egyptians must have brought with 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 137 
 
 them ; and in a land so abundant in food, and with 
 such resources for quarrying and transportation of mate¬ 
 rial, they must have had ample opportunity for carrying 
 them into practice. 
 
 In a previous chapter I noticed the probability that 
 Egypt was originally a wooded country, and I may now 
 add that Dr. Schweinfurth, who has devoted himself to 
 the investigation of the botany of Egypt and the country 
 to the south of it, believes that in primitive times Egypt 
 must have been an extension of the forest region of 
 interior Africa, and, notwithstanding the present paucity 
 of its indigenous arboreal flora, must have been well 
 wooded. Thus the early Egyptians would have abund¬ 
 ance of that kind of material which is of all others 
 most important to settlers in a new country, and the 
 clearing of the soil of forests, and the use of wood in 
 constructing buildings, boats, vehicles, and agricul¬ 
 tural implements, must have been among their earlier 
 operations. It is quite likely, therefore, that the earliest 
 villages in Egypt were built of wood, and that navi¬ 
 gation on the Nile was developed very rapidly. This 
 view accords with the fact that many beautiful examples 
 of carving on wood have come down to us from the 
 period of the early monarchy. The wooden statues 
 preserved in the Boulak Museum and in the Louvre, 
 and the planks covered with hieroglyphics, carved in 
 the most beautiful and artistic style, show that under 
 the earlier dynasties working in wood had attained to 
 a degree of perfection unsurpassed in any later age. 
 The potter’s art and metal-work in bronze seem to have 
 been as early as work in wood; but in neither of these 
 did the Egyptians attain to the artistic delicacy dis¬ 
 played in some other countries. But from very early 
 
i 3 8 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 times they seem to have preferred stone for the higher 
 development of their art ; and there is evidence that in 
 the earlier ages, before the Hyksos invasion, they had 
 already explored and turned to account most of the 
 mineral resources of their country. They had not only 
 opened quarries in the Eocene limestone, and discovered 
 the best and most useful beds, but they had quarried 
 the granite, syenite, and diorite of Assouan, as well as 
 the Nubian sandstone of Silsilis ; and their sculptors 
 had worked blocks of anorthosite and porphyry from the 
 mountains between Kosseir and the Nile, and blocks of 
 basaltic rock from the Libyan desert, as well as the hardest 
 quartzite from Jebel Ahmar and its companion hills. 
 
 In the Boulak Museum are two tables for offerings 
 of this age, made of the stone last mentioned, a rock 
 harder than agate. They are large and thick slabs, 
 worked in the most elaborate manner into a series of 
 raised bowls or cups above, with inscriptions around the 
 edges of the slabs. The rock is too hard to be cut with 
 steel or bronze, except by a slow process of elaborate 
 chipping, followed by polishing and drilling with emery 
 or some other very hard material. The labour bestowed 
 on these stones would in the present day be esteemed 
 an altogether extravagant waste, and is only to be 
 paralleled by the drilling in hard stone practised by 
 some of the more civilised aboriginal tribes of America. 
 That the old Egyptians used the drill in working hard 
 stones is well seen in an unfinished slab at Boulak, on 
 which the outline of a leaf has been marked, and the 
 space within drilled with a number of round holes to 
 the depth it was intended to cut in making the leaf 
 uniform with other figures on the same slab. In cutting 
 on hard stones like quartzite and granite, both drilling 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 139 
 
 and chipping must have been used; and it is interesting 
 to note that both these means of working hard stone 
 were practised by the American Indians and other 
 primitive peoples. 1 
 
 The Egyptians of the early kingdom had also dis¬ 
 covered and worked a great number of ornamental 
 stones. They mined the turquoise in Arabia and the 
 alabaster of their own limestones, and we find calcite, 
 agate, carnelian, amethyst, fluor, garnet, serpentine, and 
 lapis lazuli commonly used for beads and small orna¬ 
 ments. Some of these stones, as well as amber, of 
 which the remains are occasionally found, may perhaps 
 belong to a somewhat later time than that here referred 
 to ; but the relics of the early monarchy imply much 
 search for gems, and some skill in working them. The 
 boring of amethyst, agate, and especially garnet, for 
 beads, is itself a work of some difficulty, independently 
 of more artistic performances. The skill of the ancient 
 Egyptians in working all kinds of gems and stones, 
 and in the manufacture: of jewelry, illustrates the early 
 notices of such objects in the Biblical books, for there 
 can be no question that these arts had attained great 
 development in Egypt before the time of Abraham, who 
 is the first recorded Hebrew visitor to Egypt, and who 
 no doubt, like later travellers, brought back with him to 
 Canaan among the valuables in gold and silver which he 
 is stated to have acquired in Egypt some specimens of 
 the artistic skill of that country. 
 
 The engineering and architectural power displayed in 
 the Pyramids has been often referred to ; but it must 
 
 1 Mr. Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, shows that 
 the Egyptians must have used hollow drills armed with gems, or, in other 
 words, the same kind of contrivance revived in the diamond drill of modern 
 times. 
 
140 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 be borne in mind that this is only a further development 
 of the megalithie masonry of so many ancient peoples ; 
 and the pyramid itself is a sepulchral or religious monu¬ 
 ment common to many primitive nations of the Old 
 and New Worlds. There is no essential difference be¬ 
 tween the teocalli of Mexico, the temple mound of 
 Assyria, and the stepped pyramid of Egypt, except in 
 the greater perfection of mechanical skill and the im¬ 
 mense amount of labour bestowed on the latter. 
 
 The actual time implied in the long list of Egyptian 
 kings preserved by Manetho, from the age of Menes 
 downward, cannot be determined with any certainty, 
 and it has been well remarked by a recent writer 
 that all is guesswork before the twelfth dynasty. It 
 seems, indeed, quite certain that the earlier dynastic 
 lists relate to kings many of whom must have been 
 petty local sovereigns, so that several may have been 
 reigning at one time. When we read of Thinite, Mem¬ 
 phite, and Theban dynasties, it is implied that there 
 were separate sovereignties existing in the principal 
 centres of population, and that though occasionally one 
 of the kings made himself paramount, there were other 
 times when distinct kings reigned at these several places, 
 yet all the names were preserved. This seems to be 
 implied in the discrepancies in the lists actually extant 
 at Abydos and Thebes, which show that the kings of 
 the eighteenth dynasty traced their predecessors in these 
 places through distinct lines. 
 
 That the art of writing, and with it historical and 
 other literature, came with the earliest Egyptian colonists 
 there seems now no reason to doubt. It is certain at 
 least that the oldest known monuments show it in as 
 great perfection as at any subsequent date, and we have 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 141 
 
 contemporary writing on the monuments of Chaldea. 
 The art of writing certainly dates at least from the 
 Deluge. In its Egyptian form, however, it very dis¬ 
 tinctly points to its origin in picture-writing, similar to 
 that of the old Mexicans, passing into ideographic 
 characters, like those of Central America and Easter 
 Island, and finally assuming a phonetic form very 
 beautiful in its artistic aspect, and having peculiar 
 adaptations to variety of expression and union with 
 syllabic and pictographic representation. Considering 
 its adaptability in this way, one does not wonder that 
 the Egyptian learned caste of priests and scribes refused 
 to the last to abandon it for a more purely alphabetical 
 style. The invention of papyrus paper, a native Egyptian 
 discovery, must have given a great stimulus and aid to 
 literature, and its disuse marks the time of literary decay 
 beginning in the later Roman period. When Isaiah em¬ 
 phasises the withering of the paper reeds (ch. xix. 7), his 
 words imply the political changes which reduced the 
 Egyptians to bondage, and that barbarism which eclipsed 
 their literature : both of these causes combining to destroy 
 the culture of the papyrus, which as a wild plant had 
 been extirpated by the demand for it in better times, 
 so that now the papyrus is no longer found in Egypt; 
 and according to Dr. Schweinfurth, who has directed 
 attention to the causes of its disappearance, it would 
 not now be profitable to cultivate it for the manufacture 
 of paper. It has been remarked as a pleasant feature 
 of the oldest Egyptian writings, that the hieroglyphics 
 used relate to peaceful occupations, and not to war, and 
 that in these older inscriptions there is also an absence 
 of images of gods, and a more exclusive devotion to 
 Ptah, the creator. This corresponds with our Biblical 
 
142 
 
 EGYPT AND- SYRIA. 
 
 ideas of the simple piety of the early descendants of 
 Noah. It was after the invasion of the Hyksos and the 
 wars thence arising that the military spirit and the more 
 gross idolatry became dominant. 
 
 The few portrait statues and sphinxes that remain 
 from the Hyksos period are worthy, in their style of 
 execution, of the best times of Egyptian art; but in the 
 succeeding ages of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynas¬ 
 ties, the culminating period of Egyptian power, we have 
 in some respects a change in the tastes and monuments 
 of the Egyptians. This was probably the period of the 
 Hebrew residence in Egypt, and it is not unlikely that 
 they and other Semitic peoples inhabiting portions of 
 Lower Egypt exercised some influence in this new age. 
 External circumstances were, however, also different. 
 Wood had become scarce and dear; clay, sun-dried 
 brick, and stone had replaced it in many kinds of work ; 
 the Delta region had become more important relatively 
 to Upper Egypt; canals, irrigation, and culture had 
 extended over the whole country. Quarrying and con¬ 
 veyance of large blocks of stone had been perfected, 
 elaborate and conventional sculpture was more esteemed 
 than accurate representation of nature. Pyramids had 
 gone out of fashion ; and it was the age of pillared halls, 
 colossal statues, and obelisks. The Nubian sandstone, 
 instead of the limestone of Middle and Lower Egypt, 
 became the chief stone of construction, and the finest 
 blocks ever quarried were taken from the rocks of 
 Syend. In front of one of the southern propyla of 
 Karnak were six seated colossi, each a monolith about 
 20 feet in height. Each was sculptured in a different 
 kind of stone. Four, which remain more or less entire, 
 are respectively of three varieties of limestone or marble, 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 143 
 
 and of a brown quartzite with pebbles, similar to that 
 of Jebel Ahmar, near Cairo, and of intense hardness. 
 The two others, of which only chips remain, were prob¬ 
 ably one of white limestone and one of red granite. 
 The blocks for these statues must have come from dif¬ 
 ferent quarries in different parts of Egypt, and were 
 perhaps intended to be representative of these different 
 districts. In any case, they afford a curious testimony 
 to the capacity of the Egyptian sculptors to deal with 
 any kind of stone, and also to their ability to convey 
 large masses of stone to great distances. One of the 
 most remarkable feats of the latter kind is evidenced by 
 a recent discovery of Petrie at Tanis, the Zoan of the 
 Bible, in the northern part of the Delta. This is the 
 remains of a statue of Rameses II, the oppressor of the 
 Hebrews, which has been a monolith of granite 90 feet 
 in height, and weighing about 1200 tons. 1 This im¬ 
 mense mass must have been cut at the quarries of 
 Syene, and conveyed more than 5 °° miles, to be set up 
 in the temple of Tanis as a monument of a man dis¬ 
 tinguished alike by personal beauty, ability, and energy, 
 and by remorseless cruelty and tyranny. 
 
 It is unnecessary to pursue this history further, but 
 I may refer to two objects which I picked up in Egypt, 
 and which perhaps point to a time when polished stone 
 tools were extensively used. One is an ovate flat piece 
 of polished slate about 5 inches long, broad and sharp- 
 edged at one end, and pointed at the other. It may 
 have been a hatchet, knife, or spear-head, and was said 
 to have been found in a tomb in Upper Egypt, along 
 with jars of brown earthenware. The other is a beauti¬ 
 fully polished chisel of light green jade, scarcely two 
 
 1 Report of Egypt Exploration Committee, 1884. 
 
144 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 inches long, and pierced with a hole for suspension, to 
 be worn as an ornament or charm. The form is that of 
 the ordinary oblong stone hatchet or chisel of early 
 Europe and America, and, though small, it may have 
 been actually used. The edge is, however, quite blunt, 
 and it is more probably a mere model cut for an orna¬ 
 ment, or to be left as an offering with the dead. The 
 form and material are, however, both interesting, as 
 pointing to a time when polished hatchets of stone were 
 still in use in Egypt, and they connect themselves with 
 the record on Egyptian monuments that implements 
 of green stone were brought as tribute by the Hittites. 
 
 Though the valley of the Nile, which has a history 
 so interesting and extended, fails to afford traces of the 
 oldest known races of men, Syria supplies what it lacks 
 in this respect, and some of the bone caverns in the 
 northern part of that country, to which Canon Tristram 
 first directed attention in England, seem to carry us 
 back to a time anterior to the oldest history of Egypt. 
 These caverns are of great interest, and I shall summarise 
 here some notes respecting them which I read in 1884 
 before the Victoria Institute of London. 1 
 
 The Lebanon Mountains, composed as they are prin¬ 
 cipally of horizontal or slightly inclined beds of limestone 
 of different degrees of hardness, and traversed by many 
 faults and fissures, are eminently suited for the production 
 of caverns and rock shelters available for human resi¬ 
 dence or for sheltering animals. Hence the Lebanon 
 
 1 According to Lartet (Comptcs Rendus, 1864), Dr. Hedenborg was the 
 first to direct attention to the Ant Elias caves, but he does not seem to have 
 examined their contents. M. Botta was the first to notice the rock shelters 
 near the Nahr el Kelb River, which Lartet himself afterwards explored, 
 and which are obviously more modern in their contents than the breccias of 
 the Nahr-el-Kelb Pass described by Tristram. 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 H5 
 
 range seems at all times to have been a favourite abode 
 of troglodytes, and to this day caverns are not infrequently 
 used as places of residence or shelter. These caverns 
 are, with respect to their origin, of two kinds,—river 
 caverns and sea-cliff caverns. 
 
 The former have been excavated by streams running 
 underground, along lines of fissure, which they have 
 enlarged into tunnels. A remarkable example of this 
 kind is the Grotto of the Nahr-el-Kelb, or Dog River, 
 the ancient Lycus, which was explored in 1873 by 
 Messrs. Marshall, Bliss, Brigstoke, and Huxley, and 
 found to extend for 1256 yards, and to expand into 
 large halls, with magnificent stalactites. Another is that 
 from which the neighbouring mountain stream of Ant 
 Elias issues like a gigantic fountain. These water-caves 
 may ultimately become dry, by the streams finding a 
 lower level, either in the rock itself or in some adjacent 
 ravine, this being, perhaps, sometimes determined by 
 the partial falling-in or choking of the cavern itself. In 
 the ravine of Ant Elias, in addition to the present water- 
 cave, there is one which has become perfectly dry, and 
 there are remains of others which have been cut into and 
 unroofed by the further excavation of the ravine. 
 
 The second class of caverns,—those excavated by the 
 sea,—may be seen in process of formation at many 
 places on the coast, where the waves have cut into 
 fissures or have undercut the harder beds. They are 
 usually not very deep, and are often mere shelters or 
 overhanging ledges. Such caverns are frequent on the 
 old inland cliffs, which have been subjected to erosion 
 when the land stood at a lower level. Caverns of both 
 these classes contain evidences of their use by man. 
 
 To the latter class belongs the cavern, or rather 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 remains of a cavern, discovered in 1864 by the Rev. Canon 
 Tristram on the celebrated maritime pass of the Nahr- 
 el-Kelb, or Dog River, near the mouth of the stream 
 of the same name. At this place the limestone rock 
 extends boldly to the sea in a high cliff, and a road was 
 cut around the sea face of the precipice in very early 
 times, for on one of the tablets which successive military 
 commanders have cut here to record their conquests 
 appears the name of Rameses II, the oppressor of the 
 Israelites, who passed this way in the course of one of 
 his raids into Asia. The road of Rameses is very rough 
 and narrow, and high up in the cliff. A better road, 
 the same now followed, was cut by the Roman Emperor 
 Antoninus. (See Frontispiece to Chapter.) 
 
 I had the pleasure of visiting this place in company with 
 the Rev. Dr. Bliss, of the Beyrout College, in February 
 [884, and endeavoured, as far as possible, to supplement 
 and perfect the observations of Canon Tristram. 
 
 At the point in question, the present road is about 
 100 feet above the sea-level, from which the bank rises 
 in a steep slope, composed of fallen blocks of stone. 
 The road bends inward into the cliff, which here recedes 
 in a little cove facing the north-west, at the bottom of 
 which was the cave. The remains of this consist of a 
 stalagmite floor, about 18 inches in its general thick¬ 
 ness, extending inward from the road toward the 
 cliff about six paces, and in breadth along the road 
 about nine paces. The roof and sides of the cave are 
 gone, but at the back the vertical cliff presents a sort 
 of niche with the top slightly arched, and corresponding 
 to the back of the cave, which must have been nine yards 
 broad, and of considerable height, with an arched roof. 
 The floor of the cave consists of a mass of bones and 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 
 
 147 
 
 flint flakes and chips cemented together into a hard 
 stone, produced by the dripping of calcareous matter 
 from the roof, and constituting what is usually called a 
 ‘ bone-breccia,’ the cementing substance being stalagmite 
 or crystalline calcareous matter. It has evidently been 
 a sea-cave, excavated at the bottom of a small cove or 
 indentation in the cliff, and at a time when the sea was 
 about 100 feet above its present level. Near the cave. 
 
 Fig. 27.—Section of Ruined Cavern at the Pass of Nahr-el-Kelb. 
 a. Bed of road. b. Breccia of floor of cave. c. Probable ancient roof of 
 cave. d. Debris thrown down in cutting the road. e. Level of sea. 
 
 the cliff rises in a series of little terraces, on which grain 
 had been sown ; and over the top runs an old road or 
 track, which seems to have been that in use when the 
 early Assyrian and Egyptian tablets were cut on the 
 rock, as they are evidently related to the level of this, 
 and not to that of the present road (Fig. 27). 
 
 Whether the roof of the cavern had fallen in before 
 the Roman road was made is uncertain ; but it is clear 
 that the floor of the cave was cut into in making the 
 road, and at least the debris of its sides and roof used 
 
148 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 in forming the bank, as large masses both of the breccia 
 and of the limestone rock lie on the slope, some of 
 the latter holding characteristic Cretaceous corals, which 
 belong to the soft bed in which the cave was originally 
 excavated. A large slab of the bone-breccia, eight feet 
 in length, now forms part of the parapet of the road, 
 and would make a magnificent museum specimen. The 
 exposed surfaces of the stalagmite, and the pieces on 
 the bank, were filled with fragments of bone and with 
 flint knives. A few teeth were also found, which indicate 
 that the inhabitants had fed on the now extinct woolly 
 rhinoceros, on wild oxen, and on a species of deer 
 allied to the modern fallow deer. A few of the bones 
 bore evidence of having been charred by the action of 
 fire, but these were exceptional, so that these people, if 
 they did not consume their flesh raw, used some process 
 of boiling or steaming. Search was also made in the 
 little terraces near the cave, and a few flint flakes were 
 found, but no other signs of human occupancy. On the 
 flat top of the cliff, over which the old track runs, 
 nothing was seen. 
 
 In the same cove with Tristram’s cave, a little to the 
 south and 35 feet higher in the bank, another, though 
 smaller, cave exists, with its roof still entire. The floor 
 of this cave is of soft earth, and in digging in it nothing 
 was found. Near the mouth, however, was an oval bed 
 made of stones, lined with green rushes, on which some 
 one had slept within a few days, furnishing an example 
 of the recent use of this cavern. 
 
 In the next adjoining cove to the south-west of 
 Tristram’s cave, Dr. Bliss was so fortunate as to find the 
 floor of a second cavern, still richer in remains than that 
 of Tristram’s cave, from which it is distant 210 paces 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 149 
 
 along the road. Its roof is entirely gone, the material 
 having apparently been for the most part removed to 
 form the road, though some large blocks remain. The 
 stalagmite floor is 10 paces broad, and in some places 
 as much as 4 feet thick. It is somewhat softer, and of 
 a more rusty colour than that in the other cave, but its 
 contents in bones and flint knives appear to be similar. 
 
 Between the two caves the road passes round a 
 point of rock concealing the one from the other, and 
 commanding an extensive view of the coast from 
 Beyrout to Tripoli. At this point are the remains 
 of a foundation of hard concrete, and near it a plain 
 shaft of grey granite projecting from the parapet of 
 the road, as if some monument had been erected, 
 probably in Roman times, at this point. It is evident 
 that when the caverns were entire, and before any 
 road was cut around the cliff, their occupants would 
 enjoy a position difficult of approach by enemies and 
 commanding an extensive view along the coast. There 
 would also be easy access to the shore and to the top 
 of the cliff, and small terraces of ground capable of 
 occupation and even of culture, and, in any case, of 
 sustaining trees available for shelter and fuel. It is 
 possible, however, that the geographical condition of 
 the country was very different at the time of the occu¬ 
 pancy of these caves from that prevailing at present. 
 The woolly rhinoceros was an inhabitant of these regions 
 in the Post-glacial or Second Continental period, when 
 the eastern end of the Mediterranean presented much 
 broader plains than at present, affording suitable 
 haunts for this animal; and at that time the caverns 
 may have been in the face of an inland cliff at some 
 distance from the sea. No running water is known 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 T50 
 
 nearer than the river, but there are cavities in the rock 
 which retain rain-water; and if at the time of the occu¬ 
 pancy of the caverns the land was a little higher than 
 now, the flat country found at other parts of the coast 
 may have extended around this promontory, and there 
 may have been springs at the foot of the cliff. The 
 ledges of rock at the foot of these cliffs abound in 
 limpets and other shell-fish, and at the time of my visit 
 I saw boys engaged in collecting these. If the sea 
 had been as near at the time of the occupation of the 
 prehistoric caves, we should have expected that their 
 inhabitants would have availed themselves of this source 
 of food, and that numbers of shells would have been 
 found in their kitchen-middens. As this is not the case, 
 we have an additional reason to suppose that the sea 
 was then distant. If, at the period in question, the 
 maritime plain of this coast was much wider than at 
 present, this would have enabled herds of wild cattle and 
 deer to migrate from north to south and to find suitable 
 pasturage, and would also have afforded fit haunts for 
 the rhinoceros. It is evident, however, that any such con¬ 
 dition of the coast must have been anterior to the times 
 of Phoenician history, and must, indeed, have belonged 
 to that ancient palaeocosmic or antediluvian age when 
 the most ancient cave-deposits of Europe were formed. 
 
 It is also probable that the caves may have been 
 occupied, occasionally, or at certain seasons, rather than 
 continuously. The bones and knives are not merely 
 covered with stalagmitic matter, but mixed with it, 
 indicating that the deposit was in progress when these 
 remains were being accumulated. This would also give 
 evidence of a more moist climate than that prevailing 
 at present, and probably a wooded condition of the 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 151 
 
 country, such as that referred to in the descriptions 
 of Lebanon in the Old Testament, and which must 
 have continued from the earliest times till the hills were 
 finally denuded of their trees by the agency of man. 
 We may farther infer that the ancient inhabitants of 
 these caves were, like some of the hunter Indians of 
 America, feeders on a few large animals then abundant 
 in the country, and not addicted to the trapping or 
 pursuit of small game. 
 
 CL 
 
 Fig. 28.—Arrow or spear, Nahr-el-Kelb. a. Section. 
 
 Though it is possible that these caves may have 
 remained intact until the cutting of the Roman road, 
 it seems more probable that their roofs were removed 
 previously, and the appearance of the rock, along with 
 the absence of any evidence of late residence, agrees 
 with the character of the animal remains in indicating 
 that their occupancy by man had been brought to a 
 close anterior to the times of history, and possibly in 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 l 5 2 ' 
 
 the great submergence which closed the Second Conti¬ 
 nental or antediluvian period. There is, in any case, 
 no evidence of any later occupancy than that by the 
 early people whose debris is enclosed in the stalagmite. 
 
 Fig. 29.—Fragment of knife and hollow scraper, Nahr-el-Kelb. 
 
 I may remark here that the knives in these caves are 
 made of the flint found in the immediate vicinity, and 
 that they differ in no respect from those of the later 
 caves and rock shelters of this region, except in perhaps 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 153 
 
 being a little broader and more massive (Figs. 28, 29). 
 A few of the implements with rounded ends, known as 
 ‘ scrapers,’ were also found. 
 
 On the border of St. George’s Bay, between these caves 
 and Ant Elias, I observed, near the shore, and at no 
 great elevation, a band of red loam and stones in which 
 were a few similar flint flakes. The red earth in question 
 is a remanie deposit derived from the older red earth, 
 to be noticed in the sequel, and which contains no stones 
 or flints. The flakes contained in this remanie earth 
 
 F'g- 3°-—Entrance of Cavern, Ant Elias. 
 
 may have been washed out of old caverns, or from the 
 surface of the ground at higher levels ; but probably at 
 a period historically very ancient. 
 
 The stream of Ant Elias, between Nahr-el-Ivelb and 
 Beyrout, bubbles up from the bottom of a ravine, in 
 front of a cavern, along which its waters are carried as 
 in a tunnel. On the opposite or northern side of the 
 valley, and a little higher up, is another cavern, with a 
 
i54 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 high arched entrance, and about 50 feet above the 
 bottom of the ravine (Fig. 30). On entering the cave, 
 it is found to be a tunnel penetrating for about 50 
 yards into the limestone rock, in the direction of north 
 6o° east, and then turning off at right angles to its 
 former course, the strike of the Cretaceous limestone 
 being north 6o° west, with dip to the south-west. 
 Within, its floor is much encumbered with fallen blocks, 
 but near the entrance it presents an earthen floor with 
 only a few stones, some of them of large size. Against 
 the sides are masses of stalagmite, some of which rise 
 to a height of 6 feet above the floor, and at the mouth 
 is a ridge of similar stalagmite, extending beyond the 
 mouth of the cave, and indicating that the roof formerly 
 projected farther than it does at present. On the side 
 of the cliff there are also the remains of an old tunnel, 
 long since cut away, and showing only a part of one 
 side. The earthen floor of this cavern, which is quite 
 loose and incoherent, is filled in places with flint knives, 
 which are thinner and smaller than those of the Nahr-el- 
 Kelb pass. With them are many bones, all broken, to 
 extract the marrow, and teeth of the wild goat, deer, 
 and hog, and possibly also of the sheep. In short, the 
 food of the inhabitants of this cave consisted of the 
 modern animals of the country. Many of the bones are 
 partially charred by fire, and there occur many shells of 
 the large edible snail, and a few of sea snails. The sta¬ 
 lagmite, so far as observed, does not differ in its contents 
 from the earth, and may be of the same age and pro¬ 
 duced by local dripping partially hardening the deposit. 
 
 The cavern at Ant Elias is large enough to have 
 accommodated a considerable tribe of ancient troglo¬ 
 dytes, and the time during which it was so occupied need 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 155 
 
 not have been very long, provided the occupants were 
 numerous. The country at the time was no doubt 
 wooded and well stocked with game, and the primitive 
 people may have been prodigal of flint knives, as abun¬ 
 dance of material for their manufacture exists in the 
 neighbouring limestones. They may also, as it seems 
 likely the Belgian people of the reindeer age were 
 accustomed to do, have instituted battues , and made up 
 quantities of pemmican or preserved meat for subsequent 
 use with the flesh of the animals slaughtered. 
 
 Connected with the questions raised by the caverns, are 
 the flint flakes and implements found at the Ras of Bey- 
 rout, and I believe first noticed by Mr. Chester in his report 
 to the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. 1 
 
 The oldest rock seen in passing from Beyrout around 
 the point by the Light-house and Pigeon Island, is the 
 Cretaceous limestone, which at this place is remarkably 
 rich in large flint nodules. Upon the limestone rests 
 a soft grey sandstone, used for building in the town, 
 and containing in places fragments of recent shells. It 
 is similar in its character to the modern sandstone of 
 the Jaffa coast, and is, no doubt, of the same age. At 
 one of the quarries a stratum of indurated deep red sand 
 was seen to occur in the middle of the grey beds, and 
 large sand-pipes, which traverse the grey beds perpen¬ 
 dicularly, were filled with the same red sand, which also 
 overlies the grey beds, and forms the surface of the 
 highest part of the point, where it is more or less covered 
 with loose wind-blown sand of a greyish colour. In one 
 place, the lower grey sandstone was seen to be about 40 
 feet in thickness, and the red sand is in some places as 
 much as 10 feet in thickness. The summit of these de- 
 
 1 Quarterly Statement, 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 156 
 
 posits rises as high as 250 feet above the sea-level. These 
 sands are, probably, in great part products of the waste 
 of the red and grey arenaceous beds of the lignitiferous 
 zone of the Lebanon cretaceous, which occurs in the 
 hills some distance behind. They belong to the modern 
 or Pleistocene age, and to a time when the coast was 
 submerged to the amount of 250 feet below its present 
 level. At a place called the Bishop’s Garden, behind 
 Beyrout, and opposite the mouth of the ravine of the 
 Beyrout river, there occurs a thick bed of grey and red 
 conglomerate, capped with red sand, and which I believe 
 to be a more inland representative of the coast deposit. 
 
 At the Ras of Beyrout the bed of red sand contains 
 no stones or other foreign bodies, except near the surface, 
 where it seems to have been disturbed and re-deposited 
 by the action of the rain-water : but on its surface it 
 holds small stones, fragments of coarse pottery, and even 
 of glass, and flint flakes and implements, which are partly 
 covered with blown sand. Among the stones I found 
 fragments of vesicular trap, which may have been im¬ 
 ported for millstones, and a small piece of Egyptian 
 granite. All these bodies are mixed together, without 
 anything to determine their relative ages, and they are 
 most abundant at the surface of the red sand, and imme¬ 
 diately under the drifted sand, or where it has been 
 removed by the wind. The flint flakes are much 
 whitened by weathering, and evidently of great antiquity, 
 and with them are many large and irregular flakes, pro¬ 
 bably rejected as useless. A few spear and arrow heads 
 have been found at this place. I found only one frag¬ 
 ment of a lance or spear, but this had evidently been 
 worked with some skill by pressure on the edges, in the 
 manner now employed by the American Indians. A 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 157 
 
 small flake of obsidian, with a rounded indentation at 
 the edge, as if intended for use as a hollow scraper, was 
 also found, and may indicate the importation of this 
 material for the manufacture of implements. 
 
 The fact that these flint implements occur along with 
 pottery and other city refuse, probably implies that 
 they belong to the historic period ; and the reason of 
 their occurrence here may be that the place was occu¬ 
 pied by native tribes who came to trade with or to 
 attack the Phoenician colony; or that it was resorted 
 to by such people because of the abundance of good 
 flint in the limestone near this place. The deposit might 
 thus seem to connect the time of the foundation of 
 the early Phoenician colony with that of the later flint 
 folk. It is, however, possible that an older deposit of 
 flints may have subsequently been buried with city 
 refuse, which is still being carted out to this place ; or, on 
 the other hand, that the citizens of Berytus may have con¬ 
 tinued to use flint flakes and arrows at the same time with 
 pottery, and when they were building edifices of stone. 
 
 A curious instance of this connection was mentioned 
 to me by Mr. Sarruf, of the Beyrout College. He had 
 found in a grave in the Lebanon lance-heads of bronze 
 and copper along with flint flakes, thus showing the 
 continued use of the latter after the natives had obtained 
 weapons of bronze. On the other hand, Dr. Jessup, of the 
 American Mission, has found, near Tyre, ancient tombs 
 excavated in the bone-breccias of older prehistoric caverns. 
 
 Thus, in the Lebanon, we appear to have evidence of 
 antediluvian or post-glacial cave-dwellers, belonging to 
 the earliest known races of men, and of later troglodytes 
 and flint people, who must have continued in the country 
 till it was colonised by the Canaanites and Phoenicians, 
 
158 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 and who may have occupied the remoter glens of the 
 mountains down to a comparatively recent time. 
 
 It is to be observed here that the present bare condi¬ 
 tion of these mountains must be quite different from 
 their primitive state, when they must have been clothed 
 with forests, and were probably inhabited by many kinds 
 of game long since extinct. In this state, also, they 
 would be much more abundantly watered than at 
 present, and would possess a more equable, though on 
 the whole cooler, climate. 
 
 It is also interesting to note the possible connection 
 of at least the later cave-dwellers of the Lebanon with 
 some of those primitive peoples referred to by Moses in 
 the Book of Deuteronomy, as having inhabited Palestine 
 before its colonisation by the Canaanites and Semites. 
 
 I have, in the preceding pages, endeavoured as clearly 
 as possible to describe the facts connected with the 
 Lebanon cave-deposits; and it may now be useful to 
 notice shortly some of the questions which they raise. 
 It is plain, in the first place, that we have here, as in 
 many other parts of the world, indications of prehistoric 
 men of two distinct ages. The earlier of these we may 
 call that of the woolly rhinoceros, 1 and the later that of 
 the modem animals. In both cases the remains are 
 such as to evidence a rude people living in caves, and 
 using flint implements, and probably subsisting to a 
 large extent by hunting. Yet we cannot certainly infer 
 that the existing remains indicate all the culture of these 
 times. The men of the older caves may have been 
 contemporaneous with tribes living on the plains now 
 
 1 R. tichorhinus. The men in the European caves who were the con¬ 
 temporaries of this animal are believed by Arcelin to be the earliest cave- 
 dwellers hitherto discovered. Comptes Rendns Congres cTAnihropologie, etc.. 
 
PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC MEN. 159 
 
 submerged, and who had made higher advances in the 
 arts of life. The cave men themselves must have been 
 skilful hunters, acquainted with the use of fire, adepts 
 in the art of chipping from flint cores those flakes, flat 
 at one side and bevelled at the other, which served so 
 many purposes to primitive man. They also knew how 
 to execute that finer chipping of the end of flakes which 
 produces round-ended scrapers, which must have been 
 useful tools in many domestic arts. These people may 
 also have possessed for use in the finer seasons of the 
 year other places of residence than caves, and may, 
 during their sojourn on the plains and by the banks 
 of rivers or the shore of the sea, have followed other 
 modes of life than those indicated by their mountain 
 shelters. 
 
 These men of the rhinoceros age are probably an 
 extinct people. Like the animals on which they sub¬ 
 sisted, they may have perished in that great diluvial 
 cataclysm which closed the Second Continental period, 
 and which we are now beginning to identify with the 
 historical Deluge. In this case the country may have 
 remained unoccupied for ages, and when men returned 
 to it, it had become tenanted by the species of animals 
 still living. The new people also, if we may judge from 
 their implements, were more delicate manipulators of 
 flint than their predecessors, and probably a less rugged 
 and stalwart race, with more of art and less of vigour 
 than the hunters who slew the great rhinoceros of the 
 antediluvian plains. These were probably the aborigines 
 whom the Phoenicians met when their ships first ex¬ 
 plored the coasts between Berytus and Tripoli, with 
 whom they may have traded or fought for the pos¬ 
 session of the country, and whose descendants not 
 
i6o 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 improbably constitute some of the varied tribes inhabit¬ 
 ing the region at the present day. 
 
 In the Bible we have indications of these successive 
 populations. The first would correspond with the rude 
 tribes of its antediluvians, men of strength and stature, 
 fitted to cope with the great quadrupeds that then 
 abounded, but addicted to crimes of violence. The 
 second tide of population represents those pre-Semitic 
 peoples whom Moses mentions as existing in Palestine 
 before it was occupied by the more civilised races, 
 whether Hamite or Semitic, that eventually possessed it. 
 Thus the history of Lebanon, as represented in its 
 caves, is, after all, only another version of the old stories 
 so familiar to us in the Pentateilch. 
 
 The question of time is one not very certainly to be 
 settled, either by the archaeological or the historical 
 evidence. The centuries that must have intervened be¬ 
 tween the Deluge and the Phoenician colonisation are 
 sufficient for the altogether indeterminate history of the 
 later cave men, inasmuch as no physical or biological 
 change has taken place in the region since their advent. 
 The time required for the physical changes, which seem 
 to have removed the earlier race and the animals on 
 which it subsisted, we have no means of measuring, all 
 the geological data for the time occupied being of kinds 
 which admit of very different interpretations in respect 
 to this great factor, and the assertions of those who 
 maintain the necessity of ages of vast duration for the 
 changes involved being just as little susceptible of 
 scientific proof as those of their opponents. This ques¬ 
 tion therefore, like the dates of the earlier kings of 
 Egypt, we must leave to the arbitrament of the dis¬ 
 coveries of the future. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 
Seti I, King of Egypt, offering a statue of Ma, the Goddess of Truth, to 
 Osiris. From the wall of a Temple at Abydos. (From a photograph.) 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 Tpie world owes much to ancient Egypt, and perhaps 
 if its debt were properly estimated there would be more 
 tolerance of the debts and deficits of the poor down¬ 
 trodden people who are the descendants of so great 
 benefactors. Egypt has been the originator of many 
 of the arts and sciences, or if not their originator, their 
 preserver, in early historic times. Europe has learned 
 here its earliest lessons of geometry, chemistry, medi¬ 
 cine, architecture, and sculpture. We are beginning more 
 and more to understand this, as we learn that much of 
 the discovery in science and the arts heretofore attri¬ 
 buted to the Greeks and to the Arabians existed long 
 previously in Egyptian papyri. It is very wonderful to 
 find in these ancient documents—some of them dating 
 from the earliest dynasties—chemical facts, arithmetical 
 formulas, and medical recipes, almost in the identical 
 forms in which they were copied by Greeks and Arabs, 
 heretofore believed to be their authors. Independently 
 of this we can discern in the great works of the early 
 Egyptians more of knowledge, both of nature and of 
 practical science, than we can gather from the scanty 
 remains of their writings. Early Egyptian art has also 
 in it the germs of all that has succeeded it. It is im¬ 
 possible to examine the earliest sculptures preserved at 
 
 m a 
 
164 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 Boulak, without thinking, on the one hand, of that 
 primitive prehistoric sculpture of which we have ex¬ 
 amples in the remains found in the earliest deposits of 
 the caverns of Europe, and, on the other, of the later 
 developments of European art. The sculptors of that 
 early age in which the cave men lived were eminently 
 accurate and realistic, giving us correct and spirited out¬ 
 lines of the forms of animals, and showing close obser¬ 
 vation of animal form and movement. The same 
 characteristics appear in the early Egyptian works which 
 have been preserved in the tombs of the kings and 
 people of the ‘ old monarchy.’ 
 
 In the Boulak Museum at Cairo is a wall-painting 
 from a very early Egyptian tomb, said to be the earliest 
 painting extant, in which the characteristics of the old 
 Egyptian art are well exemplified. It represents a 
 flock of geese, apparently of two species, one of them 
 being the Egyptian wild goose, called by the Greeks by 
 the curious name 1 Fox-goose ,’ 1 and which, because of its 
 care for its young, became one of the sacred or vene¬ 
 rated birds of Egypt. The outlines and attitudes of 
 the animals are most natural, their plumage accurately 
 tinted, and the artist might have been employed to-day 
 to illustrate any pictorial book of natural history. In 
 the same museum, and from equally early tombs, are 
 wooden panels carved with hieroglyphics, in which the 
 delicacy and accuracy of the execution of animal and 
 vegetable forms would do credit to an artist of any age. 
 The portrait statues of this age are equally remarkable 
 for truth to nature and freedom of style. In like 
 manner in the ancient tomb of Ti at Sakkara, the family 
 sepulchre of a landed proprietor of the earliest Egyptian 
 1 Chenalopex Egyptiacus. 
 
PAST. PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 165 
 
 age, we see all the domestic animals of the period—the 
 horse and camel, as usual at that early date, being- 
 absent—beautifully sculptured in a great variety of atti¬ 
 tudes, and the whole of the operations of the farmer 
 and stock-raiser are graphically presented to us. In 
 this realistic representation of nature it is safe to say 
 that no people has excelled the ancient Egyptians who 
 dwelt in peace in the Nile valley before the irruption of 
 the Hyksos. 
 
 The practical civilisation, culture, and taste implied 
 in this, and in the absence of the grotesque and hideous 
 from these early works, strike perhaps a naturalist more 
 forcibly than an artist, and are certainly very wonderful. 
 It is true, as I have already remarked, that in later 
 times Egyptian art declined from its primitive perfection 
 and became more stiff and conventional ; but such de¬ 
 cadence has been witnessed elsewhere. In Egypt it 
 may be attributed to two causes—first, the development 
 of the power of the priests in connection with a rigidity 
 of rule in the representation of sacred subjects ; and, 
 secondly, the demand, under the greater and more am¬ 
 bitious Pharaohs, for vast quantities of work, done in a 
 mechanical and slipshod way, to satisfy the desire for 
 quantity rather than quality. In the architecture of the 
 Egyptians some features have not been followed by 
 later races. The pyramid is one of these, and perhaps 
 no people will ever endeavour to rival the structures of 
 this class erected in Egypt. Justice has, however, 
 scarcely been done to the grand geometrical simplicity 
 which gives so great impressiveness and beauty to these 
 buildings. I think it not unlikely that, should it ever 
 be possible to erect for any practical purpose pyra¬ 
 mids similar to those of Egypt, the artistic value of the 
 
166 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 pyramid would grow upon our minds and commend itself 
 to our tastes. There are, however, as we learn from the 
 account of Herodotus, to which Petrie has recently called 
 attention, certain special peculiarities in the climatal con¬ 
 ditions of Egypt which favour the erection of colossal 
 buildings like the pyramids. For three months the inun¬ 
 dation arrests nearly all agricultural labour, and during 
 this time any king having supplies of food to offer, 
 could easily collect great levies of men to transport 
 stones and to do the mechanical work of building. In 
 this way a work like the building of a pyramid, extend¬ 
 ing over twenty years, might be a boon rather than a 
 burden to the labouring population. 
 
 The obelisk is a creation of Egyptian taste which all 
 nations have adopted, and which is perhaps the finest of 
 all monumental forms, though it is but a development 
 of the ideas embodied in the upright stone which the 
 most primitive peoples have used for monumental pur¬ 
 poses. One cannot fail to recognise in the grand and 
 imposing propyla of Egyptian temples the predecessors 
 of that lofty porch of the Temple of Solomon which has 
 been a stumbling-block to architectural commentators, 
 and of our own cathedral towers; and in the pillared halls 
 and porticos of these temples the originals of the noble 
 Doric structures of Greece. In the details of internal 
 decoration, examples of unsurpassed beauty are found in 
 Egyptian temples, and many of them have come down 
 to our own time without change, or could be imitated 
 with the greatest advantage by modern decorators. The 
 dados and friezes still extant in many of the Egyptian 
 temples are often exquisite in taste and execution, and 
 certainly far superior to the grotesque Japanese patterns 
 so often seen with us. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 167 
 
 So, in the ordinary arts of life, when we see the per¬ 
 fection of agriculture, cattle-breeding, carpentry, masonry, 
 and other arts in the earlier periods of Egyptian history, 
 we are impressed by the fact that the thought and in¬ 
 vention implied in these things belong to these primitive 
 people, and that their successors have been, in the main, 
 unthinking imitators. Even the alphabet, which affords 
 us the means of expressing thought phonetically in 
 writing, exists in its most primitive form in Egypt ; and 
 though it was improved or rendered more simple and 
 definite by the Phoenicians and Hebrews, it has since 
 their time only suffered from unscientific treatment, till 
 it has become the barbarous and unphonetic jumble 
 which we are content to use in spelling English. 
 
 It was this country, so rich in art and culture, that 
 was selected by the All-wise Disposer of events as the 
 school for His chosen people, wherein, through prosperity 
 and adversity, in power as rulers and downtrodden as 
 serfs, they were trained for four hundred years; and it 
 was in the wisdom of the learned men of Egypt that 
 Moses, the great lawgiver, not only for Israel but for 
 the world, was trained in his earlier years. We derogate 
 in no respect from the inspiration of Moses when we say 
 that much of the literary and artistic fame of himself 
 and his nation was derived from the Egyptians. We 
 may rather claim it as a characteristic of Divine Wisdom, 
 that while the lower and more degrading features of the 
 Egyptian idolatry, and the oppressive autocracy of their 
 kingly and priestly system, were eliminated from the 
 Hebrew laws, no unreasoning war was waged against 
 things in themselves harmless or useful. It is true that 
 Pharaoh was an inhuman oppressor, but his own people 
 themselves suffered too much from the tyranny of 
 
t 68 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 his rule to take part against Israel. The Hebrews always 
 notice throughout their history the distinction between 
 the oppressive tyrant and the friendly people who re¬ 
 mained behind, and whose descendants at this day suffer 
 some of the bondage from which the Hebrews escaped. 
 I could not help thinking of the Hebrews when I saw 
 gangs of hundreds of labourers, many of them mere 
 boys, swarming like ants on the embankments of canals 
 and roads, and carrying earth on their shoulders in 
 baskets, whilst the taskmaster stood by with his stick 
 or koorbash. This enforced labour is, no doubt, an 
 equivalent for a certain amount of taxation, but, under 
 the new regime , it should be managed more humanely. 
 At a later time Egypt was the shelter of the Jews 
 persecuted by Asiatic despots, and it afforded the means 
 of reproducing their sacred writings in the most widely 
 distributed and noblest language of the West. Still 
 later it afforded a refuge to the Holy Family when the 
 life of the infant Saviour was threatened by Herod. In 
 this, as in the older history, the Divine Ruler might say, 
 ‘ Out of Egypt have I called My Son.’ Egypt early 
 received the Gospel, and was one of the great centres of 
 early Christianity, and it produced some of the greatest 
 fathers of the Church, who have exercised a powerful 
 influence in all later times. Even in its present enslaved 
 and depressed condition, the study of its monuments 
 and literature is one of the educational stimuli which 
 affect the minds of European nations and tend to 
 elevate our powers, while on the more gifted minds they 
 create a fascination which it is difficult to resist. 
 
 The religion of ancient Egypt, as handed down to us 
 by the remains of its literature, by its monuments, and 
 by the testimony of visitors from abroad, while in many 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 169 
 
 respects debased, and antagonistic to the purer faith of 
 the Old Testament, yet retained more of the features of 
 the patriarchal times than has usually been supposed. 
 Its complexity, and the difference between the esoteric 
 doctrine of the learned priestly communities and the 
 exoteric symbolism exhibited to the people, have per¬ 
 plexed enquirers from the time of Herodotus downward. 
 They still furnish the material of very confused and 
 contradictory explanations, in the midst of which it is 
 necessary to proceed with some caution. Yet there are 
 some leading features which are sufficiently plain. 
 
 One of these is, that the religion of Egypt was in¬ 
 creasing in complexity of forms and doctrines throughout 
 its history, and that, in its later period at least, it aimed at 
 being a comprehensive theology, uniting in itself all kinds 
 of religious ideas. Monotheism, pantheism, polytheism, 
 worship of ancestors, of animals, and of the heavenly 
 bodies, are all commingled in it in various proportions, 
 at least in the exoteric forms sculptured in the temples 
 and tombs, and especially those of the later dynasties. Yet 
 beneath all this we find in such documents as the Hymn 
 to- Ra, published in the Records of the Past , a sub¬ 
 stratum of monotheism. 
 
 Another salient point is the existence, behind all the 
 puerile symbolism, of a definite moral aim, tending to 
 social well-doing and order in this life, and having the 
 sanction of a future judgment and reward or punish¬ 
 ment in the life to come. This last doctrine was, how¬ 
 ever, in the more corrupt times prostituted to the love 
 of money, and to the pretensions of an interested priest¬ 
 hood, prepared to grant absolution on certain terms 
 even to the grossest sinners. 
 
 Accepting these as leading ideas, it is not difficult to 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 170 
 • • 
 
 perceive that the king of gods, Ra or Amun Ra, is the 
 equivalent of II or El, the supreme god of the Semitic 
 races, and the Elohim of the Hebrew Scriptures, while 
 Ptali, with his seven Khnumu or architects, represents 
 the Divine Word or Demiourgos and the creative days, 
 and Kneph is the Divine Spirit moving on the primeval 
 waters. 
 
 Beyond this trinity, we can distinguish, as a primitive 
 goddess, Athor, the mother of all living, corresponding 
 in this attribute, as well as in her connection with the 
 cross and the crescent, to Ishtar or Astarte of the 
 Asiatics, the mother of men, and the deified repre¬ 
 sentative of the Biblical Eve or Isha, a goddess wor¬ 
 shipped all over the world, even by the primitive tribes 
 of North America , 1 and connected everywhere with the 
 care of her children in the world of spirits. The triad 
 of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, came next to Athor, and 
 represents, in the contest withTyphon, the evil one, the 
 victory of the seed of the woman over the seed of the 
 serpent, and this united, as in the Biblical history, with 
 the murder of Abel and the succession of the seed 
 of Seth. The promotion of Osiris to be the judge 
 of the dead, and the prominence of this myth in the 
 Egyptian religious system, arose from its embodying 
 their version of the promise of a Redeemer, a promise 
 which is the vital point in all religions that have any 
 power. It would seem that Osiris, like the Hindoo 
 Vishnou, had his Avatars, for some of the versions of 
 his story seem to identify him with the early leader or 
 leaders, the Mizraim of Moses, who first colonised the 
 Nile valley after the Deluge. 
 
 Khem, another of the great gods of Egypt, seems 
 
 1 Atahensic of certain American tribes. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 1 7 T 
 
 merely a gross form of the apotheosis of the Biblical 
 Ham, the father of that branch of the human family to 
 which the Egyptians belonged. The animal worship 
 connected with that of the gods was apparently an 
 attempt to illustrate their attributes and powers, a fami¬ 
 liar use of animals as symbols among all peoples and in 
 all times, and possibly as conspicuous to-day in the 
 British Lion, or the Lions of St. Mark, as in any similar 
 case in ancient Egypt. It had besides its justification in 
 those symbolic cherubic forms preserved even in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, and of which the Egyptian sphinx 
 was the principal representative among the latter people. 
 
 It is an instructive fact that this broad and compre¬ 
 hensive system of the Egyptian priests, in which every 
 nation and people could see something of its own re¬ 
 ligion, had so little vitality, that, though by virtue of its 
 higher moral sanctions and more elaborate ritual as 
 compared with Western idolatry, it gained some as¬ 
 cendency over the human mind in the days of the heathen 
 empire, it succumbed at once to Christianity, just as this 
 latter, after it had become debased by absorbing the 
 myths and forms of the old paganism, gave way to the 
 still simpler dogma of Islam. The lesson is, that com¬ 
 prehensiveness and breadth, gained by the sacrifice of 
 truth and simplicity, are weak and helpless in the pre¬ 
 sence of sterner and simpler faiths. 
 
 The illustration at the beginning of this chapter is 
 a tracing of a portion of a sculpture on one of the walls 
 of a temple at Abydos, and which is supposed to have 
 been the work of the great Theban artist Hi, a master 
 of the peculiar style of the great nineteenth dynasty, 
 and who flourished in the generation immediately before 
 that of Moses. It represents the king in the act of 
 
172 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 presenting to Osiris a miniature image of the goddess 
 Ma, the divinity of truth and justice. She has on her 
 head the ostrich feather, the symbol of purity, and 
 holds in her hand the crux ansata, emblem of life. 
 These, with her unbandaged eyes (for justice in Egypt 
 as elsewhere was sometimes represented as blind), her 
 kneeling attitude, and her position in the sacrificial 
 bowl, are all religious mysteries representing the spiritual 
 attitude of the king. Osiris is the great judge of the 
 under-world, before whom king and slave must alike 
 stand for condemnation or acquittal, and the king ap¬ 
 pears before him pleading the truth and justice of his 
 motives, as represented by the kneeling goddess who 
 acts as his mediator. The picture, like many others 
 that one sees in Egypt, is an impressive revelation of 
 the beliefs and feelings of men otherwise known to us 
 only by a few of their public acts. These often appear 
 to us most cruel and aggressive, yet perhaps, from the 
 standpoint of men narrowly bigoted in favour of the 
 traditions of Egypt and the customs based on them, 
 they may have assumed a different complexion. We 
 can easily imagine such men as regarding the slaying of 
 enemies and the oppression of foreign and impure tribes 
 as pleasing to the gods. This Seti, who thus appears 
 before his god with professions of truth and purity, 
 was a great devastator of Western Asia, and probably 
 an oppressor of the Hebrews, though it was his son 
 Rameses who carried this to its utmost limit. After 
 all, his creed was not very dissimilar from that of the 
 Pharisee, who loved his friends and hated his enemies, 
 or, indeed, from that of many of the great men of later 
 days, who have been distinguished alike by beneficence 
 to their own nation or party, and hostility to all others. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 173 
 
 But the retribution for all this has long ago fallen on 
 Egypt, and the descendants of that great race that made 
 the valley of the Nile the seat of the highest civilisation of 
 the ancient world have become servants of servants, and 
 have fallen under the yoke of peoples who in the days 
 of their forefathers were mere barbarians, and who at 
 this day are at a lower social level than that of Egypt in 
 the days of the Pharaohs. 
 
 Yet we cannot visit Egypt and study its modern 
 people without seeing that there may be hope for them 
 yet, and that ‘ Jehovah shall return to Egypt, and they 
 shall return to Jehovah, and He will be entreated of 
 them and will heal them j ’ 1 a prophecy which no doubt 
 had its partial fufilment long ago, but which may have a 
 greater and brighter one in the future. 
 
 The old artistic skill of the country still survives in its 
 workmen, who, with wonderful dexterity, and often with 
 what seem most insufficient tools, form the most beauti¬ 
 ful objects in the precious metals and in textile fabrics. 
 In its present architecture and decorative art there is 
 also much to be admired. It is a touching as well as 
 interesting sight to watch the skilful workers in pre¬ 
 cious things in the squalid bazaars of Cairo, and one 
 wonders if they have worked on in this way all those 
 thousands of years, and if in the olden time the cunning 
 workmen whose artistic skill astonishes the world were 
 as poorly paid and clad, and laboured in as mean work¬ 
 shops as their successors of to-day. 
 
 In the country also the agricultural fellah is an admir¬ 
 able style of man. With good cerebral development 
 and much aptitude and intelligence, with an agile and 
 muscular frame, he is a typical farm-labourer; and as 
 
 1 Isaiah xix. 22. 
 
174 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 he patiently works his shadoof, or waters his fields with 
 tiny rills of the water it has raised, or diligently weeds 
 or hoes his crops, he presents an example of untiring 
 industry and quaint yet ingenious contrivance. He has 
 also a love of education, and desires that his children 
 should learn all that can be taught in the schools to 
 which he has access. He will often pay the village 
 teacher what for him is a very large sum in exchange 
 for a little education, and he is anxious when he can to 
 take advantage of European schools. He reads too 
 when he can get books, and loves to know something of 
 the great world beyond him. The dweller in a mud 
 hut, almost roofless and destitute of furniture, is often 
 for his circumstances a somewhat intelligent and even 
 learned man, and he is quick of apprehension and readily 
 acquires or imitates anything brought under his notice 
 by strangers. His family affections are strong, and his 
 cheerfulness and good-nature are almost invincible. He 
 is, it is true, deficient in some of the hardier virtues of 
 more northern climates, and is less self-reliant and less 
 truthful than he should be ; but it must be remembered 
 that his race has suffered oppression from a period long 
 antecedent to the rise of our modern nations. 
 
 The Egyptian must not be supposed to be repre¬ 
 sented by the rabble that howl for backsheesh at places 
 frequented by travellers. No doubt backsheesh is an 
 old institution of this country. Rameses the Great 
 levied it unscrupulously on all his neighbours, and there 
 may be reason to suspect that some part of the loan 
 raised by the Israelites when they went out of Egypt 
 was of the same nature, though it may have been in the 
 main for value received. But greedy vagrants and 
 beggars exist more or less everywhere, and in Egypt the 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 175 
 
 observant tourist can easily see the difference between 
 these and the men and boys diligently watering and 
 weeding their crops from morning to night, and the 
 women busily employed in household work. Too often, 
 however, all are treated alike by strangers and their 
 employes, and it is frequently painful to see decent and 
 orderly people plying some humble trade or offering 
 some legitimate service involved in the same hard treat¬ 
 ment which falls on idle beggars. 
 
 It is no doubt annoying to meet with the crowding 
 and noisy competition that arise from a surplus of 
 poorly-paid labour seeking employment; but this is no 
 excuse for treating these poor people with harshness 
 and contumely. It serves, however, to make one think 
 of the patience of Jesus, and how He had compassion on 
 similar noisy crowds, rudely pressing Him. I have often 
 in my excursions in Egypt been worried with intrusion 
 and importunity, and I fear have often been impatient, 
 though I have endeavoured as far as possible to treat 
 every one with kindness and justice. After all, when 
 I think of the unwearying and cheerful attention of 
 people so humble as donkey-boys and water-girls, of 
 their unfailing good-temper, of their long and toilsome 
 running over sand and stones for the most trifling pay, 
 of their care of one in rough and dangerous places, 
 of their earnest and often clever attempts to collect for 
 me and otherwise to further the pursuits of the ‘ abu 
 haggiara,’ or ‘ father of stones,’ as they call a geologist, 
 whom I suppose they regard as a simple, idiotic sort of 
 person, I am not sure that the balance of civility and 
 kindness should not be struck in favour of the Egyptian, 
 and I feel bound therefore to say a good word for him. 
 I may add that a gentleman whom I met at Jerusalem, 
 
176 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 and who has travelled much alone and unattended 
 through the villages of the fellaheen in Syria, bears the 
 same testimony in favour of them. 
 
 The Egyptian has of late borne a low reputation as a 
 soldier. But even here he has scarcely had fair play. 
 Torn from his village as a conscript, bewailed as dead by 
 his friends, feeling himself a sort of outcast, subjected to 
 drill altogether foreign to his habits, cramped in heavy 
 boots and trousers, he labours under every sort of 
 disadvantage. With bare feet and legs and a few cotton 
 rags floating around him, he might be at least active and 
 agile. Cramped in an imitation of European accoutre¬ 
 ments, he droops into a spiritless laggard. Even 
 Rameses of old is represented as fighting with bare arms 
 and legs, and I feel confident he would have fled from 
 the Hittites or dropped on his knees and begged for 
 quarter, if he had gone into battle in the rig of a modern 
 Egyptian infantry soldier. If soldiers were recruited in 
 Egypt by enlistment, with adequate bounty and regular 
 pay, and were clad in a light Zouave uniform, they 
 might show some of the fighting qualities of their 
 ancestors. But there is no doubt that the Egyptian is 
 better suited to be a farmer than a soldier, and the 
 policy which sends him to perish in vain attempts to 
 conquer interior Africa is a mistake. He should conquer 
 as an introducer of trade and civilisation, not as a 
 soldier. 
 
 To enable him to do this, he requires at the present 
 time some protection from without. He has been the 
 prey of Mohammedan fatalism, a thing practically worse 
 than even the idolatrous superstitions of his forefathers; 
 of Turkish misrule, of incompetent and avaricious office¬ 
 holders, and of foreign money-lenders and extortioners. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 
 
 177 
 
 From these he cannot deliver himself unaided. It is 
 true he retains' so much of the power of patriarchal 
 self-government as belongs to the village sheik and 
 elders, but beyond this he has been accustomed to 
 regard himself as the helpless slave of his ruler, whoever 
 he might be. A different spirit will require time for its 
 development. Perhaps by carefully nurturing the village 
 municipalities and establishing more definite self-govern¬ 
 ment in the cities and towns, the way might be prepared 
 for a national legislature. In the meantime, however, 
 there must be a paternal despotism, and the fellah will be 
 content if he has security for his life and property, 
 proper attention to the canals and similar works on 
 which his irrigation depends, and some alleviation of 
 the oppressive taxation under which he groans. The 
 difficulties in doing even this much are great, and they 
 are aggravated by the corruption of the official class 
 and the want of confidence of the people in each other 
 and their rulers. They are also aggravated by the 
 unscrupulousness of many of the foreign residents, who 
 regard Egyptians as made solely for their use and 
 benefit, and are impatient of any means for their eleva¬ 
 tion unless their own pecuniary interests are promoted 
 thereby. 
 
 The events which have been occurring in that great 
 interior region on the upper waters of the Nile known 
 as the Soudan are but the continuation of the history of 
 those Cushite or Ethiopian populations of which its 
 present inhabitants are largely the descendants, though 
 with some Arab intermixture. These people have, since 
 the dawn of history, been alternately the victims of 
 Egyptian spoliation and victors over their former 
 tyrants. Sometimes they have been invaded by con- 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 querors who have managed to overcome the great 
 physical difficulties attending the access to their remote 
 territory, and then in turn they have in despair or in 
 wild retaliation poured themselves in desolating hordes 
 on Egypt, and have even flowed over into Palestine. 
 But lately, under the Mahdi, and maddened by religious 
 fanaticism, they seemed to threaten not only to secure 
 their independence but to give a new master to the 
 Mussulman world. Defeated in this by British power, 
 the question remains, Are they to be replaced in the 
 slavery under which they have groaned since the last 
 conquest of the country by the Egyptians? 
 
 It is interesting to note that the Hebrew prophets 
 represent them very much as they appear to us now—a 
 people of stature and of fine appearance, inhabiting a 
 country desolated rather than enriched by its rivers, yet 
 a great and powerful people difficult to subdue and 
 dangerous to their enemies, but who in the latter day 
 are to be given as ‘a present to Jehovah of hosts .’ 1 
 These Ethiopians were sometimes subjects of the 
 Egyptian kings, sometimes conquerors of Egypt. On 
 one memorable occasion in the reign of Asa they invaded 
 J adea itself, but met with a total defeat in their attempt 
 to penetrate the defiles of that country. The Assyrians 
 after conquering Egypt only partially subdued them. 
 The Persians under Cambyses attempted to invade their 
 country, but were thankful to effect a retreat after 
 having to revert to the horrible expedient of cannibalism 
 in order to preserve their lives ; and though Ahasuerus 
 claims to have reigned from India to Ethiopia, his 
 
 1 Isaiah xviii. In that remarkable prophecy which begins, 'Ho, land of 
 the double shadow ’ (that is tropical land) ‘ which borders the rivers of 
 Cush.’ 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 179 
 
 empire can scarcely be said to have included either 
 country . 1 The Ptolemies made little impression on 
 them, and even in the times of the Roman empire they 
 seem to have enjoyed a practical independence under 
 the rule of their queens. 
 
 The relations of the African Cushites with the 
 Hebrews date from an early period. Moses is said to 
 have had a Cushite wife , 2 and no doubt there were many 
 people of this race among the mixed multitude that 
 followed the Hebrews in their exodus. At a later date 
 Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, the friend of Jeremiah, 
 stands out as a pattern of fidelity to God and kindness 
 to His prophet, at a time when the Jews themselves were 
 inhuman and faithless ; 3 and a still later Ethiopian 
 eunuch, the minister of Queen Candace, was one of the 
 earliest and most eminent African converts to Chris¬ 
 tianity . 4 There can be little doubt that in early 
 Christian times the Gospel had widely penetrated the 
 Soudan, and Christianity still survives in Abyssinia. 
 
 The attempts in modern times to extend over the 
 warlike population of the Soudan an Egyptian domi¬ 
 nance, which to the Soudanese meant merely oppression 
 and taxation without any adequate equivalent, were 
 undoubtedly mistakes as well as crimes, and they were 
 connected with the development of all the atrocities of 
 the slave trade, which even the efforts of Gordon Pasha 
 scarcely availed to suppress. But, on the other hand, it 
 is absolutely necessary to the commercial prosperity of 
 Egypt, as well as to the civilisation and trade of the 
 Soudan itself, and the progress of missions and educa¬ 
 tion, that the avenues of commerce should be kept open. 
 
 1 Esther i. 1. 
 
 2 Numbers xii 1. 
 
 3 Jeremiah xxxviii. 7. 
 * Acts viii. 27. 
 
i8o 
 
 EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 It would seem that in the present state of this unhappy 
 country, only a firm and beneficent European rule can 
 avail to ensure order, and to enable its people to hold 
 profitable intercourse with the rest of the world, and 
 above all to enable poor Ethiopia ‘ to stretch out her 
 hands unto God,’ in realisation of the prophecy of Israel’s 
 royal psalmist. 1 
 
 This reminds us that the Bible has to do with the 
 future of the East as well as with its past. I have 
 spoken of the Egyptians as if they were one people, 
 but they are really a mixture of very different races. 
 Of these the Coptish, which most nearly approaches to 
 the ancient civilised Egyptian, and represents also the 
 old Egyptian Christianity, is perhaps that best fitted to 
 take the lead ; and the Copts are now advancing towards 
 this position by means of their educational efforts. 
 These include large city schools, in which English is 
 taught as well as Arabic. The Coptish population is 
 said to number 300,000, and this estimate is perhaps 
 under the truth. The very valuable and important 
 work of the American Mission is largely among this 
 race, and its indirect stimulus exists everywhere. The 
 schools under the American Board are over fifty in 
 number, with more than 4000 pupils, and their work and 
 influence are daily extending. It is most important 
 that this work has fallen into the hands of people so 
 practical and so well skilled in the methods of teaching. 
 It is also most important that Americans, who are not 
 mixed up with the political complications of Egypt, 
 should have this work entrusted to them. It is better 
 with them than under any other auspices. The American 
 
 1 
 
 1 Psalm lxviii. 31. 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. l8l 
 
 College at Beyrout, the press there, and the schools 
 in Syria, represent a great power for the elevation of 
 that people. Their work is felt in Egypt also, as they 
 supply that country with trained teachers and wholesome 
 literature. The friends of missions and of education in 
 England would do well to support these enterprises of 
 American Christians as eminently fitted to attain to the 
 objects in view, and likely to do more good than any 
 efforts emanating directly from Great Britain. Without 
 the education of the Egyptian, and his higher moral 
 training and introduction to European methods of 
 thought, any attempt to introduce free institutions, or 
 even important administrative reforms, will be like 
 the mixture of iron with miry clay in the image of 
 Daniel’s vision, and will give no real strength, and have 
 no permanent influence. 
 
 A great responsibility with reference to these matters 
 rests on the British nation. It is true this has not been 
 of our seeking, for there can be little doubt that the 
 people of Great Britain have been earnestly desirous 
 not to interfere in Egypt any further than was abso¬ 
 lutely necessary. It is also true that opportunities have 
 been lost and advantages neglected by the unwillingness 
 of our Government to advance any further than it was 
 compelled by circumstances. Still, the very fact that 
 Divine Providence seems to have thrust this work upon 
 us renders it more imperative that it should be satis¬ 
 factorily completed. It seems quite certain that if 
 Egypt is to be a free and happy country it must not 
 only be educated into capacity for self-government, but 
 freed from interference on the part of the Turkish power 
 and of the more aggressive foreign nations ; and to 
 effect this, time, patience, perseverance, and self-denial 
 
EGYPT AND SYRIA. 
 
 183 
 
 are all required. If to be effected at all, it seems to me 
 that it must be by the joint efforts of English statesmen 
 and American and English missionaries, to which I may 
 add those of the Germans in Syria, and all this ex¬ 
 tended over many years. But if these efforts should be 
 successful, not only will Egypt be restored to life, but 
 the whole Eastern world will be quickened and brought 
 back to its place in the onward march of civilisation and 
 Christianity. Perhaps it is for some such end that the 
 two great English-speaking nations have been drawn, 
 without any concert and by events independent of their 
 contrivance, into this work. That it may be so, every 
 one who has seen anything of the Egyptian and Syrian 
 people will devoutly pray, and will wish all success to 
 these new Crusaders in their struggle, and will look for¬ 
 ward to the time when all these peoples, from the hardy 
 mountaineers of Lebanon to the dusky tribes of the 
 Soudan, will rejoice in the possession of political and 
 religious liberty. I place Syria and Egypt together, 
 for I do not think they can be separated. The Arabic 
 literature that emanates from Beyrout pervades Egypt 
 as well as Syria, and every event that occurs in Egypt 
 vibrates through Syria. If England and America are 
 to reform Egypt, they must reform Syria as well; and 
 they have to deal not only with the decaying Moslem 
 power, but with the influence of those European nations 
 which still, for political purposes, prostitute their power 
 in upholding systems of priestcraft and shameful super¬ 
 stitions that disgrace the old sacred places of Palestine, 
 and repress the efforts of the Christian populations to 
 attain to higher culture and a better moral and spiritual 
 position. With this great work is also connected the 
 possible restoration of the Jewish people, who are now 
 
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. 183 
 
 flocking into Palestine in unprecedented numbers, and 
 if the time has really come for the turning back of the 
 long captivity of these Eastern peoples, the way will be 
 prepared, and the power of those who oppose will be 
 broken down. God’s mill grinds slowly, and the time 
 may be longer than we could wish, but it may also 
 be shortened; and, in any case, the path is opened for 
 any amount of educational and missionary activity that 
 Christians may be enabled to put forth. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Since writing Chapter III, I have received (April, 1885) 
 the interesting memoirs of M. Naville, published by the Egypt 
 Exploration Fund. In this the learned author fully vindicates 
 the claims of Tel el Maskhuta to be Pithom, the place or abode 
 of the god Turn, by the evidence of the inscriptions found there, 
 and by the testimony of ancient geographers. In this position 
 I fully concur, and think that it is corroborated by all that I 
 observed of the topography. I am glad also to observe that he 
 regards Etham not as a town but as a district of desert country, 
 which is evidently the sense in which it is used by the author of 
 the Book of Exodus. In connection with this he abandons the 
 fanciful derivation of the name from Khetem , a stronghold, and 
 regards it as equivalent to the Egyptian name Atuma, applied 
 to a district in the east of Egypt in an ancient historical papyrus, 
 and implying that it was a border land on the margin of the 
 Arabian desert. M. Naville further identifies Pihahiroth with a 
 town to the east of Pithom, Pikerehet of the inscriptions, and is 
 led by this to conjecture that the crossing of the Red Sea may 
 have taken place between Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes, 
 about ten miles north of the locality indicated in my map. The 
 principal objection to this locality is that it is very near the 
 
i86 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Etham encampment, and -that the locality is not one in which 
 the Israelites could have encamped with safety. If this should 
 prove to have been the place of the crossing, it would imply 
 that the Israelites were brought to bay by Pharaoh and driven 
 eastward off their track at an early stage of the march from 
 Etham, while the narrative would rather imply that they had 
 completed the march and had reached a defensible position, or 
 at least one commodious for encampment. It is also to be 
 observed that the precise place of the Pikerehet has not been 
 determined. It may have been more to the south than M. Naville 
 supposes, and in any case the expressions ‘ before ’ and ! beside ’ 
 may not necessarily indicate its immediate vicinity. 
 
SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL BIBLICAL 
 TOPICS ILLUSTRATED IN 
 
 THIS WORK. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The chronology of Egypt ...... i 
 
 Israel in Egypt . . . . . . n, 47 
 
 Prehistoric and Antediluvian peoples . . . 20,158 
 
 Origin of the Egyptians . . . . . . -39 
 
 The Exodus . . . . . . . . 44 
 
 The sites of Pithom, Rameses, and Zoan (also see Appendix) 45 
 The crossing of the Red Sea . . . . . -55 
 
 Joppa and its history ....... 63 
 
 The Plain of Sharon and Philistia . . . . .67 
 
 The Shephelah and low country of Judea . . .68 
 
 The fertility of the hills of Judea . . . . .69 
 
 The topography of Jerusalem . . . . . .73 
 
 The water supply of Jerusalem . . . . -75 
 
 The Quarries under Jerusalem . . . . -77 
 
 The Sacred Rock in the Temple area . . . .82 
 
 The site and substructures of the Temple . . . -85 
 
 The true site of Golgotha and of the Holy Sepulchre. . 88 
 
 Prophecies relating to Jerusalem . . . . -95 
 
 The climate and productions of Palestine . . . -99 
 
 Topography of the Jordan Valley ..... 105 
 
 The Dead Sea, its features and geological history . .109 
 
 The destruction of the Cities of the Plain . . . .110 
 
 The site of ancient Jericho . . . . . .114 
 
 The early art of Egypt in relation to the Bible . . 139, 164 
 
 The religion of Egypt, as related to the Bible . . .168 
 
 The Ethiopian people . . . . . . . 179 
 
 The future of the East ....... i8q 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abraham, 2,11; war of, with five 
 kings, in. 
 
 Abydos, first settlement at, 39; de¬ 
 scription of, 39 ; sculpture at, de¬ 
 scription of, 171. 
 
 Ain es Sultan, 115. 
 
 Ajalon, valley of, 68. 
 
 Alexandria, description of, 2. 
 Alphabet, ancient Egyptian, 167. 
 Altar of burnt offering, the, 84. 
 American missions in Egypt, 180. 
 Amun Ra, 170. 
 
 Animal worship, 171. 
 
 Ant Elias, cave at, description of 
 I 45 > ! 53 - 
 
 Antediluvian men, remains of, 158. 
 Antiquity of Egypt, 7, 140. 
 
 Apis, the bull, 1471 . 
 
 Aqueducts of Jerusalem, 75. 
 Architecture of ancient Egyptians, 
 165. 
 
 Art, anc : ent Egyptian, 137. 
 Assouan, appearance of rocks at, 36. 
 Atelier, description of, 134. 
 
 Athor, the goddess, 170. 
 
 Baal-zephon, 54. 
 
 Bab el Molook, torrents at, 130. 
 Backsheesh, 174. 
 
 Beth-horon, pass of, Joshua’s vic¬ 
 tory at, 68. 
 
 Beyrout, the Ras of, flint imple¬ 
 ments, at, 155; geology of, 155. 
 Bezetha, 74. 
 
 Birds of Palestine, 100. 
 
 Bitumen pits, Vale of Siddim, 113. 
 Bituminous limestone, 103. 
 
 Bone caverns in Syria, description 
 of, 144. 
 
 Botany of Egypt, the, 137. 
 
 Boulak Museum, treasures of, 17, 
 164. 
 
 Breccia, 148. 
 
 Bronze weapons, ancient, 157. 
 
 Cairo, description of, 13. 
 
 Calvary, site of, 90. 
 
 Carving in wood, Egyptian, 137. 
 
 Cataracts of the Nile, 37. 
 
 Cave-dwellers in Palestine, 101. 
 
 Cave-dwellers of the Lebanon, 157. 
 
 Caverns, store, in Judea, 70. 
 
 Chisel, ancient Egyptian stone, 143. 
 
 Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 88. 
 
 Cities of the Plain, description of, 
 no ; position of, in. 
 
 Climate of Palestine, 99. 
 
 Colossi at Karnak, the, 142. 
 
 Copts, the, description of, 180. 
 
 Crucifixion, the, site of, 88. 
 
 Cushites and Hebrews, relations of, 
 179 - 
 
 Dam made by Menes, 34. 
 
 Damascus gate, the, 90. 
 
 Dead Sea, level of, 73, 99 ; geologic 
 fault at, 105; appearance of, 
 107 ; deposits at, 107 ; density of 
 water of, 109; climate of no; 
 name of, no; destruction of 
 cities on shores of, no. 
 
 Delta, physical history of, 4 ; people 
 of, 10 ; relation of, to Bible his¬ 
 tory, 11. 
 
 Dog River, pass of the, cave on, de¬ 
 scription of, 146. 
 
 Dome of the Rock, the, 82. 
 
 Drill, Egyptian use of, 138. 
 
 Egypt: the gift of the Nile, 4 ; his- 
 
190 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 tory of, 8; early people of, 9 ; 
 present condition of inhabitants 
 of, 10 ; dynasties of, 17 ; present 
 races of, 21 ; geological sketch of, 
 22; first inhabitants of, 124; 
 abundance of flints in, 126 ; rain 
 in, 129; supposed abundance of 
 wood in ancient, 137 ; ancient 
 art in, 137; enforced labour in, 
 168; soldiers of, 176; missions 
 in, 180; future of, 180. 
 
 Egyptian's, ancient, description of, 9 ; 
 ancient flint implements of, 125; 
 wood work of, 137 ; art-work of, 
 137; quarries of, 138; stone¬ 
 work of, 138 ; work of, in jewel¬ 
 lery and precious stones, 139; 
 masonry of, 139 ; writing of, 140 ; 
 papyrus paper of, 141 ; sculpture 
 of, 142; wall-painting of, 164; 
 pyramids of, 165; obelisks of, 
 166; decorations of, 166; inven¬ 
 tions of, 167 ; alphabet of, 167; 
 condition of, 167; religion of, 
 168 ; appearance of, 178. 
 
 Elisha’s fountain, site of, 115. 
 
 Etham, desert of, 50. 
 
 Ethiopians, the, 177. 
 
 Exodus, the, geography of, 43. 
 
 Faults, geological, 29. 
 
 Fellaheen Egyptian, condition of, 
 10; skill of, 173; description of, 
 1 73 - 
 
 — of Judea, the, 73. 
 
 Fi, tomb of, at Sakkara, 164. 
 
 Flint weapons used in Egypt, 125. 
 
 Flints, breakage of, 127. 
 
 Forest, petrified, 26 ; primitive 
 Egyptian, 137; of Lebanon, 151. 
 
 Fossils, Eocene, of Egypt, 24; in 
 hills of Judea, 70 11 . 
 
 — of Jerusalem, 76. 
 
 — of Palestine, 102. 
 
 Geese, wild, Egyptian painting of, 
 164. 
 
 Gems, early Egyptian use of, 139. 
 
 Geneffeh, defile of, Israelites at, 52. 
 
 German colony at Jerusalem, 70. 
 
 Gizeh, pyramid platform at, 27. 
 
 Gods of Egypt, the, 170. 
 
 Golgotha, site of, 90. 
 
 Goshen, land of, description of, 11, 
 
 47 - 
 
 Granaries, 70. 
 
 Gravel near Thebes, discovery of, 
 128. 
 
 Grotto of the Dog River, 145. 
 
 Haram area, the, 82. 
 
 Hebrews, the Exodus of, 48 ; in 
 Egypt, 167; and Cushites, 179. 
 
 Hebron, height of, 71. 
 
 Helouan, chipped flints at, 135. 
 
 Hi, Theban artist, sculpture by, 
 
 I 7 I - 
 
 Hills of Judea, the, 68. 
 
 Hinnom, valley of, 73. 
 
 Historic date, question of, 7. 
 
 Holy places in Jerusalem, site of, 
 
 88 . 
 
 Hyksos, the, description of, 18. 
 
 Israel in Egypt, 2, n, 47, 168. 
 
 Jade, implement of, 144. 
 
 Jaffa, description of, 63. 
 
 Jebel Ahmar, 20. 
 
 Jebel Assart, description of, 130. 
 
 Jebel Attaka, 30. 
 
 Jebel Muksheih, 56. 
 
 Jebel Shebremet, 56. 
 
 Jericho, site of, 115; ancient ap¬ 
 pearance of, 116. 
 
 Jerusalem, height of, 73; descrip¬ 
 tion of, 73 ; area and population 
 of, 75; water supply of, 75 ; 
 fossils of, 76 ; topography of, 77 ; 
 rocks of, 77; quarries of, 77 ; 
 Mosque of Omar at, 82 : Temple 
 at, 85 ; site of holy places in, 88 ; 
 present state of, 95. 
 
 Jews, history of, 2. 
 
 Joppa, description of, 63. 
 
 Jordan, valley of, climate of, 99; 
 description of plain of, 114; 
 people of, 114. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, tomb of, site 
 
 of, 93 - 
 
INDEX. 
 
 191 
 
 Joshua at Beth-horon, 68. 
 
 Judea, hills of, description of, 68. 
 
 Kadasseh, flint-making at, 126. 
 Kasr Jalud, foundations of, 78. 
 Kassassin, supposed camp at, 50. 
 Kedron valley, the, 74. 
 
 Kephren, 16. 
 
 Khem, the god, 170. 
 
 Knumu, the seven, 14 n. 
 
 Kokule stone, 78. 
 
 Labour, enforced, 168. 
 
 Laurentian rocks, 19. 
 
 Lebanon, height of, 71 ; description 
 of, 144; primitive state of, 157. 
 Lily of the valley of Solomon, the, 
 67. 
 
 Lot’s wife, fate of, 112. 
 
 Lycopolis, flints in tombs at, 126. 
 
 Ma, the goddess, 172. 
 
 Malake, or royal stone, 77. 
 Manetho’s list of kings, 140. 
 
 Marble of Neby Mousa, 103. 
 Memphis, description of, 14; ne¬ 
 cropolis of, 15 ; builders of, 17. 
 Menephtah, the Pharaoh of the 
 Exodus, 46. 
 
 Menes, dam made by, 34. 
 
 Migdol, 54. 
 
 Misie stone, 77. 
 
 Missions in Egypt, 180. 
 
 Mizraim, 17. 
 
 Mokattam, ridge of, 13, 24. 
 
 Moriah, 74. 
 
 Mosque of Omar, the, 74, 82. 
 
 Mud of Nile, deposits of, 5, 32. 
 
 Nabr-el-Kelb, 145. 
 
 Neby Mousa, stone of, 103. 
 Necropolis of Memphis, the, 15. 
 Nile, physical history of, 5. 
 
 Nile valley, the, physical description 
 of, 22 ; geological changes in, 30 ; 
 cataracts in, 37 ; original aspect 
 of, 38. 
 
 Nubian sandstone, 35. 
 
 Nummulites, 13, 24. 
 
 Obelisks, ancient Egyptian, 166. 
 
 Olives, culture of, in Judea, 69. 
 
 Olives, Mount of, height of, 71. 
 
 Omar, Mosque of, 82. 
 
 Ophel, 74. 
 
 Osiris, the god, 170. 
 
 Oysters, fossil, discovery of, 27. 
 
 Paintings, earliest, beauty of, 17. 
 
 Palestine, geology of Southern, 65 ; 
 climate of, 99; birds of, 100; 
 people of, 100; geology of Eastern, 
 lot ; fossils of, 102 ; view of, from 
 Nebo, 117; rocks of, 118; hopes 
 for, 119; aborigines of, 159. 
 
 Papyrus paper, 141. 
 
 Petrified forest, a, 26. 
 
 Petroleum eruptions, 111. 
 
 Pharaoh’s beans, 13. 
 
 Pharaoh of the oppression, the, 44. 
 
 Philistia, description of, 67. 
 
 Phoenicia, manners of, 81; aborigines 
 of, 159. 
 
 Pi-hahiroth, 54. 
 
 Pithom, discovery of site of, 44. 
 
 Pompey’s Pillar, 4. 
 
 Pools of Solomon, the, 75. 
 
 Pot-holes, formation of, 37. 
 
 Propyla, ancient Egyptian, 166. 
 
 Ptah, the god, 14 ;z, 141. 
 
 Pyramids, the, description of, 15; 
 architecture of, 165. 
 
 Quarries at Jerusalem, 77. 
 
 Quarry marks, 81. 
 
 Ra, the god, 170. 
 
 Rain, occasional, in Egypt, 129. 
 
 Raised beach, a, 27. 
 
 Rameses, city of, 49. 
 
 Rameses II, statue of, at Tanis, 143 ; 
 inscription of, at the Dog River, 
 146. 
 
 Ramleh, description of, 67. 
 
 Ras of Beyrout, the, deposits at, 155. 
 
 Red earth, deposit of, St. George’s 
 Bay, 151. 
 
 Red Sea, the, Israelites’ passage 
 of, 53 ; ancient limits of, 58. 
 
 Religion of ancient Egypt, the, 168. 
 
 Remanie deposit, St. George’s Bay 
 152. 
 
192 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Rhinoceros, the woolly, men of the 
 age of, 158. 
 
 Rod, the shepherd’s, 71. 
 
 Rose of Sharon, the, 67. 
 
 Royal quarries at Jerusalem, the, 
 
 79 - 
 
 Sakhra, the, at Jerusalem, 82. 
 Sandstone, Nubian, 35. 
 
 Sculpture, ancient Egyptian, 142. 
 Second Continental period, 6. 
 Sepulchre, the holy, site of, 88. 
 
 Seti, sculpture of, 171. 
 
 Sharon, the plain of, 65 ; rose of, 67. 
 Shephelah, the ancient, 68. 
 
 Siddim, Vale of, 113. 
 
 Siloamus tunnel, the, 75. 
 
 Silsilis, gorge of, 35. 
 
 Simon the tanner, supposed house 
 of, 64 
 
 Skull Hill, the, probable site of the 
 crucifixion. 90. 
 
 Slate implement, ancient Egyptian, 
 
 143 - 
 
 Slime-pits near the Dead Sea, hi. 
 Sodom and Gomorrha, destruction 
 of, no. 
 
 Soldiers of Egypt, 176. 
 
 Soudan, the, mistakes in, 179. 
 Statues, portrait, beauty of, 17. 
 Stone-work, ancient Egyptian, 138. 
 Succoth, supposed camp at, 50. 
 
 Tables for offerings, description of, 
 138. 
 
 Tanis, or Zoan, 48. 
 
 Temple, the, description of, 85 ; 
 
 substructure of, 86. 
 Terrace-culture, ancient, 69. 
 
 Thebes, 129. 
 
 Theology of Egypt, the, 169. 
 
 Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, the, 
 
 93 - 
 
 Tombs of the Kings, valley of, 129. 
 Tower of Goliath, foundation of, 
 78. 
 
 Triad, the Egyptian, 170. 
 
 Tumilat, Wady, 97. 
 
 Tyropean Valley, the, 73. 
 
 Vale of Siddim, pits of, 113. 
 
 Vines, culture of, in Judea, 69. 
 
 Wall-painting, ancient Egyptian, 
 164. 
 
 Water-shed of Palestine at Jeru¬ 
 salem, 74. 
 
 Water-supply of Jerusalem, 75. 
 Wooden statues, Egyptian, 137. 
 Writing, the art of, 140. 
 
 Yam Suph, 51, 59. 
 
 Zion, the ancient, 73. 
 
 Zoan, foundation of, 11, 48.