the Jews fight that the insurrection was not quelled by Rome until 135 A. D. When it was finally put down, Hadrian determined to blot the name of Jerusalem from the map. He rebuilt Jerusalem, making it a Roman colony, named it Ælia Capitolina, and built a temple to Jupiter on the spot where the temple of Jehovah had formerly stood. No Jew was permitted to come near the city. Jerusalem as built by Hadrian continued until the time of Constantine, and the form thus imposed upon it lasted much longer. When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire, both he and his mother began to take an interest in the Holy City and the Holy Land. Other Christians followed them. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built, and the temple of Jupiter built by Hadrian was turned into a Christian church. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land began, and monasteries, churches, and bishoprics in time sprang up over all the country. Thus for three hundred years the influences which were felt in Palestine emanated from Byzantium or Constantinople. In 615 A. D. the land was overrun by Chosroes II of Persia, who captured Jerusalem and destroyed many of its churches. The Persians held it until 628, when the Byzantine kings regained it. The control of Jerusalem by the Christians was, however, of short duration, for in 636 Palestine was captured by the Mohammedans, and with the exception of 89 years has ever since been under Mohammedan control. During these long centuries the country was ruled by the Caliphs of Medina, Damascus, and Bagdad; by the Buvide Sultans, the Fatimite Caliphs of Egypt, and the Seljuk Turks. The cruelties inflicted by these last rulers upon Christians led to the Crusades, the first of which established the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem,2 which continued from 1099 to 1188 A. D. This kingdom, organized on the feudal basis then existing in western Europe, extended over all of Palestine and Syria, including Antioch, and for nearly half the time, Edessa beyond the Euphrates. Its existence marks an epoch in the archæology of the country. Since the fall of this Latin kingdom, Palestine has remained under Moslem control. First the Eyyubide Sultans of Egypt, then the Mamelukes of that same land held sway. In 1517 the Ottoman Turks captured it, and have since inflicted their misrule upon it. What fortunes the great war now raging may bring to this land of sacred associations, we await with intense interest. 1 For details see Guy Le Strange. Palestine Under the Moslems, London, 1890. CHAPTER VI THE CITIES OF PALESTINE THEIR SITES. THE WALLS. THE STONE WORK. HOUSES. PALACES: At Taanach. At Samaria. At Jericho. At Megiddo. FOUNDATION SACRIFICES. CITY GATES. WATER SUPPLY: Springs. Underground tunnels. Reservoirs. 1. Their Sites.-The cities of Palestine were usually built on hills. These elevations, surmounted as they were by walls, created a natural means of defence from attack; (see Fig. 33). Even more important than an elevated situation was a water supply, hence all Palestinian cities of importance are near springs. The necessity of being near a spring led, in some cases, to the erection of a city on a level plain. This was the case with Jericho; the only mound at its site is that created by the city itself. The hills on which the cities were erected varied in height. That at Megiddo rose to a height of but 45 to 90 feet above the surrounding land, but even this elevation was a great protection from the simple methods of attack known to ancient warfare. The hill Ophel, the site of Jebusite Jerusalem, rises today from 60 to 150 feet above the valley of the Kidron, and in ancient times that valley was from 20 to 50 feet deeper than it is now. The same hill was separated from the land on the west by a valley the bed of which in ancient times was from 50 to 100 feet below the top of the hill. The hill on which Samaria was situated rose some 300 feet above the surrounding valley on all sides except the east, and when fortified presented such an impregnable front that it took even an Assyrian army three years to capture it. (2 Kings 17: 5.) In the Seleucid and Roman periods, when some cities expanded in size, the hilltops were sometimes abandoned and they spread out over the plain. This was the case with Gerasa and Philadelphia (Rabbah Ammon).1 But "a city set on a hill" (Matt. 5: 14) was a common feature of the Palestinian landscape. 2. The Walls.-The walls by which the cities were surrounded varied according to the advancement of the different periods, and 1 See Chapter XIV. according to the importance of the place. As has already been pointed out in Chapter V, the first wall at Gezer was but 6 feet high and 2 feet thick, and had a sloping bank of earth packed against it on the outside. This bank was 6 feet 6 inches thick at the base and was covered with a facing of stone. In the Amorite period a wall 13 feet thick was erected at Gezer, in which towers were constructed about every 90 feet. These towers were 24 X 41 feet. Their height is, of course, unknown. This wall was probably built about 2500 B. C. and formed the defense of the city for a thousand years. By that time the tops of the houses probably protruded above the wall, and the population had increased so that more space was needed. This wall was, accordingly, replaced by another built outside of it. Much of the material of which the old wall was constructed went into the new wall, which was approximately 14 feet thick and contained occasional towers. At some time a part of this wall had been destroyed, and then rebuilt. Probably at the time of this rebuilding, additional towers had been inserted at different points. The stones of these towers touched those of the wall without being articulated with them. It has been conjectured1 that these towers were a part of the repairs made by King Solomon after the town had been captured by his Egyptian father-in-law and presented to Solomon. (See 1 Kings 9: 16, 17.) Still later an attempt was made to strengthen the weakness caused by the unclosed seam between the towers and the wall by constructing around the towers rude bastions. (See Figs. 40, 46.) Mr. Macalister conjectures that this was done by the Syrian General Bacchides when he hastily fortified Gezer and occupied it in 160 B. c.2 (1 Macc. 9 : 52.) At Lachish, Petrie found massive city walls, though he did not describe them in detail. At Taanach, Sellin found a strong city wall, but did not attempt to trace it about the tell. Schumacher devoted considerable attention to the city walls of Megiddo, a part of which were built of bricks.5 At Tell es-Safi (Gath?) the outlines of the city walls were traced, as they were at Tell el-Judeideh. At Samaria a part of the Roman wall of the time of Herod was found; lower down in the mound remains of a Babylonian wall (see 2 Kings 1 See p. 94. 2 On these walls, see Macalister, Excavation of Gezer, I, 236–256. Petrie, Tell el-Hesy, p. 17 and Plates 2 and 3. 4 See his Tell Taanek, p. 13. See p. 96 and Fig. 41. • See p. 91. 17:24), beneath which the excavators recognized the Hebrew wall.1 City walls were found, too, at Bethshemesh,2 but of especial interest to the student of the Bible are the walls of Jericho. Here, as at Megiddo, the walls were constructed in part of brick. They had an average thickness of 13 feet. The Canaanitish wall was traced around three sides of the mound. It was strengthened by occasional towers. On the east, next to the spring, they had entirely disappeared. This must not be pressed into a confirmation of Josh. 620, that the walls fell down flat, for the later Israelitish wall has disappeared on that side of the mound also. Later, when in the days of Ahab the Israelites rebuilt the city (1 Kings 16:34), they did not place the wall on the old line, but enclosed a considerably larger space. This wall was constructed partly of bricks, but mostly of stone. The walls of Jerusalem will be treated in Chapter XIII. At the northwest corner of the Canaanitish wall was a tower enclosed by two brick walls; the outer wall was a little more than 4 feet thick; the inner, about 10 feet. 3. The Stone Work. The kind of stones used in city walls varied with the circumstances and the degree of civilization. The walls of the stone age were naturally made of small undressed stones. The Amorites began the use of cut stone. Their blocks are often fairly smooth and regular. The Amorite wall of Gezer was made of more regular stones than the wall of the Egyptian period. In the Israelitish and Jewish periods a stone with an embossed edge was often used. It is found in the wall of Nehemiah, excavated by Bliss, a wall made of stones that some pre-exilic king had used before,—and appears also in the structures of Herod the Great. In the structures of Constantine and later Byzantine builders, this type of stone is replaced by a stone with a perfectly smooth surface -much more smooth than anything found in the early walls. This type of stone work continued through the crusading period; (see Figs. 253, 254.) While these types can be traced, their use was not altogether regular. The areas of Palestinian cities in the early time were very small. All of Canaanite Jericho could be put in the Colosseum at Rome! See Macalister, Excavation of Gezer, I, 244. See Dickie, in Quarterly Statement of Palestine Exploration Fund, 1897, 61–67. Megiddo, one of the largest of these early cities, was built on a mound that contained only about eleven acres, and Jebusite Jerusalem was built on a ridge that in ancient times contained not less than nine or more than thirteen acres. 4. Houses. Within these small areas the houses were crowded together, as in the modern native villages of Palestine, separated only by narrow, crooked lanes. One may see in Hebron or in some parts of Jerusalem similar conditions to this day. There was no drainage; refuse was thrown into the streets. The cities were ill-smelling places. The wonder is that the mortality was not greater. The houses in the central, elevated portion of Palestine were usually of stone, though at Gezer, Jericho, and places in the lower-lying portions of the country they were sometimes of brick. The walls of the stone houses were constructed of rough stones of a great variety of sizes, from small pebbles to large boulders. Mortar and cement were never used. The stones were set in mud. They were not dressed except with a hammer in the roughest way. The joints between them were wide and irregular. Into the crevices serpents and scorpions might crawl. It was of such a house that Amos says, "a man leaned his hand on the wall and a serpent bit him" (5:19). The bricks were rarely burned; they were simply sun-dried, and had no more cohesion than the earth in which they were embedded. The houses generally had no floor except the earth, which was smoothed off and packed hard. Sometimes this was varied by mixing lime with the mud and letting it harden, and sometimes floors of cobblestones or stone chippings mixed with lime were found. In the Roman period mosaic floors, made by embedding small smoothly cut squares of stone in the earth, were introduced. By employing stones of different colors the mosaics were often worked into beautiful patterns; (see Figs. 35, 42, 43, 44, 47, and 48). Sometimes pictures of birds and animals were formed in the floors. The doorways were usually simply an opening made by the vertical sides left in the masonry. In the later time they were sometimes lined with standing stones. The doors themselves have long since disappeared, but there is evidence that, like many houses still to be seen in Palestine, they were made fast to a post, the lower end of which was set in a hollow or perforated stone. When the door swung the whole post turned in this stone. Some of these stones were found. In a few houses at Gezer enclosures of stones on end |