Tyrus, now called ’Arâk el Emîr, is our one relic of the Jewish architecture of the days of Judas Maccabæus. The priest Hyrcanus, who fled from his brothers beyond Jordan, committed suicide at this place (where he had lived seven years) on hearing of the approach of Antiochus in 176 B.C. His life was one of adventure and of constant warfare against the Arab or Nabathean tribes of the region. He first made himself a stronghold consisting of numerous caves in two storeys, with an open rock terrace leading to the upper tier, where, among other chambers, he cut a great stable for his horses. We measured this stable, and found mangers for a hundred steeds. Near this fortress he built his great palace, which is now fallen in, except the east wall. The palace was surrounded by a broad moat, and water was brought by an aqueduct from the stream, which here breaks down rapidly towards the Jordan Valley through dense bushes of oleander, which have grown to the size of forest trees. The walls of the palace were of stones six to eight feet in height and fifteen to twenty feet long. Only three courses were required to reach up to the roof. The top course above a narrow frieze was adorned at each corner by rude sculptured figures of lions, which were carved in relief by sinking back part of the face of the stone after it was placed in position.
The details of some fragments of cornice are rude imitations of Greek classic style, but the extraordinary capitals of great pillars belonging to the interior are unlike any that I have elsewhere seen, and they most resemble Egyptian work. They seem not to have been noticed by De Vogüé, whose work I have generally found to be very detailed and faithful.
Whether this great palace was ever quite finished seems doubtful. A stone which must weigh about fifty tons lies half-way between the building and the quarry, as though left on the last day when the building was stopped. A deliberate destruction of the walls seems also certainly to have occurred.
Here, then, we have an ancient dated Jewish inscription, belonging to an age singularly deficient in monumental remains, and to a time when the characters used in writing were slowly changing from the old Hebrew to the later square Hebrew letters. A photograph of these boldly-cut letters shows that some of the great authorities who have discussed it have unfortunately started with an incorrect copy. If we compare the letters with those of other alphabets, we find only one which properly accounts for these forms, namely, the alphabet of the Jewish coins which were struck in the same century in which Hyrcanus lived. The meaning of the text is still doubtful, but its date agrees with the comparison of the letters with those used west of Jordan in the same age.
In spite of the scantiness of our materials, the history of writing in Palestine is being gradually unfolded in a marvellous manner. When we look back on the old theories which made the square Hebrew of our own times an original alphabet, unchanged since the time of Moses, and on the equally crude criticism which denied that writing was practised before about 500 B.C., we become aware of the rapid advance of knowledge. First came the Phœnician inscriptions, for a few of which great antiquity is claimed, though the majority belong to Greek or Persian times. Then the Moabite Stone was found, and the inhabitants of Eastern Palestine were proved to have been acquainted with monumental writing in the ninth century B.C. Then came the Siloam inscription, giving almost an equal antiquity for the alphabet of Jerusalem. To these are added several inscriptions of the second or first century B.C., and quite a number which belong to the earliest Christian age. In this series of alphabets we trace the same steady and gradual change which has differentiated all known alphabets in the world. It would be impossible now to mistake, within fairly narrow limits, the date of such a text as that at Tyrus; and the same reasoning assures us of the age of the important and ancient inscriptions above noticed.
Equally valuable is the light thrown on history by the remains of the Tyrus palace. It belongs to the period just before the revolt of Judas Maccabæus against the Greeks. We see how strongly the builders were influenced by Greek art, while the sculptures of animals show that they were not limited by the commands of the Law which forbade such representations of living things. It is also interesting to notice that the stones in the wall, which are much larger than those in the Jerusalem Temple, are surrounded by a draft like that employed by Herod the Great. This drafting was a Greek method of finishing the stone. It occurs in the walls of the Acropolis at Athens, and it was used in the second century A.D. by the Roman builders of Gerasa and Baalbek, the stones in this latter case having in a few instances Greek letters for mason’s marks. There is, I believe, absolutely no foundation for the idea that the early Phœnicians used such a finish to their stones. Drafted stones are, it is true, used in Phœnicia, but the oldest occur on structures of Greek character, and the latest in the Crusading walls of Tyre.