[43] Sinnabris I recovered, in 1872, from a list of ruins kindly prepared by a resident. It was afterwards fixed by the surveyors. The identity of Hippos and Susieh was suggested by Dr. Neubauer in 1868, and the site has been recently discovered by Herr Schumacher.
[44] The Druzes took from the older Ismailiyeh sect the words Natek and Asas, which are not Semitic words. They represent the two powers in Nature. The first might be connected with the Mongol word Natagai for the chief deity, and the latter with the word Asa for “god” in the same language.
[45] The immorality of the Palestine peasantry, though hidden by their decent manners, is, I have been assured by respectable residents, very great. Their vengeance on women who have gone astray is often very savage. I have visited a cavern in the Judean hills with a deep pit in it, down which such unfortunate women used to be thrown, and I believe there is another in the Lebanon.
[46] This theory I put forward in 1883. The late Dr. Birch held the same view. Dr. Isaac Taylor in 1887 published his belief that the Hittites were Mongolians. Mr. G. Bertin, the Akkadian scholar, favours the same conclusion. At the British Association, 1888, Professor Sayce admitted that the general opinion favoured this view.
[47] See “Heth and Moab,” chaps, vii., viii.
[48] An antiquary familiar with Indian and British stone monuments, writing from Edinburgh, tells me that “cups and smoothed sloping hollows are common enough in Keltic standing-stones. The best I have seen,” he adds, “are the two on the menhirs east and west of the Frodart parish church, Strathpeffer. I think they were swearing-holes, in which the vower placed his fingers, for they are worn as smooth as glass.”
[49] See a detailed note, Pal. Expl. Quarterly Statement, January 1885.
[50] This curious connection between churches and rude stone monuments, also remarked in Britain and in France, is no doubt explained by Pope Gregory’s letter (Greg. Pap. Epist., xi. 71), advising the early missionaries not to suppress the rites and sanctuaries of the Saxons, but to reconsecrate them to Christian use.
[51] The practice has also been noted at Kerlescant in Brittany, at Rollrich, and at Ardmore. There is a similar rite in China of “passing the door” to cure sickness. In Cornwall, the Men-an-tol, or “holed-stone,” near Morvah, is a stone ring two feet in diameter, flanked by two menhirs in a line which passes through the hole.—Dymond, Journal, Brit. Arch. Assoc, June 30, 1877.
[52] The following are the principal groups which I drew and measured:—