Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

Here, on the 30th of May, I received an addition to the party, by the arrival of Corporal Brophy, R.E.

Many fine ruins existed round us, showing that it is probably to the agency of man, rather than to the gradual action of weather, that the utter destruction of ruins in more accessible parts of Palestine is to be ascribed.

A good instance of the valuable finds made by the Survey party in this unknown district, is that of the ruin called Deir Serûr. Here we discovered the site of an important town, with public buildings of good masonry, and rock-cut tombs, evidently a place of great importance. This conspicuous site is not marked on any modern map, nor described by any previous traveller, so far as I have been able to find. On a map of the last century, an episcopal town of the fifth century called Sosura, is, however, shown in just the position of this ruin of Serûr, and the character of the buildings seems to agree with this identification.

At Kurâwa we found also a rock-cut sepulchre, with a classic façade, rivalling any of those at Jerusalem, and apparently to be attributed to the first or second century of the Christian era; yet, on this fine monument, there is not a single letter of inscription to tell the names of its former occupants. These are but single instances of the large number of interesting discoveries, in central Palestine, which are stored up in the memoir of the map.

On the 3rd of June we moved again south, and crossed the most difficult valley we had yet encountered. It was nearly a thousand feet deep, and only a narrow goat-walk led down its precipitous sides, above which hangs the fine ruin called Deir Kŭl’ah, the “Convent Castle.”

This valley forms the boundary between Judea and Samaria, and runs into the plain near Râs el ’Ain. We were obliged to follow its course westward for some distance before it became possible to take the pack-animals up the other side.

Our new camp at Rentîs was in more open ground, and but little remained to be done in order to join on to the old limits of the Survey on the south. A hole in the work was, however, here left in the plain which weather forbade our attempting to fill in, and, as nearly all our horses were laid up with sore-back and lameness, the summer rest, which we had now earned, came none too soon to save the party from demoralisation.

Two places of great interest came within our district from the Rentîs camp, namely, Tibneh, in the hills to the east, and Râs el ’Ain to the west: the first supposed by some to represent Timnath Heres, the burial-place of Joshua; the second, Antipatris, built by Herod the Great.

Tibneh is a ruined site on one of the great Roman roads from Lydda and Râs el ’Ain to Jerusalem. A mound, or Tell, stands on the south bank of a deep valley, surrounded with desolate mountains; by it, a clear spring issues from a cave; to the south-west is a beautiful oak-tree, the largest I saw in Palestine, called by the natives Sheikh et Teim, “the Chief, the Servant of God.” South of the Tell, the hillside is hollowed out with many tombs, most of which are choked up. One of these has a porch with two rude pilasters, and along the façade are over two hundred niches for lamps; the trailing boughs of the bushes above hang down picturesquely, and half cover the entrance. Within there are fifteen Kokim, or graves, and through the central one it is possible to creep into a second chamber, with only a single Koka. Other tombs exist farther east, one having a sculptured façade; but the tomb described is the one popularly supposed to be that of Joshua.

It seems to me very doubtful how far we can rely on the identity of the site with that of Timnath Heres. It is certain that this is the place called Timnatha by Jerome, a town of importance, capital of a district in the hills, and on the road from Lydda to Jerusalem, the position of which is fixed by references to surrounding towns. But the Jewish tradition, and also that of the modern Samaritans, points to Kefr Hâris as the burial-place of Joshua, as already noticed in Chapter II. It is remarkable, however, that a village called Kefr Ishw’a, or “Joshua’s hamlet,” exists in the immediate neighbourhood of the ruin of Tibneh.