Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

The district around us was full of places of interest—Jericho, Gilgal, the Cities of the Plain, Jordan and the Salt Sea. The ruins were also important—Roman and later aqueducts, Crusading monasteries, and rock chapels. The results summed up in the following pages, represent the continuous labour of more than a month, during which I was in the saddle till late every day, and engaged till midnight in writing and drawing, rising before the sun began to appear behind the Moab wall. Twice again in the following years I returned to the valley, and revisited the sites round Jericho.

There is only one natural position for a large town in the plains of Jericho, namely, the neighbourhood of the beautiful fountain called “the Sultan’s Spring,” near the foot of the Quarantania precipice. Nothing can well explain the choice of a new position, but the fact that Jericho was cursed by Joshua, and that the curse was fulfilled. Thus it is by the spring that we naturally place the Jericho of Joshua’s time, and this view receives confirmation from the account of the flight of the spies “to the mountain;” for if situated in the immediate vicinity of the great crag of Kŭrŭntŭl, the city was so near that the fugitives might easily have crept through the cane jungle and thorn-groves to the shelter of one of the innumerable caverns in the face of its precipices.

Of ancient Jericho nothing now remains but the bright spring, and the shapeless mound above it. We can hardly wonder at this when we find that even the Jericho of Herod has disappeared, and that only a vague conjecture can be made as to the position of Thrax and Taurus, the great towers which once defended it. It seems probable that this second town stood south of ancient Jericho, and even closer to the hills, for the great aqueduct which brought water, a distance of four miles, from the fine spring at the head of the wild Kelt chasm leads just to the opening of the plain, and seems to be the only one of the numerous aqueducts which dates back to Roman times. At the mouth of the pass, also, is the rock-fort called Jubr or Chubr, in which title we may recognise, as my companion, Mr. Drake, pointed out, a relic of the name Cupros, which was given to a tower above Herod’s Jericho.

Jerome tells us that there were in his day two Jerichos, and in 333 A.D. the anonymous pilgrim of Bordeaux found a town at the foot of the pass. Here also we have remains of a bridge which has the opus reticulatum of Roman masonry, and this, with a few strewn fragments and with two great mounds of sun-dried brick, seems all that is left of the second Jericho. The Byzantine, or fourth-century town, mentioned by Jerome as the second Jericho, is no doubt represented by the foundations and fragments of cornice and capital, over which the rider stumbles among the thorn-groves east of the ’Ain es Sultân.

By 700 A.D. Jericho had again disappeared, and thus, in the twelfth century, we find the site once more moved. The modern Erîha then springs into existence near a square tower, such as the Crusaders erected along their pilgrim-roads, and a tradition of the “Garden of Abraham” comes into existence as early as the time of Sæwulf (1102 A.D.). In the fourteenth century Sir John Maundeville finds Jericho a little village, and Abraham’s Garden is then stated to be at the foot of the Quarantania. Fetellus makes the distance between Jericho and the latter mountain two miles, and thus it is pretty clear that the modern Erîha represents the site which was created in the Crusading period.

A question of even greater interest is that of the long-sought site of Gilgal, and our inquiries were rewarded with success. Robinson had heard the name Jiljûlieh, but had not been able to fix the site. A German traveller (Herr Schokke), in 1865, had been more fortunate, and was shown the place at a mound about a mile east of Erîha. It was important to ascertain the reliability of this discovery, and I succeeded in recovering the spot visited by this traveller, by means of the compass-bearing which he had been wise enough to take. I found three persons who knew the site by the name Jiljûlieh, and one of them conducted me to ruins to which a curious tradition applies.

There was, however, still a difficulty to be met; for Captain Warren had been shown another place, as the true site of Gilgal, north of this Jiljûlieh, where are ruins of a large mediæval monastery. The explanation is, however, the usual one. Our Jiljûlieh is the Gilgal known to the early Christians, which St. Willibald (724 A.D.) places two miles from the Jericho of his time, and five miles from Jordan; Captain Warren’s site is just in the position in which Gilgal is shown on the mediæval map of Marino Sanuto. The Crusaders have again in this instance changed the site, and both traditions are extant among the natives. The questions naturally rise, which is the true one, or whether either is worthy of notice? The ruins of Jiljûlieh, east of Jericho, appear to me to bear away the palm, for two reasons; first, the position is that described in the Bible, “in the east border of Jericho” (Josh. iv. 19); secondly, the fourth-century site is noticed by Jerome, not as fixed by a monkish tradition, but as held in reverence by the inhabitants of the country, and thus apparently connected with a genuine or indigenous tradition. It is true that the existing ruins, with hewn stones and tesseræ of glass, indicate traces of the early Byzantine monastery which is noticed as containing the Church of Galgalis, but this does not militate against the genuine character of the site, for the tradition, in this case, appears to be derived from a more authentic source than that which fixes most of the early Christian sacred spots.

The recovery of Gilgal ranks as one of the most important successes of the Survey work. The name is not commonly known among the natives, for the site is generally called Shejeret el Ithleh, “the tamarisk-tree,” from the very large tamarisk just west of the ruins. The tradition connected with the place is, however, apparently common among the Arabs of the neighbourhood.

South-east of the tamarisk is an oblong tank lined with rubble, measuring one hundred feet by eighty. It resembles other reservoirs found in early Byzantine buildings, especially in monasteries. Near it are about a dozen mounds some ten feet in diameter and three or four feet high, which, when excavated, proved to consist of sandy marl, with pottery, glass, and tesseræ imbedded. North-east of the tree is a modern Arab graveyard, showing, perhaps, that the place is held sacred by the Bedawîn, as they generally prefer to bury in the neighbourhood of consecrated ground. The grave-stones are blocks apparently belonging to some ancient building, and many other stones are strewn round. These remains—stones, tesseræ, and the tank—indicate the former existence of a monastery similar to the numerous other religious establishments which once covered the plain. The mounds are called Telleilât Jiljûlieh, “the little hillocks of Gilgal;” the tank is named Birket Jiljûlieh, “the Pool of Gilgal.”

The site is conspicuous from a distance, because of the magnificent old tamarisk, and the view from it is very fine, extending up the Jordan Valley as far as the grand peak of Sŭrtubeh, which stands out, like a bastion, in front of the line of hills, and culminates in a sharp cone, not unlike the outline of Monte Viso, seen near Turin. The ’Osh el Ghŭrâb, or “Raven’s Nest,” in front, equally white, and almost as pointed, repeats the Sŭrtubeh in miniature, and above the Quarantania crag stands the lofty summit of Jebel Nejmeh 3000 feet above the valley. The white marl banks—shores of a former Dead Sea—skirt the Jericho plain thinly dotted with Dôm-trees, balsam-trees, and tamarisks, and reach the foot of Quarantania. In front are the shapeless mounds round the Sultan’s Spring, and the thorn-groves reaching to the tower of Erîha, which is brown and square, with a solitary palm beside it. The rest of the view is almost the same as that seen from ’Ain es Sultân.