Camel trains are used in transporting grain. Camels can be used only in dry weather, as their large, spongy feet slip on the muddy ways and they are apt to fall spread-eagle fashion and be hurt fatally.
In the village of Râm Allâh the customary width of a road is but three meters.
A case has been known where a man, who owned land on both sides of the road, desired to consolidate his properties, and accomplished it by building in the road and deflecting traffic to such an extent that it left him on one side of its course.
The trades that need a large patronage for support are usually carried on in the cities, though the craftsmen go on tours through the villages, doing such work in their line as has accumulated since their last visit. So carpenters, glaziers, tinsmiths, cleaners and whiteners of the copper cooking vessels (ṭungerer), sellers of ready-made garments, etc., itinerate among the villages. The gipsies are the country blacksmiths. In the cities native blacksmiths are found. In shoeing a horse the custom is to place the foot to be shod on a small block and have an attendant hold up the other foot of the same side to prevent kicking.
Ready money is scarce enough to be a very strong influence in favor of any occupation that can offer it. Many men and women from the villages about Jerusalem go into the city to sell their produce or their labor. Sitting about the streets near David’s Tower may be seen the Silwân women with vegetables, milk and eggs. Some men who own donkeys or mules act as messengers between their villages and the city, carrying produce into the markets and returning with purchases for the village. Some Râm Allâh men go into the city as mechanics, but more go for domestic service in the houses and convents. When women servants are needed they are usually secured from Bethlehem, which is only five miles from the city.
The peasants use the word antîky (plural, antîkât) for any antique object, such as a bit of carving, an inscription, an old coin or a piece of glass or pottery. Indeed, some friends of ours met an extension of the use of the term in Egypt. A girl, very eager to sell them some oranges, after following the carriage a long way and being continually refused, hit on what she thought would be a successful method. Thrusting the fresh fruit close to the Americans she cried, “Antîky, antîky.” Seldom can the peasants really comprehend the strange delight that foreigners take in ancient objects, unless perchance the material be precious metal or stone, but they have learned that antiquities command a price. So with a money stimulus the mischief is augmented. Certain of the country people go hunting for old objects, rifling ancient tombs and scattering the contents far and wide in order to gratify the hideous taste of curio purchasers. Fearing lest they may be traced in their philistinism the peasants give wrong information as to the places from which the articles came so that their “finds” lose much of their value as historic data. Could the place and conditions of their age-long burial be known they might give archeological information more precious than the intrinsic value of the objects themselves. Sometimes a “find” is more or less injured because it is supposed to be valueless.
The provisions of the Turkish law regarding antiquities are very strict and operate to make scientific research difficult when not impossible. But the administration of these laws is not skilful enough to prevent an immense amount of sly pilfering from old tombs and suspected localities. Ancient tombs are completely covered from observation by soil. After heavy rains these sealed tombs are often betrayed by a slight sinking of the earth about them, and thus possibly a whole series of tombs will be discovered and their contents disposed of in the distant city.[[166]] These opened tombs may be seen all through the country, staring from the hillsides and among the terraces like ghastly eye-sockets. In the house which we hired for a boys’ school the builders had placed in one room as a floor stone an antîky of which they were proud. It was an ornamented and inscribed slab which they claimed to have found at Dayr Dîwân.[[167]] The inscription in Greek read
✠ΥΠΕΡ ΑΝΑΠΑΥΣΕΩΣ ΣΗΛΑΜΩΝΟΣ ΠΡΕΣΒΣ✠
For the repose of Sêlamôn (Solomon) Presbyter.