Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

Perhaps the best account of “Lot’s wife” is to be found in E. H. Palmer’s “Desert of the Exodus,” where a coloured plate helps the realisation.

“While with the Ghawárineh” (says Palmer) “we had heard strange rumours that ‘a statue’ called ‘Lot’s wife’ existed on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, but none of them had ever seen it, or could give us a satisfactory description of it. Making cautious inquiries amongst the Beni Hamideh, we found that the statement was correct, and after some little trouble, guides were procured who offered to conduct us to the spot.... Our path led us to another plateau, about 1000 feet above the Dead Sea, and on the extreme edge of this was the object of which we were in search—Bint Sheikh Lot, or ‘Lot’s wife.’ It is a tall isolated needle of rock, which does really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman with a child upon her shoulder. The Arab legend of Lot’s wife differs from the Bible account only in the addition of a few frivolous details. They say that there were seven Cities of the Plain, and that they were all miraculously overwhelmed by the Dead Sea as a punishment for their crimes. The prophet Lot and his family alone escaped the general destruction; he was divinely warned to take all that he had and flee eastward, a strict injunction being given that they should not look behind them. Lot’s wife, who had on previous occasions ridiculed her husband’s prophetic office, disobeyed the command, and, turning to gaze upon the scene of the disaster, was changed into this pillar of rock.

“Travellers in all ages have discovered ‘Lot’s wife’ in the pillars which atmospheric influences are constantly detaching from the great masses of mineral salt at the southern end of the Dead Sea, but these are all accidental and transient. The rock discovered by us does not fulfil the requirements of the Scriptural story, but there can be no doubt that it is the object which has served to keep alive for so many ages the local tradition of the event.

“The sun was just setting as we reached the spot; and the reddening orb sank down behind the western hills, throwing a bridge of sheeny light across the calm surface of the mysterious lake. As we gazed on the strange statue-like outline of the rock—at first brought out into strong relief against the soft yet glowing hues of the surrounding landscape, and then mingled with the deepening shadows, and lost amid the general gloom as night came quickly on, we yielded insensibly to the influence of the wild Arab tale, and could almost believe that we had seen the form of the prophet’s wife peering sadly after her perished home in the unknown depths of that accursed sea.”

6. The Natural History of Palestine, as dependent on its Physical Geography.

The gradual elevation of the countries of Egypt and Palestine, inferred by Professor Hull from the geological facts, appears to be borne out by a comparison of the fishes which inhabit respectively the Lake of Galilee and the lakes of south-eastern Africa.

Josephus, after describing in glowing language the beauty and fruitfulness of the country of Gennesaret, says, “For besides the good temperature of the air, it is also watered from a most fertile fountain. The people of the country call it Capharnaum. Some have thought it to be a vein of the Nile, because it produces the Coracin fish as well as that lake does which is near to Alexandria.”[15] The truth turns out to be much stranger than Josephus imagined, for the Sea of Galilee can claim affinity by its fishes with the Victoria Nyanza. Rev. Canon Tristram, who more than any other traveller has studied the natural history of the Holy Land, has made the comparison in some detail, and made out the relationship of the fishes beyond doubt. He declares that of all the forms of life in Palestine the fishes are the most interesting. There are no fishes in the Dead Sea; but there are fishes, chiefly Cyprinidæ, or of the perch tribe, in the little streams and rivers close to the Dead Sea. “I have seen the date palm absolutely dipping its fronds into the Dead Sea as it hung over—for on the east side the date palm is very luxuriant. On the eastern shores there is as wonderful an exuberance of vegetable life as will be found anywhere on the face of the earth. The plants are like hot-house plants growing wild. In the warm waters entering to the sea there are small fishes of various species. We found thirteen new kinds of fishes in the Jordan and its affluents. Dr Günther of the British Museum kindly described them in a paper in the ‘Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,’ and certainly such a discovery amply repaid our search.

“I wish now to point out the conclusions come to from these fishes, for they are really the climax of the physical geography of the Jordan Valley. The fishes found in the Sea of Galilee not only belong for the most part to species different from those found in any stream flowing into the Mediterranean, but they belong frequently to different genera. Some years before, I brought home the type specimen of a fish, the only species I could find in some salt lakes of the Sahara, and Dr Günther declared it to be not only a new species but a new genus. I remember Sir Charles Lyell observing, ‘You have got there the last living representative of the Saharan ocean.’ We found in the Sea of Galilee three more species of the same genus, but each distinct. Speke brought back two species of the same family from the Nyanza, and Dr Kirk has described several from the Zambezi and the neighbouring region.

“Now we may see what this amounts to. We have got the same genus of fishes represented in a variety of specific types from the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan that are found in the feeders of the Nile, and in the Central African lakes down to the Zambezi. The conclusion is natural that all these fishes come from a common origin, and that during the Tertiary period there was a chain of fresh-water lakes, extending to the lakes in Africa, similar to the chain of lakes in North America.