Buried Cities and Bible Countries

by George St. Clair

(By favour of the Palestine Exploration Fund.)

At Azotus, or Ashdod, one of the Philistine cities, is a large mound, with columns cropping up out of the ground on the outskirts of it. Mr Trelawney Saunders, the geographer, has described the site in his “Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.” Ashdod, on a hillock (alt. 140 feet), at the western end of the plain of Zeita, is now separated from all that remains of its port, by sand-downs 3 miles in breadth. The site is occupied by the present village of Esdud, with eighteen hundred people, but the remains of this primeval city, once so strong and mighty, are so few and insignificant that one is tempted to suppose the greater part of the city may be buried beneath the sands. If so, they may be in a superior state of preservation, and would perhaps repay for digging out.

Gath, the birth-place of Goliath, has long been a lost city, but is now reasonably identified with Tell es Sufi at the mouth of the Wady or water-course which runs from near Hebron, past Adullam and Shochoh, and westward towards Ashdod. It is the site of the Crusading fortress of Blanche Garde, which was built in 1144 A.D. as an outpost for defence against the people of Ascalon. It is now a mud village with olives beneath it, standing on a cliff 300 feet high, which is burrowed with caves. The Rev. Henry George Tomkins takes Tell es Sufi to be the “mound of Safi,” and regards Safi as a personal name. In a learned paper in the Quarterly Statement, October 1886, he argues that Safi was a brother of Goliath’s, and if so this is an additional reason for regarding Tell es Sufi as Gath.

Ascalon, “the bride of Syria,” is still called Askalon. The fortifications and walls are in ruins, and the site of the city is a garden planted with fruit trees and vegetables. The walls are the ruins of battlements, erected by Richard Lionheart in 1191 A.D., in place of those destroyed by Saladin, and doubtless with the same materials. They are half buried by the great dunes of rolling sand which are ever being blown up by the sea breeze from the southward. The whole interior of the site is covered with rich soil, to a depth of about 10 feet, and the natives find fragments of fine masonry, shafts, capitals, and other remains of the old city, by digging into it. Of Herod’s beautiful colonnades nothing now remains. The Crusaders had little respect for antiquities, and the innumerable granite pillar shafts which are built horizontally into the walls are no doubt those originally brought to the town by Herod.

Conder says, “We heard a curious tradition at Ascalon. A tomb had been opened by the peasantry, near the ruin, some thirty years ago. Under a great slab, in the eastern cemetery, they found a perfectly preserved body, with a sword by its side, and a ring on its finger. The dead eyes glared so fiercely on the intruders that they let fall the slab; and as one of the party soon after died, they came to the conclusion that it was a Nebi or Prophet whom they had disturbed, and the place has thus become surrounded with a mysterious sanctity.”

In the days of David’s grandson the kingdom of the Israelites divided in two, and began the new phase of its existence as the parallel monarchies of Israel and Judah. The disruption, it may be said, was owing to the fact that Ephraim envied Judah, and Judah vexed Ephraim. Naturally, the split, when it came, took place along a line between these two powerful tribes and right athwart the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin was torn asunder—Jericho and Bethel going to the northern kingdom, while other towns went to the south. Jerusalem continued to be a capital, but it was now the capital of the kingdom of Judah only; and Shechem was chosen as the capital of the northern kingdom, which was called Israel.

But these northern monarchs had their pleasant summer residences as well, corresponding to Windsor or Versailles. One of these was Samaria, another was Tirzah, a third was Jezreel.

The Samaria of the present day is a large and flourishing village of stone and mud houses, standing on the hill of the ancient Samaria. The most interesting ruins now to be seen there are those of Herod’s colonnade to the west of the modern village. The colonnade seems to have surrounded the whole city with a kind of cloister, which was 60 feet wide, and the pillars 16 feet high. The city of Samaria of the Old Testament has disappeared. But the kings of Israel were buried here, and the ancient tombs may yet perhaps come to light.

Tirzah, famous for its beauty, is the only Samaritan town mentioned among the royal cities taken by Joshua. Conder finds it in the present mud hamlet of Teiasir. It was delightfully situated on a plateau where the valleys begin to dip suddenly towards Jordan.