RAS EL-’AIN.
Though they are unquestionably of a high antiquity, the author and finisher of these great works are unknown. There is an Arab legend that Alexander the Great constructed a subterranean canal through which he brought the water from Bagdad! but a more pious tradition ascribes them to Solomon. Quoting Menander the Ephesian, Josephus informs us that they existed in the days of Shalmanezer, who, in his siege of Tyre,“placed guards at the rivers and aqueducts to hinder the Tyrians from drawing water.”[647]
Around these fountains, and stretching northward over this fertile plain, stood the old city of Tyre. Though neither temple nor column remains to mark the site, yet beneath the drifted sands of many centuries lie entombed those magnificent ruins which have escaped the hand of the spoiler, and which, of late, have been uncovered in part near the hill called Tell Habeish. During the reign of Hiram, Palai-Tyrus consisted of two parts, the larger and grander standing near the fountains on the main land,and the smaller on an island three milesto the north and not far from the shore.[648]It was by retiring to this island that the inhabitants were enabled to maintain the defense of their insular city against the attack by Shalmanezer during a period of five years.[649] Though subsequently besieged by Nebuchadnezzar for 13 years, yet it was reserved for the son of Philip to be the scourge of Providence, the destroyer of the city, and the accomplisher of prophecy. The continental city falling an easy prey to the victorious arms of Alexander the Great, he laid siege to the insular town for seven months. To capture this strong-hold, he removed a large portion of the materials of the former place, and with them built a causeway connecting the island with the continent. Advancing on this new military road, he took the city by storm; and, having slain 8000 of the citizens in the attack, he crucified 2000 others, and sold 30,000 more into slavery. Thus terminated the wonderful history of Phœnician Tyre, whose wealth was equaled only by her luxury, and whose power was excelled only by her pride. Abandoned to the worst forms of idolatry, she incurred the displeasure of an offended God;intoxicated with prosperity, she broke her “covenant” with the Hebrews, and confederated with other nations against them;[650] haughty as she was impious, she scrupled not to demand the wealth and sacred ornaments of the Temple at Jerusalem,which the enemies of the Jews had sacrilegiously pillaged;[651] forgetting the covenant with David and Solomon,she purchased the Jewish captives from their conquerors, and, loading her vessels with the human cargo, sold them into slavery in distant countries;[652] and when Nebuchadnezzar had utterly destroyed the Holy City, and had subdued and wasted all the lands of the Jews, she exulted over their downfall, and insultingly exclaimed,“Aha! she is broken that was the gates of the people; she is turned unto me; I shall be replenished now that she is laid waste.”[653]
For these sins God denounced against Tyre the severest judgments, and to-day she is a mournful proof of the accuracy and fulfillment of prophecy. Her royal palaces have given place to the abodes of poverty; her magnificent navy, with sails of embroidered linen from Egypt and ivory benches from the Isle of Chittim, has been exchanged for a few crazy fishing-boats;her famous mariners from Sidon and Arvad are superseded by boatmen whose nautical knowledge is not equal to a cruise on the Mediterranean five miles from land; and her vast commerce in the precious metals of Tarshish, the slaves of Javan, the horses of Togarmah, the coral and agate of Syria, the wheat of Minnith, the wine of Helbon, the spices of Sheba, the cassia and calamus of Dan, the precious clothes for chariots of Dedan, and the fine fleeces of Arabia, has dwindled down to an occasional cargo of millstones and juniper charcoal. Even her hill-sides, once rich in olive-groves, are now forsaken; and such have been the incursions of the sea, that the once fertile plain of Tyre has been transformed into a sandy waste, and she who was the “perfection of beauty is now smitten with baldness;” in her unrelieved desolation, her harps of gold and enchanting minstrelsy are forever silent, and winds and waves alone lament her departed glory. So complete is the ruin of the primal city, and so difficult to determine with exactitude the site of the Phœnician Tyre, that it is still true,“Thou shalt be no more; though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God.”[654] In removing the materials of the old town to fill up the arm of the sea between the island and main land, Alexander the Great fulfilled these astonishing words:“They shall break down thy walls and destroy thy pleasant houses; and they shall lay thy stones, and thy timber, and thy dust in the midst of the water.”[655] And, as significant of the utterness of her ruin, the traveler of to-day beholds what the prophet saw in the heavenly vision;“I will make thee like the top of a rock; thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more.”[656]
While the words, “Thou shalt be built no more,” are singularly and literally true when applied to Continental Tyre, yet the island city, which was not included in the prophetic denunciation, rose to great elegance under the Romans. Attaining to somewhat of the pristine splendor of the parent city in the first century, it resumed in part its ancient sway over the sea. Receiving Christianity at an early period, it was visited by St. Paul when on his way to Jerusalem,“who, finding disciples, we tarried there seven days.”[657] Seized by the Arabs in 638 A.D., it remained in their possession till June 27, 1124, whenit was captured by the Crusaders, who held it for 150 years, when it fell again into the hands of the Moslems on the evening of the day on which ’Akka was captured.Declining under their withering sceptre, at the close of the 17th century it was without a house, and its vaults were occupied by a few fishermen.[658] Under the fanatical Metawileh, in 1766 it was partially restored. Modern Tyre is a village of 4000 inhabitants, equally divided in their religious faith between Christ and Mohammed. What was once Alexander’s causeway is now a sandy isthmus, and what was once an island is now a peninsula. Originally extremely narrow, but increased by the action of the winds and waves upheaving the loose sands, the isthmus is half a mile wide, and that which was formerly the island is a ridge of rocks parallel to the shore, nearly a mile long, three quarters of a mile broad, and half a mile distant from the coast-line. The general surface is uneven, in part strewn by rocks, and in part encumbered by the accumulation of rubbish. The present town occupies the northwestern portion of the peninsula, and is near the ancient harbor. A single gate admits the traveler to the city. Around it are the remains of old towers, and near it are two deep wells, from which the inhabitants obtain their principal supply of water. With few exceptions the buildings are mere hovels, the streets narrow and crooked, and the citizens filthy and ignorant. As if to hide the fallen glory of Tyre, there are a few palms and pride of India trees growing in the gardens. Within the shattered walls and along the shore fishermen were mending their nets, and in the gloomy bazars were a few bales of cotton and tobacco, several tiers of millstones, and heaps of charcoal. The Moslems have a mosque crowned with two domes, and from beside it rises a tapering minaret; the Christians have two small churches, which are remarkable neither for their size nor elegance. In the southeast corner of the town are the remains of the famous Cathedral of Tyre, erected in the fourth century by Bishop Paulinus, and consecrated by Eusebius, and by the latter described as the most splendid of all the temples of Phœnicia. It was 216 feet long by 136 broad, and its ruins indicate its great magnificence. The south wall, the east and west ends, together with the chancel, remain standing; but the arched roof, the massive columns which supportedthe triforium, and the lofty tower, with its spiral staircase, have fallen into a thousand fragments. Somewhere within these broken walls reposes the dust of Origen and of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.
Five miles to the east of the town is the Tomb of Hiram, king of Tyre. It is an imposing mausoleum, and one of the most interesting monuments in the Holy Land. It is less remarkable for its beauty and ornaments than for its grandeur and durability. Crowning a graceful hill, it consists of a pedestal and a sarcophagus. The former is composed of four layers of immense blocks of limestone, about ten feet high; the latter is hewn out of a solid block, and is twelve feet long, eight wide, and six high, and is surmounted with a pyramidal lid five feet thick. The ends of the lid are beveled, the toprounded, and it is fitted on with such care that it is difficult to remove it. On the north side of the monument is an arched vault 20 feet square and 12 deep, which no doubt served as the place for the final repose of the royal family. Commanding a view of the City of the Great King, and of the sea beyond, the country around the tomb is strangely solitary; neither ancient ruin nor human habitation is near, but, standing alone, it is at once a venerable relic of the past and an impressive monument of the loneliness of death.
TOMB OF HIRAM.
On the same road, but some distance to the west, the French have excavated one of the most splendid temples yet discovered in the environs of Phœnicia. Consisting of a nave, two side aisles, a chancel, and an altar-piece, it is 75 feet long by 36 wide. The roof and portions of the walls are gone. Of the 14 columns which formed the aisles only the bases of 11 of them remain, on each of which is sculptured the Maltese cross. But its great beauty consists in its magnificent mosaic pavement, covering more than two thirds of the entire area. Formed of small square blocks of white and black marble, it is arranged in the most curious manner. In the aisles are circles 30 inches in diameter, containing figures of sheep, fish, fowls, fruits, tigers, elephants, buffaloes, dogs, horses, rabbits, deer, lions, antelopes, and leopards, together with ten mythological busts, representing the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome. Before the high altar is a lengthy inscription in Greek characters; but, owing to their curious forms and the numerous contractions, it was impossible to decipher it without reference to learned works. From all that we could learn from those having the work in charge, it was originally a heathen temple, was converted into a Christian church by the Crusaders, and, abandoned during the mediæval wars, it has since remained buried beneath the accumulated sand and rubbish of centuries.
A single historic site breaks the monotony of the journey from Tyre to Sidon, a distance of 25 miles.The path follows the coast along the Plain of Phœnicia, over which “a mournful and solitary silence now prevails.”[659] While the hills which bound it on the east are carefully cultivated, and the summits thereof are adorned with villages, this vast and rich plain is deserted. Less than two miles from the gate of Tyre we passed a large fountain, believed by the Arabs to possess medicinalvirtues, and four miles beyond we came to the banks of the Leontes of the old geographers, and the Nahr el-Kâsimîyeh of the natives. The third largest river in Syria, its highest source is not far from the ruins of Ba’albek; and draining the southern section of the Bukâ’a, with the adjoining sides of the Lebanon and anti-Lebanon, it bursts the everlasting gates of the former, and, descending through a wild ravine, crosses the plain to the sea. It is twenty-five feet wide; its clear waters flow rapidly through a deep gorge, which is now spanned by a modern bridge, having a single arch. Nine miles to the north is Khan el-Khudr, the Zarephath of the Old Testament and the Sarepta of the New. On a fine hill overhanging the plain is the large town of Sŭrafend, the Arabic of the Scriptural name. The original city stood near the shore; its site is now marked by a Mohammedan tomb and a noble fig-tree. Driven by famine from his retreat by the “brook Cherith that is before Jordan,”hither Elijah came, and was received into the house of that poor widow whose “barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruise of oil fail,” and whose son, as a reward of faith and charity, the prophet raised to life.[660] And here an early tradition has preserved the site of that touching scene of the meeting of Christ and the woman of Syro-Phœnicia,whose daughter he healed during his first and only visit “to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.”[661]