Haifa; or, Life in modern Palestine

by Laurence Oliphant

It was up the branch of the wady that I was descending that the projected railway from Haifa to Damascus would have to be led, and it was some satisfaction to see that it offered facilities for the ascent of the line. The scenery was in the highest degree picturesque, the sides of the valley sometimes sloping back for some distance to the foot of the basalt precipices which formed its upper wall; at others these approached and formed projecting and overhanging promontories, like that on which the Kasr Berdawil was situated. We scrambled down by a rugged path to the small stream at the bottom with the view of following it, if possible, to its outlet on the lake, but this we soon found to be impracticable, and were assured by a Bedouin, whose hut we finally reached on its margin, that we must cross it, and make an ascent on the opposite side. This led us by a roundabout, hilly, but picturesque route across numerous and intersecting wadys, and past one ruin, of which nothing remained but the black blocks of hewn basalt. I was fortunate enough, however, to meet a man who told me the name, which I added to my list of unknown ruins, and so, after much scrambling, we reached at last the white limestone strata, and the purling brook again with its fringe of oleanders, and could see in the distance the one large solitary tree which we had given as our rendezvous, and beneath which our servants were standing, that marks the site of the ruins of Kersa, or the Gergesa of the Bible, where Christ healed the two men possessed with devils, and suffered those malignant spirits to enter into the herd of swine.

There is a discrepancy in the accounts of the Evangelists in their narrative of the incident. Mark and Luke, in our version, locate it in the country of the Gadarenes, but Matthew states it to have taken place in the country of the Gergesenes. The Vulgate, Arabic, and others that follow the Vulgate read Gergesa in all the Evangelists, and there can be no doubt that this is the correct reading, for the simple reason that the miracles could not have taken place in the country of the Gadarenes, a district which lies south of the Yarmuk, and at a long distance from the lake, the principal town, Gadara, the modern Um Keis, about the identification of which there can be no doubt, being at least eight miles from it. Now the account says that “when he came out of the ship immediately there met him a man,” also that the herd ran down a steep place violently into the sea. To do this, if the incident had taken place at Gadara, they must have descended twelve hundred feet to the Yarmuk, swam across that river, clambered up the opposite bank, and then raced for about six miles across the plain before they could reach the nearest margin of the lake. Scarcely any amount of insanity on the part of the devils would account for such a mad career, but in point of fact it does not tally with the Scripture record, according to which they rushed down a steep place into the sea. This is exactly what they could do at Kersa. The margin of the lake is here within a few rods of the base of the cliff, where there are ancient tombs, out of which may have issued the men who met Christ on the plateau above; and it is easy to suppose that the swine, rushing down the sloping cliff, would have enough impetus to carry them across the narrow slip of shore at its base. The remains now only consist of long lines of wall, which may easily be traced, and of a considerable area strewn with building-stones, which show that it must in old time have contained a considerable population. This is the more likely to be the case as it was the chief town of a district which was called after it. In fact, this picturesque and interesting Wady Samak, with its evidences of a former civilization, and its “place of arches” and handsome synagogue, was, in fact, “the country of the Gergesenes;” and there can be little doubt that to Christ and his disciples the remote corners of it, which I had been one of the first to explore, were intimately known.[^[3]]

The ruins of Kersa are a good deal overgrown, and in the cover which is thus afforded I put up a wild boar. He dashed away so suddenly, however, that a bullet from a revolver, which was sent after him, failed to produce any result. I have little doubt that the old Roman road turned from the lake at this point up the Wady Samak, as there are traces here and there indicating such a probability. It will be a singular commentary on the progress of events if it turns out that it has taken the best gradient, and if, upon its ancient track, the scream of the locomotive may in the near future be heard waking up the long-silent echoes of the country of the Gergesenes.

[3] The greater part of the Wady Samak and the surrounding country had, immediately prior to my visit, been most accurately surveyed by Mr. Gottlieb Schumacher, the son of the American vice-consul at Haifa, whose admirable and exhaustive surveys are embodied in the proceedings of the English and German Palestine Exploration Societies, and who was my companion on the occasion of our discovery of the ruins of Umm el-Kanatar.

[THE ROCK TOMBS OF PALESTINE.]

Haifa, April 26.—The fact that I am laboring under a peculiar phase of insanity, which takes the form of descending with a light into the bowels of the earth with a measuring tape, and writing down cabalistic signs of what I find there, whether it be in a cistern or a tomb, or a natural cavern, has become pretty widely known among the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, and the consequence is that from time to time I receive information which may minister to this harmless monomania. The other day, for instance, a stonecutter whom I had employed on some building operations came to me with the intelligence that while he and some villagers had been getting out stone for a house at a place about twenty miles distant they had unexpectedly come upon a series of subterranean chambers. His account was so tempting that, though prepared by experience for disappointment when acting upon purely native information, I nevertheless thought the possible results worth an effort, and proceeded therefore to the village in question, which was situated in the centre of the Plain of Esdraelon. The sheik was at first somewhat reluctant to show me the spot, as the fellahin have an inherent suspicion of all investigations of this nature, believing them to be mysteriously connected with the discovery of treasure, which, when found, they will be accused of having concealed, and punished for it. He finally consented, however, to lead the way, and brought me to an opening in the earth, from the surface of which a flight of nine stone steps led down to a small paved court, about six feet square, which had now been emptied of the soil which had previously concealed its existence. The sides of this court, which were about twelve feet high, were formed of massive masonry, the blocks of stone being each from eighteen inches to two feet square, set in mortar. A short vaulted passage, three feet long, two feet six wide, and five feet high, led from it into a subterranean chamber of fine workmanship, and in such a high state of preservation that it was difficult to realize that from fifteen hundred to two thousand years had elapsed since its stone floor had been trodden by the foot of man. It was fourteen feet long, eight broad, and eight feet six in height, with a vaulted roof, the walls consisting of plain chiselled stones set in mortar, in courses of from two feet to two feet six inches in height. On the left of this chamber was a single koka, or tunnel, hewn in the rock for the reception of a dead body. The roof was vaulted and of solid masonry. On the side opposite the entrance was another vaulted passage, which was seven feet six in length, and led into a chamber hewn out of the solid rock, twelve feet by ten feet six, and six feet six in height. This contained three kokim and a loculus under an arcosolium; but the side of the loculus, as well as those of the kokim, had been much injured. The villagers, who had opened these tombs for the first time only a few weeks before, told us they had only found human bones in them, but I strongly suspect they had found ornaments which they were afraid to exhibit, though I offered them money. One or two glass bottles and earthenware jars they also said they had found and broken.

Not far from these tombs was another smaller excavation, the entrance to which presented the appearance of an ordinary cave, but on entering it we found ourselves in a small, circular, rock-hewn chamber, the floor so covered with rubble that it was not possible to stand upright. In the centre of the roof was an aperture eighteen inches square, opening to the sky, carefully hewn, and from it led a passage of masonry, the stones also set in mortar, two feet six broad, and about five feet to the point where it was completely choked with earth. Had I had time to excavate I should no doubt have found that it led into a tomb. The entrance to this passage was almost completely blocked by the capital of a handsome Ionic column; the column itself was eighteen inches in diameter. How it ever came to be wedged down in this underground passage I cannot conceive. Among the stones in the vicinity which had been unearthed by the natives I found one on which was carved a seven-branched candlestick, another of Jewish moulding, a sarcophagus, several fragments of columns, and a monolith standing ten feet from the débris at its base, with grooves and slots similar to others which I have seen on Carmel, but taller. I can only imagine it to have formed part of some olive-pressing machinery. In the neighbouring rocks were hewn vats and wine-presses.

The discovery of this tomb, with the peculiar characteristics which marked its construction, and the objects which surrounded it, afforded a fertile subject of conjecture. In order that my readers may understand the considerations to which it gave rise, I must enter a little more fully than I have hitherto done into the subject of the ancient Jewish methods of sepulture. These consist of sundry varieties, and it has been attempted to fix their dates from the variations which have been observed, as well as to discriminate by them between Christian and Jewish tombs. So far as my own investigation goes, I have been unable to fix any positive rule in the matter, my experience being that one no sooner forms a theory based upon observation, than one makes some new discovery which upsets it. Roughly, the tombs which I have investigated may be divided into the following categories: 1. Rock-hewn tombs containing nothing but loculi; 2. Rock-hewn tombs containing nothing but kokim; 3. Rock-hewn tombs containing both; 4. Masonry tombs containing either loculi or kokim, or both together; 5. Sarcophagi; 6. Rock-sunk tombs. A rock-hewn tomb is an excavation made in the solid rock (advantage generally has been taken of a natural cavern), and round the sides of the chambers so formed, which vary in dimensions, are ranged the receptacles for the dead. In some cases these are more than one chamber. In Sheik Abreikh, for instance, I counted fifteen opening one into another. Sometimes these are one above another, and one has to enter them from below through a hole in the stone roof which forms the floor of the upper chamber. A koka is a rectangular sloping space cut into the rock, tunnel fashion, extending six feet horizontally, sufficiently wide and high to admit of a corpse being pushed into it. A loculus is a trough cut laterally into the rock, which is arched above so as to form what is called an arcosolium. This trough is generally about six feet long, two feet six broad, and two feet deep. It is thus separated from the chamber by a wall of rock two feet high. A large tomb will contain as many as twelve loculi ranged around it.

At first it was supposed that the kokim tombs were the oldest; then it was found that loculi and kokim were sometimes found in the same tomb; and, indeed, there seems now to be no reason to suppose that one kind is older than the other. That the Christians used both is certain from the fact that Greek inscriptions with Christian ornaments are to be found over the doors of tombs containing kokim as well as loculi. Masonry tombs are only found in Galilee, where they are very rare. Indeed, so far as I am aware, this is only the sixth that has been discovered; but what gave it a special interest in my eyes is the fact that the stones were set in mortar, which is not the case with any of the others, ancient Jewish synagogues, as well as their masonry tombs, being built without cement. I therefore had made up my mind that this was a Christian tomb, the early Christians having evidently continued the Jewish method of sepulture, more especially as it is oriented, which is not the case with Jewish tombs; and, indeed, the character of the masonry and the fragments of columns and capitals lying about induced me to place it in the Byzantine period, possibly as late even as the fourth or fifth century A.D. But then I stumbled upon the stone with the seven-branched candlestick, an unmistakably Jewish emblem, which threw the date back. It is true that this stone was not built into the tomb, and might have formed part of a building of a date long anterior to it. Indeed, we know that on this spot, which is now called Jebata, and which is undoubtedly the Biblical Gabatha, was formerly a Jewish town of some importance, and its remains have doubtless got mixed up with those of a later Byzantine period, to which I still think it probable that the tomb which I discovered belongs.