From Egypt to Palestine through Sinai, the Wilderness and the South Country. Observations of a journey made with special reference to the history of the Israelites ... With maps and illustrations

Front matter

MENEPIITA, THE SUPPOSED PHARAOH OF TnE EXODUS. From Lepsius's " Denkmaler. FROM EGYPT TO PALESTINE THROUGH SINAI THE WILDERNESS AND THE SOUTH COUNTRY OBSERVATIOXS OF A JOURXEY MADE WITH .SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE HISTORY OF THE ISRAELITES BY S. C. BARTLETT, D.D., LL.D. . PRESIDENT OF DARTMOCTH COLLEGE, AMD LATELY PROFESSOR IX THE CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YOEK HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRANKLIN SQUARE Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Preface

. The present volume, aud the journey which it records, were undertaken with a somewhat definite purpose. A large number of industrious and acute investigators have been engaged for many years in unfolding the antiquities of Egypt; and many judicious and learned travellers have recorded their observations upon the Sinaitic Peninsula and the "Wilderness of the Wandering. These investigations have cast great light upon the history of the Israelites, as related to these regions, until it has become practicable to place the narrative of the Pentateuch at least approximately in its historic and geographical surroundings. These results lie widely scattered. Many persons have desired to find them gathered up compactly, and passed in review by some one who should possess the requisite knowledge of these discoveries and theories, and sufficient personal cognizance of the scenes and facts to do it with some degree of intelligence and unity of view.

This object the writer has endeavored to subserve. In company with three intelligent and observing friends — Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, M.D., missionary in India; Rev. E. M. Williams, of Minneapolis; and Edwin J. Bartlett, A.M., of Chicago, now Professor in Dartmouth College — he travelled from Alexandria to Beyrout by the routes herein recorded. As' other travellers had commonly expressed opinions drawn only from the special routes they had travelled, he

PREFACE.

. made it a point to examine personally, between Suez and Sinai, each of the several lines of travel which have been ascribed to the Israelites, and with the facts and opinions before him to judge for himself. The observations, and commonly the opinions, were shared, as they were greatly aided, by these companions. It may explain the minuteness of statement on many points to say that the writer had spe cially in mind the difficulties which have been raised con cerning the possibility of such a journey as that described in the Pentateuch — difficulties with which his studies had made him long familiar ; and that his observations were somewhat steadily directed toward ascertaining the actual and possi ble condition of those regions, and the correspondence here between the land and the Book. The same practical aim shaped his inquiries throughout the journey.

He endeavored, in view of all that had been discovered and conject ured, to judge fair]}7 for himself on the spot. It was no part of his purpose to indulge in exaggerated descriptions for the sake of " tine writing," nor to advance novel theories for the sake of sensation. No doubt a large class of readers wonld eagerly welcome a volume filled with such novelties as that of Piazzi Smyth, who finds in the Great Pyramid a divinely revealed standard of metrology, found ed on the exact dimensions of the earth ; or that of Brugsch, who would lead the Israelites along the Serbonian bog; or that of Mr. Forster and others, who converted the Naba thean inscriptions of Wady Mukatteb and elsewhere into records written by the Israelites themselves ; or that of Beke, who in 1S74 was fitted out with money from Eng land, and with a steamer by the Khedive of Egypt, to seek Mount Sinai east of the Gulf of Akabah. What is needed is not new theories; nor, perhaps, can it be now expected that, in the region of Sinai and the Wilder-

PREFACE.

. 7 ness, any one traveller shall add much to the knowledge of essential facts. This could be accomplished only by labori ous and protracted explorations, prosecuted by expeditions fitted out at very heavy cost. To the careful records of many learned observers, from the days of Burckhardt, have been added the recent researches of the British Ordnance Survey and the Palestine Exploration Fund, furnishing am ple materials for the intelligent traveller to combine with his own observations, and thus to form the basis of intelligent opinions. On returning to America, the writer had access to all the principal treatises on Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, including not only books of travels, but such works as the Denkmaler of Lepsius, and his other publications ; together with those of Diimichen, Brugsch, Mariette, Leemans, Chabas, and oth ers — a donation to the Chicago Theological Seminary from the Rev. E. M. Williams.

He trusts that he has used these sources of information discreetly, but no man could claim to have done it exhaustively. His aim has been to give his readers a knowledge of the present state of the case, and the means of knowing more. His own views he has freely ex pressed, while holding all subject to revision, should more light come. It is altogether probable that, in dealing with so wide a range of facts and opinions, he has fallen into some errors. These he will gladly correct. A meteorolog ical record was kept, and many measurements and compu tations made, by Edwin J. Bartlett, A.M. The author owes his thanks for courtesies to many persons at home and abroad. He desires particularly to mention his obligation to Mr. and Mrs. E. W. Blatchford and Rev. E. M. Williams, for aid and encouragement with reference to the journey. His acknowledgments are also due to Gen. Charles P. Stone, chief of staff to the Khedive of Egypt, for kind at-

PREFACE.

. tention and use of instruments belonging to the government. Unforeseen hinderances have delayed the publication of the volume many months after its preparation. Nothing has meanwhile fallen under the notice of the author calling for any changes of statement, nor diminishing the usefulness of such a work. Some perplexity has been experienced in regard to the orthography of the geographical names, which is still unset tled. There is not only a German and an English method quite prevalent, but individual travellers of each nation have their own methods of representing these Arabic names. Thus, the orthography of Palmer is diverse from that of Robinson, and Dr. Porter's (as represented in Murray's Guide-book) often different from both. Moreover, in quot ing from different travellers, it was, in some instances at least, deemed undesirable to change their method of repre senting the name.

The author preferred to leave this di versity to some extent, rather than to attempt the functions of an arbiter and bring all to a fixed standard, until at least that standard should be agreed upon better than it is at present. CONTENTS.

Appendix

547 INDEX MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Menephta, the supposed Pharaoh of the Exodus Frontispiece Alexandria 27 Street in Cairo 31 Street in the Bazaar at Cairo 34 Modern Shadoof 44 Section of the Great Pyramid 53 The Pyramids 54 Great Hall at Karnak 5 7 Wooden Statue — referred by Mariette Bey to the Fourth Dynasty 67 Egyptian Art 71 Jutaha Melek 99 Suez Canal and Eastern Egypt 148 Map of Eastern Egypt and the Koute of Israel 156 Map of the Red Sea Crossing, showing A7arious Theories 161 The Northern End of the Gulf of Suez — from the Map of the Maritime Canal Company 168 Map of Wady Maghara 218 Snefru— Chufu (Cheops) : Tablets in Wady Maghara 222 Wady Mukatteb 227 Sinaitic Inscriptions, AVady Mukatteb 229 Strata in Wrady Feiran, one-twentieth of the Natural Size 239 Oasis in AA7ady Feiran 244 Plan of the Oasis of Feiran . . . .' 245 Ordnance Survey Map of Mount Serbal Faces 248 Jebel Serbal 262 Ordnance Survey Map of Mount Sinai Faces 266 Ras Sufsafeh, the Northern End of Sinai 275 Gate of the Convent of St. Catherine 279 Beer-sheba 380 El 4Vujeh 383 Ruined Town of Sebaita 389 Ruined Houses at Sebaita 396 nebron MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE Lower Pool of Hebron 415 Rachel's Tomb 419 Jerusalem, from the East 422 Plan of Jerusalem 425 Wall at South-east Corner of Temple Area 427 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre 431 Ground-plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 433 Quarries under Jerusalem 437 Jews' Wailing-place 439 Pool of Siloam 441 Bethlehem 444 The Dead Sea, from the North 447 Map of the Dead Sea 450 Entrance to Nablous 462 Samaria 468 Jenin 474 Map of the Valley of Esdraelon 476 Map of the Valley of Nazareth 481 Plan of Nazareth 483 Nazareth 487 Kefr Kenna, seen in the Distance 490 Tiberias and Lake, looking North-east 495 Mejdel-.and Plain of Gennesaret 508 Map of the Sea of Galilee 510 Wady Hamam 514 Tyre, from the East 521 Sidon 525 Beyroot 532 Constantinople 539 The Bosphorus 544 Map of the Environs of Jerusalem At end of volume Map of Sinai, the Desert, and the South Country " "

Chapter I. To Antiquity

One may best enter antiquity through the " Eternal City." As all roads lead to Rome, so the road from Rome leads through all history. It is well for an American traveller — at least I found it so — thus to bridge over the chasm be tween him and the ages past. I had set out primarily to see the historic scenes of the old Covenant People : the conntry of their bondage, the track of their exodus, the mount of their law -giving, the desert of their wanderings, and the land of their hope and promise. To the native of a country whose oldest monuments and records are younger than three centuries, those events seem at times interminably remote, and inaccessible. The city that once joined all nations to gether still mediates between the ages. She takes the traveller by the hand, and leads him steadily upward into the past.

The spell of the Empire, indeed, is upon him almost as soon as he sets foot upon the shores of Europe ; and by the time lie has reached the "golden mile-stone" by the Forum, he begins to have a sense of fresh contact with the chief events of the past. They lie around within easy reach. Through all the diverse and multitudinous sights of Europe, there is found one central historic cord running up to antiquity. I first encountered it in the little remnant of a brick and-cement wall, found not without difficulty, in a garden at Carnarvon, Wales. At Chester the whole soil was full of relics, cropping out wherever a drain is dug; aud the old bath-room, now underground, still showed its bathing-tub in situ. At York were to be seen the ruins of Roman towers; at Lincoln, the solid gate-way still in use ; in London, the central mile-stone; and in every considerable. collection of curiosities, from Edinburgh to the south of England, Roman altars, relics, and inscriptions.

On crossing to the Conti nent, the marks of this ancient and ubiquitous force grew more continuous. They lay all along the Rhine Valley : at Cologne (colonia), thickly sown with mosaics, statues, and sarcophagi; Bonn, rich in its cabinet of antiquities; Engers, where the masonry of Cæsar's bridge is still pointed out; Coblentz, the confluentia of the Moselle ; Treves, up the Mo selle, exhibiting its ancient gate-way, baths, and amphithe atre ; and at Maintz, with its aqueduct, its monument of Drusus, and its museum overflowing with all manner of Ro man relics. Where the Rhine comes from Switzerland, the name which the Romans gave still remains in "Basilea" (Basle). On the shores of Lake Geneva, and along the val ley of the Rhone, as at Sion (Sedunum) and at Martigny, I had seen the permanent marks of their occupancy ; and in one almost solitary place a single Roman pier stood bolt upright by the river, to tell of an energy such as never has been there since.

Such indications as these keep growing upon the traveller till the strong hand that once lay upon the nations has taken firm hold of him. The impression deepens as he approach es the seat of that ancient power. The first contact with the macaroni-making, chestnut-roasting, begging population of the modern city makes him ready to question, indeed, whether there is not some mistake. But an old column or a majestic ruin brings back the spell, and, after a little roam ing about this wonderful place, he begins to feel that he is almost in the presence of the great acts and actors of the ages past. There can hardly be found in the world another place that so shortens the way back through the world's history. Sometimes you ascend by a series of colossal steps. You stand on the Piazza del Popolo, before a tall granite obelisk covered with inscriptions.

Gay equipages, with fleet horses and showy liveries, are gliding by in a continuous stream of life. But as you lift your eyes to the column, you read first the inscription of Sixtus V., " Pontifex Maximus," bearing date near three hundred years ago. Next you read the name of another " Pontifex Maximus," Augustus Cæsar, who records that this was his own undivided gift to the Roman people, some 1500 years earlier, and that he brought it from Egypt. Higher yet you read the names of Rameses II. and Seti I., and you have mounted some fourteen hundred years beyond Augustus Cæsar. Or you bridge the way to Cæsar's time by shorter arches, when, for example, you enter the lit tle church of San Clemente, where services have been con ducted seven or eight centuries in the present building, but in an ill-fitted choir taken from an older church.

From the sacristy you descend a long double flight of steps into an ex cavation accidentally originated within about a dozen years, and completed within live, to find yourself in another older church directly underneath, containing sixteen columns of granite and marble and various fresco paintings, between which five more centuries seem to intervene ; and you learn that St. Jerome, in the year 592, mentions a church in this place. From this lower church you still descend, passing on the stairway two or three strata of ancient city walls, one of PAlLESTINE. which is supposed to belong at least to the republican period of Rome, and another perhaps to the time of Servius Tul lius. Beneath all this, down where the water stands a foot in depth, on the one side is a chamber containing an altar to the oriental god Mithras, aud on the other a well-built room, with a vaulted and stuccoed ceiling and the base of a marble column, which is alleged to be the house of Clement, the apostolic father, for whom the church is named.

It may or may not have been his ; but in descending those successive flights of steps, you have, beyond all cavil, walked from the nineteenth and the twelfth to the fourth century of the Christian era, and an indefinite period beyond. Or you may waive all intermediate stages, and stand in the presence of the Empire and the Republic. There is a singular sense of personal acquaintance with those times and men, when, as you ascend the Capitoline Hill, between Cas tor and Pollux, the first mile-stone of the Appian Way is on your right, and Marcus Aurelius, with outstretched hand, mounted on a horse, to which Michael Angelo once said, " Get up," welcomes you to the spot where Brutus addressed the people after Cæsar's death. As you descend on the oth er side, the events which Sallust describes grow vivid while you stand in the unquestionable hole, the Mamertine pris on, where Jugurtha starved, and Catiline's accomplices were strangled, and see the place of the stairs by which Cicero came forth to say, " Vixerunt."

The sense of recentness increases when you leave the prison and look upon the site of the Senate Chamber, where he and Cæsar debated the doom of the prisoners — for the old cement of the foundations still holds together like a rock ; and close at hand the three columns of Vespasian and the eight of Saturn's temple stand as firm on the solid mass of substructure as though they were set up last year. From the site of the Senate House diagonally across the Forum you enter the spot from which Cæsar no doubt went forth to his death, and, hard by, the place of Cicero's modest dwelling on the edge of the Palatine Hill. You push through the monstrous substruc tions of the same hill, and climb to the site of the palace where Caligula raved, or descend into the Atrium and Tri clinium of Tiberius's father, and look upon the frescos which the family saw at their meals.

You pass round, seeing in four or five places great blocks which belonged to Roma Quadrata of the earliest times. You go to the rear of the hill, half-way down, into the rooms of the Pædagogium, and read names which the boys scratched on the plaster of the walls — Felicis, Dolychorus, and others — and half sentences, in bungling letters, such as " Corinthus exit de pœdagogio." You descend in front over the ancient lava pavement of the "Via Nova," by the foundations and remains of the temple of Jupiter Stator, commenced, as the story goes, by Romu lus, and you read on two blocks of stone, lying ten feet be low the surface, the names of Diocl[es] and Pelora[lis], of Rome's third century ; while on your right and left are the historic sites where Ancus Marcius and Servins Tullius lived. You enter into the private life and sumptuous habits of Rome's imperial rulers when, for example, underneath the wide-spread ruins of Titus's Baths you pass through room after room of Nero's palace, seeing the paintings in spots yet upon the walls, and the bath-tub in which the wretch washed the tenement of his foul soul ; and still beneath that palace you look npon the mosaic floor of the villa of Mæce nas, which it covered up.

On the way thus from the Pal atine to the Esquiline Hill you have passed, perhaps, over the old pavement of the " Sacred Way," where so many tri umphs went ; beneath that Arch of Titus, on which is to be seen the only contemporary representation of the golden candlestick,1 the Jubilee trumpets, and the showbread ta ble; and by the Coliseum, where Ignatius and so many other martyrs shed their blood. And thus the vista opens up both to the Temple and the Cross. You are forced to remember, as you study the beautiful Column of Trajan, wreathed with fresh sculpturings of forgotten warfare, that the man who reared it personally doomed Ignatius to prison, torture, and the beasts. The Arch of Septimius, the Tomb of Hadrian, and the Baths of Diocletian awaken the same kind of associations. The sense of personal intercourse with these great factors of history is completed by standing in the presence of so many marble portraits.

In a room of the Lateran one is in troduced to Augustus and all his family. In a chamber of the Capitoline Museum all the emperors and some of their wives look in his face, until at last the features of Julius and Augustus Cæsar are almost as familiar as those of Welling ton and Napoleon. A multitude of bass-reliefs make one live over the scenes of classic fable ; and the matchless stat ues which the rulers of the world gathered here, not alone by the hundred, but literally by the thousand, open an en trance to the best ages of Grecian art. These things not only enliven the impressions of the past, they at the same time strengthen the faith historically, and, I might well add, religiously too. Recent excavations have developed facts before which some of the modern historic 1 The substantial accuracy of this bass-relief is conceded, although some sub ordinate details are deemed improbable.

The original was tlien, and Ion"* remained, in the hands of the Roman conquerors. De Saulcy in 1864 procured at Tiberias a bass-relief of the candlestick, said to have been brought from TJm Keis (Gadara), which he deposited in the Louvre (Vogage en Terre Sainte ii. 263) ; and another was found by the Palestine Exploration Fund on the lintel of a ruined synagogue at Nebartein, in Galilee. But the age of neither is known definitely. doubts must stand rebuked. And there are other indica tions here which carry us down to the old palæozoic rocks of Christianity, and prove its once mighty hold upon the Empire. The time is not long past when there was more of ancient history below than above ground in Rome. This wonderful city opens up like a great avenue into the Apostolic Church. Perhaps there is no place in the world which, by its unbroken line of historic connections, its mani fold chains of association, and its direct and almost per sonal contact with a great cloud of witnesses, so brings one into the presence of the earliest Christianity.

One wan ders among memorials here that are authentic and indisput able, until he feels that he could quite as easily and ration ally doubt the chief facts of the Roman Empire, as the grasp with which the Gospel laid hold of the Empire with in twenty -five years of the death of Christ. Indeed, its superior vitality and viability strikes the eye at once. The Empire had the start. But after eighteen hundred years the outward memorials of the one are a few crumbling ruins; of the other, three hundred churches or more, degenerate indeed, but maintaining the activities of life. The only entire edifice of Imperial times, the Pan theon, was preserved by its Christian consecration twelve hundred years ago. Three columns, inscribed with the mocking word, " restituerunt," are all that remain of Vespa sian's temple, and an equal number stand for that of Au gustus ("Mars Ultor"), while antiquarians dispute whether it was his.

St. Peter flourishes his keys on the top of Tra jan's Column, and the Column of Marcus Aurelius has been "purged of all impiety" by Sixtus Fifth. The massive tombs of Hadrian and Augustus have long been cleared of the ashes of nigh a score of dead emperors, and the cover of Hadrian's sarcophagus was spared to be a baptismal font in St. Peter's. If Aurelius on horseback still welcomes us to the hill of the Capitol, it is because, ages ago, he was mistaken for the Christian Constantine. The priceless treasures of art that once filled the imperial palaces have been preserved to us chiefly in the palaces of the Pope. The memorials of the emperors are largely, also, remind ers of the contact of the Empire at every point with the facts and factors of early Christianity. The Arch of Con stantine celebrates the battle in which, " instinctu divini tatis," he won the victory, thenceforth avowing himself a Christian.2 The Coliseum is not more closely associated with the lives of three emperors than with the deaths of an uncounted host of Christian martyrs.

Titus engraved on his Arch the tokens that Christ's prediction was accomplished. The mutilated shafts of Trajan's forum suggest the unmu tilated letters of Trajan and Pliny, written close upon the death of the Apostle John, and attesting the numbers, the ways, and the sufferings of the Asiatic Christians. The "Tower of Nero," which marks the spot from which the ty rant beheld the burnino* city, also reminds us of the ensuing* havoc inflicted by him upon the Apostolic Church, and of the"ingens multitudo " of Christians then in Rome, among whom, no doubt, was Paul. And then it comes to mind how this was the city to which the great apostle wrote his greatest epistle, its genuineness undisputed by the most ar rant scepticism ; this the place from which he sent the Christian salutations of them " which are of Cæsar's household ; " this the city from which his last brave words were written.

And here at times one is confident that he is on the very 8 Attention has been called to the vagueness of the phrase used in this inscription, as perhaps a compromise in the Senate, and to some indications that the phrase itself is not the original form of the inscription. track of Paul : certainly along the Appian Way, and under the Arch of Drusus ; perhaps in the imperial Basilica on the Palatine, where he " answered" to the emperor ; most likely on the Ostian Way, where he went forth to his death; and possibly, at least, in the now subterranean apartments of San Pudenziana and of Santa Maria in Via Latina; if not in San Paolino, and still less in the Mamertine Prison. The lounging soldier helped us to feel the freshness of these things when he scratched in a room of the Palatine his caricature of the young religion, under the figure of a man with an ass's head upon the cross, and the comment, "Anaxamenos worships God."

We even trace the memorial connection, in a peculiar continuous series, up to the earliest times. The church of San Clemente, already described, takes us back by successive stages almost to the apostolic father whose name it bears, Clement of Rome. The church of St. Agnes and the Lateran take us to the time of Constantine, while oth ers already mentioned (e. g., San Pudenziana) seem to con nect themselves with houses of a much earlier date. But, however this may be, we stand at length in person by the side and in the midst of the mighty host of early witnesses, and read the personal testimonies with which they went to their rest. The impression of the Catacombs, their almost breathing inscriptions, and their vast numbers of human remains, multitudes of which still lie just as they were laid by pious hands, is deep and irresistible.

Here we literally walk among thousands, hundreds of thousands, and, De Rossi says advisedly, " millions," of ancient believers, as dating certainly as far back as a.d. 71, and thence to a.d. 410. These Catacombs lie in a zone some two miles wide, outside of the city, and their latest and most careful inves tigator has ventured the estimate that the entire extent of their passages is as great as the length of all Italy. I visited four of them, besides that belonging to the Jews. In one of them I wandered round some two miles by taper light, seeing but an eighth part even of this. It was a newly ex cavated portion of the Catacombs of St. Agnes. We passed through two series of galleries, one beneath the other, and looked down into the third. On each side were tombs cut into the rock above each other in from five to nine successive tiers, each tier followed by the next throughout the en tire distance, with scarcely a vacant foot between.

Many of the tablets that closed the niches in front still remained undisturbed, showing the trustful inscriptions of Christian "peace," rudely cut, or sometimes merely scratched in mor tar with the point of a trowel. But most of them were opened, and the remains, often entire skeletons, sometimes two or even more in a single tomb, were lying precisely as they lay ages ago. In three-quarters of an hour I must have passed the remains of ten thousand persons, and I was freshly reminded of the statement of Tacitus — the "great multitude " — and the rather intense boast of Tertullian, that to expel the Christians would be to depopulate the Empire. It is impossible to convey to another the impression of the nearness, vividness, and absolute certainty of the great events of early Christianity made upon one who walks among these miles of Christian dead, and these thousands of original and separate records.

Many of the inscriptions have been removed to the more convenient galleries of the Vatican and Lateran. They are in general rudely, often hastily and clumsily, cut or scratched, frequently in unclas sical Latin or in the Greek of those times; but they all re cord that the occupants are " in peace," or that they " rest," while the cross, the olive-branch, the dove, the victor's palm, symbolize their faith and hopes. A man who walks round among this host of early witnesses that have here individual ly proclaimed their faith, often from the martyr's tomb and with the martyrs memorial, is constrained to feel that the evidence of anything else in all the past life of Rome is al most insignificant in comparison. And they not only tell the fact, but the nature of their faith. Nothing so shines out as the brightness of that hope.

I visited the Hebrew catacombs, marked with Jewish symbols, and two of the old Roman columbaria, containing the ashes of some thousand persons, and I spent many hours in examining the inscriptions gathered in the Vatican and Lateran palaces from Pagan and Christian burial-places. The difference is mar vellous. The Pagan inscriptions are often ostentatious records of rank and title, and in not a few instances they are full of yearning expressions of endearment for " a beloved son," "a sweetest daughter," or even "an incomparable wife." But I searched in vain through hundreds of inscriptions for one expression of any hope beyond. One young wife " lies in darkness ;" a despairing mother sees in the death of her two children " her own funeral ;" a young daughter comforts her parents that her early death was "fated."