Page:An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine.djvu/182

166 166 THE PLAINS OF THE JORDAN.

is found along the ordinary embankment of the Zor. Perhaps the unusual course of these river beds may have been originally due to artificial channels made for the purpose of irrigation. The narrow tongues of land between the tributaries and the Jordan are called in Arabic, Monkattat or Mankatta'at, which according to Professor Palmer appropriately means " strips."

On the south of the outlet of Wady el 'Aujah, the Ghor is watered by the branches of Wady Mesa'adet 'Aisa, which rises in the low hills crowned by 'Osh el Ghurab.

The Arabic name of this wady means the " Ascension of Jesus," so called with reference to the conical hill of 'Osh el Ghur&b (Eaven's Nest), the traditional site among the Arabs for the mountain of the Temptation.* Christian tradition originating in the time of the Crusaders, places the same event at Jebel Kuruntul or Mount Quarantana. On the north of the wady are two groups of ruins with extensive sandstone quarries, called es Sumrah, which are commonly identified with Zemaraim, a Benjamite City. Josh, xviii, 22.

The next watercourse is Wady en Nuei'arneh, which crosses the Ghor from 'Ain Duk, and divides the Plain of Phasaelis from the Plain of Jericho.

2. The Plain of Jericho.

The Ghor acquires a comparatively unbroken surface in the Plain of Jericho. Its commencement on the north is at Wady en Nuei'ameh, and its termination on the south is defined by the embankment of the Zor, which also comes to an end on the north of the Dead Sea. At Kusr el Yehud or Jews' Castle, about two miles below the confluence of the Nuei'ameh, and nearly eight miles from the Dead Sea, the embankment begins to slope away from the Jordan in a south- westerly direction towards the foot of the western moun- tains, narrowing as it goes, till it ends in a point at Khurbet Kumran, which is ten miles south of the north-west angle of the plain.


 * Gender's " Tent Work," ii, 13.