Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/393

 "Prisse d'Avennes relates that when he visited, in 1836, Behbeit el Hagar, the site of the old Heb, in the Sebennyte nome, near the present city of Mansoorah, he went away disgusted, seeing the regular trade that was carried on in the most beautiful sculptures of the ruined temple, which was besides used as a quarry by the inhabitants of the spot."—M. Naville.

"When the sheikh on whose land I was excavating became reassured as to the object of my researches, he told me that some twenty years ago a great number of inscribed stones were unearthed on that spot [site of Goshen]; but since that time they had disappeared, most of them having been used for building purposes. The great number of broken pieces which are built into the walls of the houses prove that the sheikh spoke the truth."—M. Naville.

At Babel there are four wells scientifically built. When Mr Rassam cleared one of them of débris he came to water at the bottom. Each stone is 3 feet in thickness, is bored, and made to fit the one below it so exactly that you would imagine the whole well was hewn out of the solid rock. Yet the Arabs break up these stones for the sake of making lime."—Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, viii. 185.

"In 1815 Lady Hester Stanhope conducted excavations at Ascalon, and found a colossal statue of a Roman emperor, thought possibly to have been that of Augustus, erected by Herod. It was unfortunately broken up by the workmen in search of treasure supposed to be concealed within."—Conder's "Syrian Stone-lore."

"At Cæsarea a broad street has been laid out (by the recent immigrants from Bosnia) which passes directly over the remains of the Roman temple built by Herod in honour of Cæsar and of Rome (the finely dressed white stone being turned to good account by the colonists), and over the