Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/421

 private information. Mr. Rothenstein owns Condor's first sketch-book.]

 CONDER, CLAUDE REIGNIER (1848–1910), colonel royal engineers, Altaic scholar, and Palestine explorer, born at Cheltenham on 29 Dec. 1848, was the son of Francis Roubiliac Conder (1815–1889), civil engineer and a writer in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ by his wife Anne Matilda Colt (1823–1890). Josiah Conder [q. v.], his grandfather, married a granddaughter of Louis François Roubiliac [q. v.], the sculptor.

After spending eight years of his youth in Italy, Conder passed from University College, London, to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he distinguished himself in surveying and geometrical and freehand drawing. He received a commission as lieutenant in the royal engineers on 8 Jan. 1870, and after a two years' professional course at Chatham was selected with the assent of the military authorities to continue a scientific survey of Western Palestine, which had been begun by engineer officers under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund some seven years earlier [see under, Suppl. II].

In July 1872 Conder took charge of the survey party at Nablus in Samaria. Work was begun by the measurement of a base line, about four miles in length, near Ramleh on the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and the triangulation was carried gradually over the whole country. In the course of three years the greater part of the country west of the Jordan had been surveyed and, in addition to actual mapping, a mass of information regarding the topography and archæology of the country had been collected, while many places mentioned in the Bible and previously unknown had been identified. Conder also devoted himself to the languages of the country and to the decipherment of ancient inscriptions, to which he brought abundant ingenuity. C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake [q. v.] at first assisted Conder, and on his death of fever at Jerusalem in June 1874 his place was filled by Lieut. Kitchener, R.E., now Field-marshal Viscount Kitchener of Khartoum.

A murderous attack on Conder and his party by the inhabitants of Safed, a town in the hills north-west of the Sea of Galilee (July 1875), in which Conder and Kitchener with others of the party were seriously injured, temporarily suspended the survey. Conder was sufficiently recovered to return to England in October 1875, after having surveyed 4700 square miles of Western Palestine. Plotting of the maps and preparation of the ‘Memoirs’ were then taken in hand. In 1877 the unfinished portion of the survey was completed by Lieut. Kitchener, and the whole survey was plotted and the ‘Memoirs’ finished in April 1878. The map, on a scale of one inch to the mile, was printed at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, and, with seven volumes of ‘Memoirs,’ was issued by the committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1880. For his work Lieut. Conder received the thanks of the committee and the commendation of the secretary of state for war. ‘It may fairly be claimed,’ wrote Sir Walter Besant, ‘that nothing has ever been done for the illustration and right understanding of the historical portions of the Old and New Testaments since the translations into the vulgar tongue which can be compared with this great work. The officer whose name is especially associated with it has made himself a name which will last as long as there are found men and women to read and study the sacred books.’

Returning to regimental duty in May 1878, Conder was employed for three years on the new defences of the Forth and stationed in Edinburgh. In his leisure hours he continued his studies of the history and archæology of the Holy Land and adjacent countries. In 1878 he published his first book ‘Tent Work in Palestine,’ illustrated with his own drawings. It gives a popular account of the survey operations and of the customs of the inhabitants of Palestine, of various Bible sites, and the topography of Jerusalem. In 1879 he published ‘Judas Maccabæus and the Jewish War of Independence,’ and in collaboration with his father ‘Handbook to the Bible.’ These works were popular, and went through several editions.

In the spring of 1881 Conder resumed his labours for the Palestine Exploration Fund in the country east of the Jordan. Near the lake of Homs in the valley of the Orontes, he discovered the remains of the ancient city of Kadesh; then going south and crossing the Jordan, a base line was measured between Heshbon and Medeba. Conder devoted especial attention to the description of the rude prehistoric stone monuments which abounded in the district; he photographed and made plans of many stone circles, cromlechs and menhirs, and other relics of bygone ages. Turkish obstruction impeded Conder's progress, but he acted with great discretion, and