Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/360

 3o A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.ea. whilst the road between Khan-Minyeh and Tell-Hum is an ancient canal cut in the solid rock, which in former times conveyed the waters from Aîn-el-Tabighah to the plain stretching below, extolled by Josephus for its fertility (Fig. 222). 1 Throughout Syria are grottoes partly hewn, with ramps and passages, spacious enough to shelter families with all their be- longings. Sometimes, as at Arak-el-Emir, and at Arbela, near Lake Genezareth, these excavations were almost entirely rock- cut, consisting of vast stables with mangers for a hundred horses, a treasury, a living house, granaries, and cisterns. They were veritable fortresses, having an enclosure at a somewhat lower level than the building itself, with a kind of dam and retaining wall ; chambers at different levels, inner stairways, and loopholes in one of the walls, evidently a pigeon-house, to supply the larder of these troglodytes. 2 This rupesque architecture bears witness to the patient industry and spirit of enterprise of the people who devised it, albeit still in the stage when useful rather than fine proportions and beauty of aspect are considered. The answer to the question as to whether the Israelites showed any aptitude for plastic creations must be sought in another place ; but we may even now formulate the opinion that those nations alone who delight in the representation of the human form, stamping it with their own individuality, deserve to be called inborn artists. § 4. — Sculpture. We tried in a former chapter to give some idea of the primitive creed of the Hebrews, and of their crude symbols of the deity ; whether menhirs, 3 baetuli, cippi, cones, poles, springs, rivers, moun- tains and the like, whose significance was modified according to position and locality. 1 Ant. Bell. Jud., XVIII. iii. 2. See also Quarterly Statements, pp. 71, 72, 1875. 2 On the grottoes of Arak-el-Emir, see De Vogué, Le Temple, pp. 38, 39, Plate XXXV. ; about Arbela, Josephus, Bell. Jud., I. xvi. 2-4, and Life of Josephus, § 37 ; Lortet, La Syrie d'aujourd'hui, pp. 517-522. 3 Consult Stade, Geschichte, torn. i. pp. 449-459, on the forms of fetishism to be read between the lines in the Old Testament, as well as the many interpreta- tions of the word asherah, " pole " — whose verbal root primitively signified to plant, cut, more appropriate to a pole than an idol ; whilst metzebab, menhir, witness, is derived from the root yatzeb, "to raise," "set up."