Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/135

Rh the church as in the plan. The door shown in the west wall was found in the ruin; the width of the wall I assume to be about 5 feet; the north and south walls (rising now only a foot or two above the rubbish and extending only 50 or 60 feet east) I continue to points directly north and south of the end of the crypt; the east wall I draw with an apse as a termination of the nave—as I remember the ground above the east end of the vault, it falls away in a sort of rounded hillock, suggesting a buried apse; the altar, usually just west of the apse, would thus come just above the well, or the sacred spot of the church, I do not venture to draw transepts with apses, as there is no indication of them.

I draw double aisles for the following reason:—The north and south axis of the church is 66 feet; the column is 11 feet from the south wall and the column  11 feet from the north wall, leaving 44 feet between the two columns, obviously too great a distance for the span of the arch of the nave. I thus assume another column 11 feet to the south of and one the same distance to the north of m, giving 22 feet as the span of the nave. We thus have four rows of columns. As and  are each 35 feet from the west wall, I divide the space by four, giving spans of about 9 feet. This division also brings columns in a line with

As the pavement found at the top of the stairway is several feet below the top of the vault, the choir of the church must have been necessarily elevated above the nave. Whether this elevation extended across the width of the church depends on the unknown continuation of the wall and of the inferred wall  If  extended to the south wall of the church, then the choir would have been ascended by steps from the west; if  turned and joined the east wall, then the choir steps would have ascended from the south. The pillar found leaning against I have not indicated in the plan, as it may have been placed in some later time. It is possible, however, that all the columns were in pairs.

This restoration has been attempted on the assumption that the remains about the vault belonged to the same construction as the west wall with the columns and  That the vault was merely the crypt of some superimposed edifice is made probable by the steps leading up to the pavement, and it is natural to assume that the west wall with the columns belong to that edifice, as they follow exactly the orientation of the crypt. The correctness of my plan could be tested by a few days' excavation in search for answers to the following questions: (1) Can traces of the pavement about the crypt be found as far as the western wall? (2) Are the bases of the columns and  actually on a level with the pavement? (3) Are other columns to be found under the rubbish at any of the places indicated? (4) What is the further direction of the wall ? (5) May traces of an eastern apse be found? (6) Were there transept apses as in the Church of St. Mary's at Bethlehem? (7) What is the breadth of the western wall? (8) Has it at any point a facing of well cut stone? This last question is important. The stone of the walls and  is well dressed, and it is hard to