Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/185

Rh mosque once occupied this site is in itself sufficient to warrant the supposition that there was once a Christian place of worship here.

3. At Jerusalem the carved "hand of might" is also often met with painted blue, that colour being supposed to be peculiarly effective in warding off the malignant effects of "the evil eye."

4. Bether (see Quarterly Statement, 1894, p. 73). The Rev. J. E. Dowling and I visited Bittir and its vicinity last summer in order to study the ground and thus to arrive at a personal independent judgment as to the claims of the place to be the site of the Bether of Rabbi Akiba's and Bar Cocheba's days. We had no difficulty whatever in recovering the name of "Khirbet el Yehud," i.e., "Ruin of the Jews," and on a rocky platform on the very top of the hill south of and commanding the "Khirbeh," on the steep northern side of which the present village is built, a fellah pointed out to us the isolated and shattered pedestal of an ancient monument (probably of a "tropæum" erected by Hadrian to commemorate his victory), and told us that it was known by the country people of the district as i.e., the mangonel or catapult stone. As ever since the times of Fabius, Maximus and Ahenobarbus, B.C. 121, the Romans were accustomed to raise triumphal stone monuments on the held of battle, and place on them trophies adorned with the weapons and other spoils of the vanquished, we may safely conclude that Hadrian would not be backward in following an example set by Pompey (Strabo, III, p. 156; Pliny, H. N., III, 3; Dion. Cass., XLI, 24; &c., &c.), Julius Cæsar (Dion. Cass., XLII, 48), and Drusus (Dion. Cass., LI, 1; Florus, IV, 12), and that a catapult may probably have formed a distinguishing feature of the "tropæum" at Bether. The interesting relic (of which I enclose my original rough pencil sketch) was too heavy for us to turn over, though we tried to do so in hopes of finding an inscription. The fellah who showed it to us told us that it marked the very spot from which the "Neby" had "cannonaded" the Jews.

We could make nothing out of the illegible inscription at the spring. In the village itself we noticed, besides traces of the old rock-hewn aqueduct, many well-hewn stones, some with mouldings, and, built into the mosque, an ancient window, formed of a quatre-foil perforated stone slab about two feet square.

In the valley called "Wady Halule" running up south-east towards Beit Jala, we were shown a huge boulder lying in the torrent bed and having a little rock-hewn chamber inside it with door aperture 14 inches square. This chamber may perhaps at one time have been a tomb, but the marks of bars in the doorway, and indications of grooves or channels to carry off or collect the rain water, seem to show that it was at one time the abode of a recluse. The fellahin call the boulder "Kala'at Sabah el Kheir," i.e., "Good Morning Castle," and state that it was once inhabited