Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/190

154 archæological explorations, and has graciously given a firman, enabling us to begin work at once at Jerusalem. I will now ask my old friend, Major Conder, to deliver the lecture he has been good enough to prepare. I look back with pleasure to the year 1882, when he travelled with my brother and myself throughout the whole of Palestine, and went with us into the Mosque at Hebron, and crossed with us into the country east of Jordan. (Applause.)

Major Conder then delivered his lecture, of which the following summary appeared in the "Times":—

Major who met with a most cordial reception, said that the interest felt in Jerusalem, as the centre of the Hebrew Kingdom, made it naturally the first site to which explorers turned with increasing interest; and he believed that excavations there might still bring much to light, and that they were still possible, though there were many difficulties in the way. It was an inhabited city, and it contained one of the most sacred places of the Moslems. The southern hills outside the city walls were allowed by all to have been included in the ancient city before the Captivity. The western hill, usually called Sion, was that of the upper city of David and Solomon; and the southwest angle of its fortress wall had been discovered. It only required to be traced toward the east. The little spur above Siloam was the quarter where the priests' houses grew up south of the Temple, where the Kings of Judah had a palace, and where some of them were buried in the Royal garden. It was walled in by the later kings, and the wall was rebuilt by Nehemiah. There also, therefore, they had much reason to hope for important discoveries. They might light on the palace itself, and might find some remains of early archives on its site. The site of Herodium, the burial place of Herod the Great, and the rock-cut tomb supposed to be that of the Patriarchs, under the sanctuary of Hebron, were also important objects for future investigation, and there were several uninhabited places which would yield a rich harvest to the explorer. Generally speaking, he thought it was along the great trade routes of Palestine that the most important sites occurred. The towns in the mountains were for the most part small, and the civilisation of early ages was chiefly found in the plains, along the great highways from the Euphrates, and from the sea to Damascus and to Egypt. There was, he thought, some evidence that in the earliest times the great centre of native civilisation was in Lebanon, and not in Southern Palestine. Many important remains had already been found in this region, which was full of deserted mounds some 40 feet high, which concealed unknown treasures of antiquity. The sites in that region which required exploration, and which others would soon explore if we did not, included especially Kadesh itself, Orpad, and Karchemish. The society should not confine itself between the limits of Beersheba and Dan, for the kingdom of Solomon reached the Euphrates; and the "Land of the Hittites" was quite as important for Bible study as Southern Palestine. Their limits should be drawn from the Egyptian boundary to the foot or the Taurus, and the most promising sites were to be found in the plain of the Orontes east of Lebanon. In Lebanon itself inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar were cut upon the rocks; and the Assyrian conquerors, returning from their expeditions to Egypt, left monuments at Beirut and at Samala describing their distant victories. The Egyptians set up statues near Orpad, and it was quite possible that in that region they might yet recover texts which would tell of the conquest of Jerusalem by the Northern