Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/223

Rh says: "There must be a dozen of the mounds within a square mile, 8 or 10 feet diameter, and not more than 3 or 4 feet high. I hope again to visit the spot and to open one of the mounds, making a sketch and special plan of the site at the same time." I cannot find any such plan published. From my plan it will be seen that there seems to be no arrangement in the mounds, of which I find two dozen of various sizes and heights. Nos. 3, 7, 9, and 10 were the highest; 10 being about 6 feet high, and over 50 feet in diameter. Nos. 2 and 16 were regular ruins, strewn with pottery, the latter showing regular walls, like the ruin near the tree. The rest were mere swellings of earth. I greatly longed to open one but thought it not wise.

For the legends respecting the place I refer the reader to the number of the Quarterly Statement referred to above, which contains notes on the subject by Conder, Drake, and Warren.

From what I have written here it will be evident that a systematic exploration of the Plain of Jericho would be attended with results as varied as they would be valuable. Light would be thrown on its preIsraelitish history, on the times of Christ, on the early Christian period, and upon that of the Crusaders. Most interesting to me, of course, would be excavations which would take us into the very heart of Tell es Sultan.

2em

Jerusalem, May 30th, 1894.





In the Quarterly Statement, 1893, p. 260, the Rev. Th. E. Bowling asks for reliable information as to the origin of the "Jerusalem Cross." "Four theories of the early history of this cross are current in Jerusalem. Can any date, prior to that of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem, be assigned to it? "

This question is repeated in the Quarterly Statement, 1894, p. 3, to which Major C. E. Conder, E. E., remarks on p. 81 (1894): "The Jerusalem Cross which, with four crosslets, the Latin Kings of Jerusalem adopted as arms {or on argent), is heraldically a 'cross potent,' sometimes explained as croix potence (gallows cross), from the gallows-like ends. I was struck in Moab by finding, at Hesban, a stone, apparently a lintel of the Byzantine age, with two designs, one of a St. Andrew's Cross, and another of a cross in a frame, with four crosslets, which might be an older 