Page:Palestine Exploration Fund - Quarterly Statement for 1894.djvu/243

Rh them occur the words and this spelling of the name of Christ seems usually to be earlier than the fourth century.

East of Jordan, Greek texts are also uncommon south of Bashan. The dedication of the temple at Philadelphia, and the two important texts at Gerasa (Christian) are among the earliest known. Prof. Ramsay has kindly translated the text which I discovered at Philadelphia.

"Aurelius Victorianus did honour to Gaius Julius Victor (Junianus?) of the tenth legion Fretensis Gordiana."

This is therefore one of the memorials of Roman officers, common in Bashan, and belongs to the third century A.D.

With exception of a few scattered letters, the only other text which I found in Gilead was at Umm el Buruk, where "Antonius Rufus set up to himself at his own expense" a winged tablet which is partly defaced.

The abundance of texts in Bashan, and in Syria, seems to show that about the Christian era the Decapolis must have had a much larger Greek population than existed in Western Palestine; and in the Byzantine age the Greek population seems to have been either stronger, or more civilised than that of Southern Palestine, both in Northern Syria and in Bashan and Northern Gilead.



has given us a clear account of his excavations, and has shown the antiquity of this site. The Tell occupies about two acres, and seems to have been the fortress of the town. The study of the inscriptions does not disagree with the dates assigned to the pottery, but seems to forbid the supposition that the place was abandoned in 500 B.C. If, as I have proposed, this be the site of Lachish, we have in the Onomasticon the statement that it was still a town in the fourth century A.D., and in the Book of Nehemiah we find it inhabited at least as late as 445 B.C. (Neh. xi, 30), while some of the pottery may be as late as 350 B.C. The Greek inscription appears to me to be clearly later than 300 B.C., and I believe Prof. Ramsey would assign it a yet later date. Anyone acquainted with the Greek texts of the time of Psammetichus (600 B.C., or later) will recognise how much later that found at Tell el Hesy must be, and the Hebrew jar handle should, I believe, be dated about 400 B.C.

The scarabs are evidence of the earliest but not of the latest date assignable. They may have been kept for centuries before they were lost, and one of Amenophis II (1540 B.C.) occurs much higher up than the Zimridi tablet (1480-40 ). Such considerations lead me to propose some slight modifications in the dates proposed by Mr. Bliss, and to carry down the history of the Tell to at least the Hasmonean age, when the 2em