Common Arab visitors arrived--from no one knew where: some on horseback,
to see what could be picked up among us; even women and children. They
must have travelled during the night. A handsomely-dressed and
well-armed youth on horseback, from Soof, accosted me during one of my
walks.
I bought two sheep for a feast to the Arabs that came about my tent; but
they asked to have the money value instead of the feast. Alas for the
degradation! What would their forefathers have said to them had they
been possibly present?
Afternoon: a fine breeze sprang up, as is usual in elevated districts. I
strolled again with an attendant--first outside the ancient wall on the
east side of the rivulet, where it is not much dilapidated; it is all
built of rabbeted stones, though not of very large size; then crossed
over to the western wall, and traced out the whole periphery of the city
by the eye.
In the great Corinthian colonnade, one of our party called me to him, and
showed me some inscriptions about the public edifices along that line,
and at the Temple of the Sun. There was one inscription in Latin, on a
square pedestal; a similar one near it, broken across, had a Greek
inscription. The rest were all in Greek, but so defaced or injured that
seldom could a whole word be made out. However, we found, in a small
temple beyond the city wall to the north, in a ploughed field, an
inscription more perfect, containing the work _Nemesis_ in the first
line. There also I saw several mausoleums, with sarcophagi handsomely
ornamented, and fragments of highly-polished red Egyptian granite
columns, to our great surprise as to how they had arrived there,
considering not only the distance from which they had been brought, and
the variety of people through whose hands they had passed since being cut
out roughly from the quarries of upper Egypt; but, moreover, the
difficulty to be surmounted in bringing them to this elevation, across
the deep Jordan valley, even since their disembarkation from the
Mediterranean either at Jaffa or Caiffa.
The inscriptions that I had been able to collect were as follows:--
[Picture: Two inscriptions]
Among all the hundreds of fragments of fine capitals and friezes lying
about Jerash, there was not one that was not too heavy for us to carry
away. I found no ornamented pottery, although we had found some even at
Heshbon; neither coins, nor even bits of statues. And remarkable enough
in our European ideas, so little space appeared for private common
habitations--as usual among ruined cities of remote antiquity--it seemed
as if almost the whole enclosure was occupied by temples or other public
institutions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account