Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and AdventureConder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
History
Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure
Conder, C. R. (Claude Reignier)
Palestine -- Description and travel
Although no ruins were found by the Survey party, and, as I have urged
above, were not to be expected, yet there are names in the district,
applying to portions of the ground, which seem to me to have a possible
connection with those of Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim.
The great spring of ’Ain Feshkhah is a probable site for one of the
Cities of the Plain, and the great bluff not far south of it is called
Tubk ’Amrîyeh, and the neighbouring valley Wâdy ’Amrîyeh. This word is
radically identical with the Hebrew Gomorrah, or Amorah as it is spelt
in one passage (Gen. x. 19), meaning, according to some authorities,
“depression,” according to others “cultivation.” It is possible then
that the name of Gomorrah is preserved in this modern district title.
Admah means “red earth,” a description which would hardly apply to the
ground near the Dead Sea. A “city Adam” is noticed in the Book of
Joshua, and the name Ed Dâmieh applies to the neighbourhood of the
Jordan ford east of the Sŭrtubeh, about twenty-three miles up the
valley. It has always seemed to me possible that Adam and Admah were one
and the same; for the Ciccar or “plain” extended yet higher up the
Jordan Valley, and included Succoth (Tell Der’alah) within its limits (2
Chron. iv. 17).
Zeboim means “hyenas,” and is identical with the Arabic _Dub’a_. Now the
cliff just above the plain, near the site of Roman Jericho, is called
Shakh ed Dub’a, “lair of the Hyena;” but the title is Hebrew, not
Arabic:--Shakh being a word not found in the Arabic dictionaries. Might
not Zeboim, I would ask, have stood here?
Sodom alone remains without a suggestion, and of this word we find no
trace west of Jordan. I may note, however, that the word Siddim is
apparently the same with the Arabic _Sidd_, which is used in a peculiar
sense by the Arabs of the Jordan Valley as meaning “cliffs” or banks of
marl, such as exist along the southern edge of the plains of Jericho,
the ordinary meaning being a “dam” or obstruction. Thus the Vale of
Siddim might well, so far as its name is concerned, have been situated
in the vicinity of the northern shores of the Dead Sea.
Such are the only suggestions I am able to offer on this interesting
question. To discover the sites of these cities, on the north shores of
the Dead Sea, will, I feel convinced, be impossible, unless springs of
fresh water be also there discovered, which are not to be found on the
Survey sheets.
A morning ride brings the traveller from the Sultan’s Spring to the
banks of Jordan, at the spot where the Kelt valley debouches, and where
the Crusading monastery of St. John-on-Jordan, replacing the original
building erected by the Emperor Anastasius, stands on the marl hillocks,
by the fine reservoir built by Justinian for the former structure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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