The tomb points approximately north and south, thus being at right angles to the direction of Moslem tombs north of Mecca. How the Mohammedans explain this disregard of orientation in so respected a Prophet as “our Lord Joseph,” I have never heard; perhaps the rule is held to be only established since the time of Mohammed. The veneration in which the shrine is held by the Moslem peasantry is, at all events, not diminished by this fact. The little village of ’Askar stands on the slope of Ebal within sight of Jacob’s Well, about half a mile from it and little over a mile from Nâblus. It is merely a collection of mud-hovels like Balâta or any village near, but it has a spring issuing from a curious cave, and ancient rock-cut sepulchres beneath it, so that it is in all probability an ancient site. It is here no doubt that we recognise the Sychar of the Fourth Gospel. An unaccountable confusion has grown up lately between Sychar and Shechem, for which the Crusaders are originally responsible, as they are indeed for most of the false theories on sacred sites. It is only through careful study, and by such work as that of the Survey, that we are beginning to escape from the entanglements and confusion caused by the ignorance of knights and priests, arriving, in the twelfth century, strangers and illiterate enthusiasts in a hostile country. It will be evident to all readers of the Gospel narrative that Sychar, “a city of Samaria” near Jacob’s Well (John iv. 5, 6), is a description hardly to be expected of Shechem, which is moreover mentioned by its original name in the New Testament (Acts vii. 16). The early Christians recognised the distinction, and place Sychar a mile east of Shechem, as noticed in the “Itinerary of Jerusalem,” 333 A.D. It is clear that they refer to ’Askar, and the identity is maintained by Canon Williams and others; but a difficulty has always been felt by students because the modern name begins with a guttural, which cannot have occurred in the name Sychar. This difficulty the Samaritan Chronicle seems to me to remove, for in it we find a town mentioned apparently near Shechem, called Ischar, which is merely a vulgar pronunciation of Sychar; and the Samaritans themselves, in translating their Chronicle into Arabic, call it ’Askar. Thus the transition is traceable from the Hebrew form, having no meaning in Arabic but originally “a place walled in,” through the Samaritan Ischar to the modern ’Askar, “a collection” or “army” in Arabic. [Illustration: TOMB OF PHINEHAS.] But one group of sacred places remains to be noticed, in the village of ’Awertah called Abearthah in the Samaritan dialect. It stands in the Plain of the Mŭkhnah, and is sacred to the Samaritans and to the Jews as containing the tombs of Phinehas and Eleazar, Abishuah and Ithamar. It is probably to be recognised as the Hill of Phinehas, where Eleazar was buried according to the Bible (Josh. xxiv. 33), and which is described as in Mount Ephraim.