The Giant Cities of Bashan; And Syria's Holy Places
The Giant Cities of Bashan; and Syria's Holy Places. By the Rev. , A. M., Author of “ Murray’s Hand-Book for Syria and Palestine,” etc., etc. New York : T. Nelson and Sons.
TRAVELLERS who have merely visited the classic scenes of Greece and Italy, or at the best have “ browsed about ” the ruinous sites of Tyre and Carthage, must have a mortifying sense of the newness of such recent settlements, in reading of Mr. Porter’s journey through Bashan, and sojourn in Bozrah, Salcah, Edrei, and the other cities of the Rephaim. As Chicago is to Athens, so is Athens to these mighty and wonderful cities of doom and eld, which are marvellous, not alone for their antiquity, (so remote that one looks into it dizzily and doubtfully, as a depth into which it is not wholly safe to peer,) but also for the perfection in which they stand and have stood amid the desolation of unnumbered ages. A Cockney clergyman travelling through Eastern Syria, with his Ezekiel in his hand, arrives at nightfall before the gates of a town which was a flourishing metropolis in the days of Moses, and takes up his lodging in a house built by some newly-married giant, say five or six thousand years ago. It is in perfect repair, “ the walls are sound, the roofs unbroken, the doors and even window-shutters” — being of solid basalt monoliths, incapable of decay or destruction— “ are in their places.” In the town whose dumb streets no foot but the Bedouin’s has trodden for centuries and centuries, there are hundreds of such houses as this ; and in a province not larger than Rhode Island there are a hundred such towns. According to Mr. Porter, the language of Scripture, which the strongest powers of deglutition have sometimes rejected as that of Eastern hyperbole, is literally verified at every step in the land of Bashan. The facts, he says, would not stand the arithmetic of Bishop Colenso for an instant ; yet from the summit of the castle of Salcah (capital of his late gigantic Majesty, King Og) he counted thirty utterly deserted and perfectly habitable towns; so that he finds no difficulty in believing the bulletin of Jair in which the Israelite general declares he took in the province of Argob sixty great cities “fenced with high walls, gates, and bars, besides unwalled towns a great many.” Nor is the fulfilment of prophecy in regard to this kingdom, populous and prosperous beyond any other known to history, less literal or less startling.
“ Thus saith the Lord God of Israel : They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate.”
Everywhere Mr. Porter witnessed the end predicted by Ezekiel: a nation might dwell in these enchanted cities, but they are all empty and silent as the desert. Their architecture, however, is eloquent in witness of the successive changes through which they have passed in reaching the state of final desolation foretold of the prophet. The dwellings, so ponderous and so simple, are the work of the original Rephaim, or giants, from whom the Israelites conquered the land, and the masonry is of these first conquerors. The Greeks have left the proof of their presence in the temples and inscriptions, and the Romans in the structure of the roads ; while the Saracens have added mosques, and the Turks solitude and danger, — for the whole land is infested with robbers. But while Jewish masonry has crumbled to dust, while Roman roads are weed-grown, and the temples of the gods and the mosques of Mahomet mingle their ruins, the dwellings of the Rephaim stand intact and everlasting, as if the earth had loved her mighty first-born too well to suffer the memory of their greatness to perish from her face.
It must be acknowledged that Mr. Porter has not done the best that could be done for the country through which he travels. With a style extremely graphic at times, he seems wanting in those arts of composition by which he could convey to his readers an impression of things at once vivid and comprehensive. He visits the cities of Bashan, one after another, and tells us repeatedly that they are desolate, and in perfect repair, and quotes the proper text of Scripture in which their desolation is foretold, and their number and strength not exaggerated. Yet he fails, with all this, to describe any one place Completely, and is of opinion that he should weary his reader in recounting, at Bozrah, for example, “ the wonders of art and architecture, and the curiosities of votive tablet, and dedicatory inscription on altar, tomb, church, and temple ” ; whereas we must confess that nothing would have pleased us better than to hear about all these things, with ever so much minuteness, and that we should have been willing to take two passages of prophecy instead of twenty, if we might have had the omitted description in the place of them. But Mr. Porter being made as he is, we are glad to get out of him what we can, and have to thank him for a full account of at least one of the houses of the Rephaim, in which he passed a night.
“The walls were perfect, nearly five feet thick, built of large blocks of hewn stones, without lime or cement of any kind. The roof was formed of large slabs of the same black basalt, lying as regularly, and jointed as closely as if the workmen had only just completed them. They measured twelve feet in length, eighteen inches in breadth, and six inches in thickness. The ends rested on a plain stone cornice, projecting about a foot from each side wall. The chamber was twenty feet long, twelve wide, and ten high. The outer door was a slab of stone, four and a half feet high, four wide, and eight inches thick. It hung upon pivots formed of projecting parts of the slab, working in sockets in the lintel and threshold; and though so massive, I was able to open and shut it with ease. At one end of the room was a small window with a stone shutter. An inner door, also of stone, but of finer workmanship, and not quite so heavy as the other, admitted to a chamber of the same size and appearance. From it a much larger door communicated with a third chamber, to which there was a descent by a flight of stone steps. This was a spacious hall, equal in width to the two rooms, and about twenty-five feet long by twenty high. A semicircular arch was thrown across it, supporting the stone roof; and a gate, so large that camels could pass in and out, opened on the street. The gate was of stone, and in its place ; but some rubbish had accumulated on the threshold, and it appeared to have been open for ages. Here our horses were comfortably installed. Such were the internal arrangements of this strange old mansion. It had only one story ; and its simple, massive style of architecture gave evidence of a very remote antiquity.”
Mr. Porter does not tell us whether all the dwellings of the Rephaim are constructed after one plan, as, for instance, the houses of Pompeii were, or whether there was variety in the architecture, and on many other points of inquiry he is equally unsatisfactory. His strength is in his one great fact, — that these cities are older than any known to profane history, and that they yet exist undecayed and undecaying. The charm of such a fact is so great, that we recur again and again to his pages, with a forever unappeased famine for more knowledge, which we hope some garrulous and gossipful traveller will soon arise to satisfy.
Of him — the beneficent future tourist — we shall willingly accept any number of fables, if only he will add something more filling than Mr. Porter has given us. It is true that this tourist will not have a mere pleasure excursion, but will undergo much to merit the gratitude of his readers. The land of Bashan is nomadically inhabited by a race of men much fiercer than its ancient bulls ; and Bedouins beset the movements of the traveller, to pillage and slay wherever they are strong enough to overcome his escort of Druses. Mr. Porter tells much of the perils he incurred, and even of actual attacks made upon him by fanatical Mussulmans while he sketched the wonders of the world's youth among which they dwelt. For the present his book has a value unique and very great: the scenes through which he passes have been heretofore unvisited by travel, and the interest attaching to them is intense and universal. The literal verification of many passages of Scripture supposed more or less allegorical, must have its weight with all liberal thinkers ; and, as a contribution to the means of religious inquiry, this work will be earnestly received.