HOLY CITY TREASURES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 45, 18 November 1918, Page 8

HOLY CITY TREASURES

Professor Flinders Petrie, in a'most interesting little work ("Eastern Exploration, Past and. Future," appeal to the BriHsh people to' take immediate step? for the protection of tin! historic buildings anil sites in tho Near East which have fallen into their hands (states a reviewer in the "Dailv Mail").

Palestine, is full of buried cities and of ruined monuments which at all costs must be guarded with reverence. Olio of the most important problem's is the protection, )f the Holy City at Jerusalem. Professor Pe.trie urges that building on the old sies. sacred to three religions, should not henceforth be permitted.' ' "AH modern notions of habitation and pfliiitation are agni:ist piling more on the top of the ruins of Jerusalem. . . . The only clean course would b3 to extend a new suburb, either ono to three mileiudoM'n the Valley of Kephoim to the south-west, where thu railway now is, or to iL better site l.wo miles north-west in the .'ino valley running down from l{amih. Klectric trams would placo either B/>to within a-few minutes' access of the city. The present city has .. . bod access and bad water. Us only claim ia its historical and religious value to mankind Tim best way to respect that value is reverently to place modern nffairs'on.one side, in ground auited 'to present lift*.

"Wβ may hope that with careful reeearch discoveries of supreme importnirje may lie made. The documents of early Palestine were clay tablet*, which can only be destroyed by crushing, and ii'hinh it pays no onj to steal.

"There seems no reason why hundreds of documents nf the greatest historic interest should not bo found. . . . What was the history o!' Ilia Atnnnm correspondence (on brick tablets of B.C. 1100)? Found by accident, some of it was bought by a dealor; he could not sell the tablets; they were uneercd at as forgeries;' at last tho uroup was tumbled into a sack and jolted on donkey back up to Thobes, with ureat lose. It, wns two ov three years before they reached the hands o fthose, who could appreciate what survived," It is not tou much to expect that documents of David's or Solomon's reign or of the date of Joshua and the Judges may yet be fo'.iml. "In. Galilee there are the great synagogues of Capernaum and Chorazin, built of m.jrbly limestone, finely carved with figures of nninials and fniife. Are thase—tlie very buildings, probably, in which, Christ taught—to be left to the itwrcy of tho next needy settler?"