THE UNKNOWN CITIES OF SYRIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5319, 13 April 1878, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE UNKNOWN CITIES OF SYRIA.

(From the Melbourne Argus.)

The present Minister of Foreign Affairs in France, who was educated at Oxford, is one of the most accomplished scholars in that country, and combines, like Mr. Gladstone, an enthusiastic love of classical studies with a zealous devotion to statesmanship. A few years ago, M. Waddington, in company with the Comte de Vogue, who is also an active p-diticran, undertook an expedition into a part of Syria which has remained almost, if not altogether, unexplored, and they were rewarded for their enterprise by the discovery of a number of previously unknown cities, which although deserted by their inhabitants something like twelve centuries ago, are in a remarkably fine state of preservation. Their architecture has been described in a work entitled “’Syria Centrale,” by Comte de Vogud; who has published also a volume containing the Semitic inscriptions which he copied; while M. Waddington has given to the world the Greek and Latin inscriptions which he met with during their joint explorations. An interesting abstract of these works is given in a date number of the llteae lies deux Alondes, and to this we are indebted for the chief materials of what follows.

The region explored by the French travellers lies considerably to the eastward of Damascus, and seems to have fallen under the rule of Home in, or shortly before,, the first century of the Christian era. Previously, it had been a prey to intestine disorders and liable to predatory attacks from without, but the Romans, with that consummate administrative skill fo.r which they were so justly celebrated, speedily established peace and security witliiu the borders of the land ; and by the formation of a nu mber of entrenched camps on the frontier's, they guaranteed the people against foreign invasion. The next thing the wise and beneficent conquerors did was to employ the soldiery in the construction of reservoirs and aqueducts, so as to bring the abundant rainfall and the natural springs of the; mountain ranges to irrigate the arid plains. By this means they transformed the whole face of the country, and actually lifted the people up from a condition of barbarism to one of the highest civilisation. What they were when'they first fell under the sway of Home may be inferred from an edict issued by King Herod-Agrippa, and discovered in Central Syria by M, Waddington. “I cannot understand,” said that monarch, “how it is that you have hitherto lived in dens like so many wild beasts , and then he goes on to admonish them to erect and inhabit, more suitable abodes. They soon did so, under.the contagious influence of Homan example. Palaces, baths, basilicas, elegant mansions, and commodious residences were constructed of stone quarried in the immediate neighborhood; and many of these are so perfect as to attest both the architectural skill of their builders and the refined taste of their occupants. True to those admirable principles of toleration which ware exhibited by the Homans as well as by the Greeks, iu their political dealings with subject nations, the people of Central Syria seem to have enjoyed the fullest liberty of worship, according to both the Syrian and the Christian faiths, for a period of six centuries, during which this country flourished and attained a condition of peace and prosperity which attest the sagacity aud benignity of the Imperial rule. There were temples to Mulakbel, the sun-god ; to Baalaimiu, the Lord of the world ; and to a nameless deity who was only spoken of as the Good and aud the Merciful; and there were also synagogues of the -Marcionists, and of the other Christ ; an sects ol the early centuries, when schism was just as rife as it is now. They seem to have been a devout people, these old Syrians, to whom life was pleasant and beautiful, and who had an abiding sense of the Divine authorship of the blessings they enjoyed. Over their doors they carved the symbols of their faith, and with them generally some passage from the Psalms, such, for example, as the following:—“ Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” But some of the citizens who adhered to their inherited Pagan beliefs, engraved over their cellar doors Latin verses in praise of the bounty of Bacchus and the ardour of Apollo, sinoe these were conducive to the production of a grape from which they expressed a wine that resembled nectar.

Around each city stretched an extensive metropolis, and the inscriptions on the tombs are full of hope and cheerfulness, expressive of a firm conviction that death was not the end of life, and that the mind could not perish with the body. When a follower of the Nazarene built a church, his name was not inscribed in letters of gold upon the foundation-stout, but the edifice sometimes bore an ■ inscription of this kind ; “ Remember, O Lord, the Christian who reared this monument, and whose 1 name Thou knowest.” Many of the old temples were converted into churches; but this was towards .the fifth and sixth centuries apparently, when the people had become more self-righteous and superstitious. Of this kind was one fitted up at the expense of “the notable John, son of Diomed;” who was careful to inform posterity that he had “ placed in this magnificent monument the precious relic of that victorious martyr St. George, who had appeared to him, the said John, not in a vision, but in reality.” In making some excavations for the purpose of laying hare the facade of a beautiful temple erected to Baalsimin, which M. de Vogue believes to have been designed after the model of the Temple at Jerusalem, he came upon an inscription indicating that the pedestal upon which it was engraved had been formerly surmounted by a statue of Herod the Great; and the liveliest hopes were entertained of recovering the effigy ; but it had evidently been smashed to atoms, most likely by some zealous Christian, who considered he was avenging in that way the massacre of the innocents. But it is interesting to be brought thus face to face with architectural works, and with inscriptions in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic, all of which date hack to the days of Christ. And it is the same with the civic and domestic life of that period in a country no further from Jerusalem than Riverina is from Melbourne. In the silent cities explored by these French gentlemen, they found the narrow streets flanked by mansions which were in some instances three storeys high ; and which internally had suffered comparatively little by the effacing fingers of Time. “ Everywhere else, with the exception of Pompeii,” writes M. de Vogue, “the private life of the ancients has left, so to speak, no traces. In Greece, in Assyria, in Egypt, the home of the individual has disappeared. . . In Central Syria, on the other hand, private life appears in all its material details. The house subsists in every degree of the social scale, with its sumptuous or modest accessories, and in all its relations, whether with the public life, with the religious life, or even with death."

In these Syrian houses the ground floor was occupied by a large hall, which was both a family living room and a place of reception for strangers. A stone staircase gave access to the sleeping-rooms and private apartments surrounded by thick walls, in the recesses of which were placed the couches and wardrobes. The kitchen was excavated out of the solid rock underground, and along the walls were ranged the ring 3, niches, and sinks which were made use of in connection with the various cooking utensils. In separate wings, somewhat distant from the house, were found the stables, with stone mangers, and the holes in the pillars to which the horses were fastened, and not far from these the cellars and the oil and wine presses, one of the latter having been met with at a place called El-Barra, to which the Emperor Heliogabulus was accustomed to send for grapes from Rome. Altogether, these discoveries possess a remarkable interest, alike for the archmologist, for the student of ancient manners and customs, for the investigators of bygone civilisations, and for Biblical commentators.