The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-11-13
FOUND IN JUDEA.
RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS BY ENG-
 LISH INVESTIGATORS.
Tel1-es-snfi, That May be Ancient Gath

Teil-es-Snfi, That May be Ancient Gati
 -The "fIigh Places" Broken Down.
 The anticipations and hopes expressed
 in the report of the excavations at Tell es-Safi, which appeared in these col
 umns on July Il, have not long re
 lnalned without justification and fulfil
 ment. The Palestine Exploration Fund
 is to be congratulated on the success | which has already attended the second
 expedition in the Shephelah The work
 of pr. Petrie and Dr. Bliss at Tell-el- Hesy Uachish) in 1S90-'93 was of great interest and value, and the results have l been given to the world in the volumes written by the explorers. There, it
 may be remembered, in depth of some
 sixty feet of debris. the foundations
 and remains of city after city were laid
 bare, the latest and uppermost belong
 ing to about the middle of the fifth cen- tury B. C., and the earliest and deepest
 revealing the remains of a civilization
 which belonged to the pre-1sraelite times, and probably to the seventeenth
 or eighteenth century B. c. The find
  tum, written in the cuneiform script conforming in all essential particulars to the contemporary Tell-el-Amarna tablets Cmany of which came from Syr- ia), and bearing also the name of Zim- ridi, which had already been read in the Tell -el-Amarna collection on tablet from Jerusalem, and on another from Lachish itself-this discovery as much as anything else discouraged archae ologists to look to these mounds, which mark the ruins of ancient cities by scores and hundreds in the Holy Land, for materials wherwth to fill up the blanks in the history of -Israeite Syria, as well as those in the history of the Hebrew occupation.
 In ''The Times report (July 1D of the operations at Tell Zakariya and Tell-es-Safi (the former about sixteen and the latter about thirteen miles northeast from Tell-el-Hesy) mention was made of remains having been found at both sites pertaining to Jewish and periods, and similar or even larger results than those which accrued at Tell-el-Hesy might therefore req sonably be expected. It is probable that excavations over larger area at Tell-el-Hesy might have yielded a rich CT harvest, but when costly operations have to be carried out on an annual in- come of less than three thousand exhaustive examination of such sites becomes a very serious busi- ness. Nevertheless, it is hoped that Tell-es-Saf may be very thoroughly axcavated, and that, whatever insuper- able difficulties there may be, in the | shape of modern buildings and grave yards, to the examination of the entire 1 site, the utmost will be done to turn ,ver every available square foot of de- oris
 Tell-esSafi, whether it be the ancient | Gath or not, must from it's splendid po | ,ition have always been place of i'm | portance. As a preface to the descrip | ion of the discovery, which adds inter .st to the facts and considerat ton sta ed above and emphasis to the plea for the following brief de- cription of the place written by Lieu enant Colonel Conder when surveying | he country in 1875 may be given as of present. interest:
 "On March 13 we rode to the white
 Tiff called Tell-es-Safi, the site of the fortress of Blanche Garde, which was built in 1114 A. D. as an out ost for defence against the people of Ascalon. Of the fortress nothing re- mains beyond the rock scarps, which re only dimly traceable: but the posi- ion is one of immense natural strength, 'uarding the mouth of the Valley of llah, and the situation is that in which erome describes the Philistine Gath. is impossible without the of the ancient name, but there }, think, no place which has stronger laims than this site to be identified iith Gath. It is now a mud village ,lth olives beneath it; the cliff on 1hich it is built is three hundred feet igh, and is burrowed with caves on ne north on the south a narrow sad le joins it to the ridge, but on every ther side the Shining Hill as it is ell called. is impregnable, and when by fortifications on the weak side it must have been a most i'm ortant post"
 Dr. Bliss and MT. Macalster had It. e difficulty at the outset in determin- lg the probable line of the ancient de- ,nces.
 At several points" they report, along the slope of the tell .here ap- ear above the surface portions of a assive wall. Following these clews Q have traced large part Of the ram art. We thus have in all probability le limits of the ancient city as the Ide construction of this rampant and le entire absence of mortar rule out le Crusaders as It's builders This wall
 flows the natural contours of the hill whose shape is more or less like the oon in it's first uuarteT around it's st, south and west sides. On the pre- pituos north side wall would appear
 have been superfluous. Thus, limi- q by the rampant ard by the cliffs, the cient city crowned the summit of the Il and extended part way down it's opes, having an extreme length of 'out four hundred yards and an ex- l :. 9me breadth of about two hundred lrds." Near the middle of the inner curve (
 the crescent, to which the report C the site, the explorers, in d acing the ancient city wall under the $ 1dern rubbish heap, found that the | )dern rubbish heap was in part super $ posed on one of very ancient date, | | lich yielded large collection of in- d N1ni +;ox, l