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F the many sites in Palestine whose excavation has been recommended by the distinguished engineer officers who have made the survey of that land, one of the most important is the hill which rises beside the village of Abu-Shusheh, Tel-el-Jezair. It is one of the first landmarks which attract the attention of the traveller from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and is a prominent object in his view even before he reaches Lydda, continuing in sight until the train has entered the wild pass of the Wady-elSurar, the valley of Sorek of the Book of Judges.

Tel-el-Jezair is a long, low mound, about 200 metres high, with steep sides and a flat top, a typical "tel," or mound, of a buried city, although its stony sides and summit show no sign of the secrets which they hide. At both its eastern and western ends it rises a little and

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widens, its mid part being lower and narrower. The western knoll is crowned by a ruined wely, the shrine of the patron Moslem saint of the district, Sheikh el Jezair, but, excepting this, a farmyard on the southwestern slope, and a graveyard between the farm and the wely, the rest of the top and sides is bare and wild.

Before the excavations began, visitors to the tel were few and far between; yet there are very few hills in Palestine which offer such an extensive and varied prospect. To the northeast and north are Jaffa, Lydda, and Ramleh; to the northwest, the broad valley of Ajalon leading up to Beth-horon, whose name is associated with Joshua's victory over the five Amorite kings, and Amwas, with its ancient church (one of the rival sites of the Emmaus of St. Luke); to the east is the pass of Bab-el-Wad, with the Trappist monastery of Latrun at its mouth, and

the valley of Sorek, whose name calls to mind many episodes in the history of Samson. To the southeast is the valley of Elah, the scene of the conflict between David and Goliath. To the south and southwest the eye ranges over the illimitable sandy plain containing the Philistine cities Ekron, Ashdod, and Gath not far off, Askelon still more remote, and Gaza in the far distance, where the sands of the desert meet the sky in the south ern horizon.

Even if we knew nothing as to the ancient history of this mound, its prominence and strategic importance, commanding as it does the passes from the seacoast to Jerusalem, would have invested it with more than usual interest; but since the discovery of boundarystones at various points around it, by which it has been identified as Gezer, its importance to the Biblical and historical student has become enhanced. Four such stones have been found, upon which words signifying "Boundary of Gezer" were inscribed in Hebrew letters, together with the name of Alkios in Greek, probably that of some official of the Seleucidan period. Unfortunately, these stones have, for one reason or other, been removed or destroyed, and there now only remains in situ a portion of one of these inscriptions.

The city whose site is identified in this unique manner was one of considerable importance in the history of Palestine. It is mentioned as a conquered city in the Karnak list of Thothmes III., about 1500 B.C., and about two centuries later its conquest was claimed by Merenptah. From it three of the Tel-el-Amarna let

ters were written to Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep IV. (B.C. 1370), and it is referred to in four others. According to Joshua, x. 33, its king was killed by the Israelites at the siege of Lachish, but the city itself was not taken by them (Joshua, xvi. 10), so, although it appears in the list given in Joshua, xxi. 21, as a Levitical city within the territory of Ephraim, it really remained in the hands of the Amorites until the reign of Solomon. When that king married the daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt (or, as some critics would have us believe, the daughter of Pira, king of the Arabian Musri), his father-in-law burned the city and handed it over to Solomon, who rebuilt it. It was an important place in the time of the Maccabean struggle for independence, and still later during the wars of the Crusades. Thus the chronology of the historical events of which it was the theatre ranges from B.C. 1500 to 1200 A.D.

In its undisturbed state the tel showed little sign of its former glories; its steep sides and flat top show only a scanty vegetation of thorns and thistles, with scarcely any traces of the structures which are buried under its surface.

Early in the year 1902 the committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund obtained a firman permitting the excavation of the hill, and they have intrusted the superintendence of the work to Mr. R. A. Stewart Macalister, who had been associated with Dr. Bliss in the excavation of the Shephelah tels in 1898-1900. Owing to unavoidable causes, the work was not begun until June 15.

The results of this excavation, so far,

The oldest of the occupations appears to have been a semisavage settlement rather than a city. Its inhabitants lived in caves and rock shelters united by causeways of stones. They used flint weapons, and were ignorant of all metals. They gathered and crushed olives, probably made wine of grape juice, and used a very coarse pottery shaped by hand without the aid of the potter's wheel. They, in some cases at least, cremated their dead, hence it is not easy to be absolutely sure of their physical characteristics. As well as could be ascertained from the fragments of their bones, they seem to have been short in stature, but muscular in frame, with fairly broad heads and thick skulls. The bones of domestic animals, such as goats and oxen, have been found in their caves. To this aboriginal people were probably due certain rock-cuttings and cup-markings which may have been used for sacrificial purposes. It is possible that these may be equated to the Avvim, who are said to have been the precursors of the Canaanites in this district, but they certainly were not giants.

The stratum which overlies this contains the foundations of many dwellings, rectangular in outline, built of undressed stones. Flint and bone implements and ornaments are common, but with these are a few copper and bronze spears and axes. Many mazziboth, or pillar stones, are found in the narrow ways between the houses, and some at least of the dead were buried in caves within the city. When I joined my son at the works last July, he had opened one such cave near the top of the eastern hill, in which were the remains of many persons,-men, women, and children of this city. The cave had been used by the aborigines of the

When surveying the middle part of the hill, Mr. Macalister had noted two bosses of stone projecting about a foot and a half above the surface at the place where the tel was narrowest; and being familiar with the appearance of the rude stone monuments in Britain, he conjectured that these were the summits of standing stones like those which he had found four years ago in one of the Shephelah tels. Wishing to verify his hypothesis, he set a number of men to work around them, and after little more than a week's digging they unearthed a magnificent alignment of nine standing stones extending from north to south more than half-way across the hill. The largest of these stones measured about four metres in height, more than a metre in width, and three-quarters in thickness. Two of them had fallen, but these have been replaced, and it is intended that these, as well as other of the larger archæological finds, shall be left in situ, exposed for the benefit of future visitors. To the west of the middle stone of the row was a large and beautifully squared stone, in the centre of which a great square trough had been cut. This cannot have been an altar, for it showed no trace of fire, but it may have been a socket for one of the Asherah, or sacred trees, the "groves of the Authorized Version of the Bible, which we know to have been parts of the symbolism in ancient Canaanite worship.

These great stones were placed on an artificial plateau or flat pavement made of limestone chips which must have formed the floor of the temple. Embedded in this floor were seven large earthen jars, each of which contained the skeleton of an infant, in some cases calcined. Small libation vases or other

sacrificial vessels were found either in or beside these jars. These objects were evidently the traces of ritual sacrifices, possibly of the first-born, who were among the Semites consecrated to the tribal god. The performance of these rites in later times is referred to in Isaiah, lvii. 5.

There had been a great wall around this holy place, but this has not yet been fully cleared. Certain other sacred enclosures and caves were found in the vicinity, perhaps priestly dwellings and treasure-houses. In an adjoining plot and at about this depth were found the broken remains of an Egyptian stele of one Ankh-amen-aau, son of Baba,-names only known in monuments of the old or early middle empire of Egypt, about twenty to twenty-five centuries B.C.

In the stratum which overlay this second city were numerous dwellings resembling those described in that layer, but these were usually better built, and of stones somewhat rudely hammer-dressed, but only cemented with mud mortar. In some places a layer of charred vegetable matter intervened between the second and third strata, but not sufficiently extensive to indicate a general conflagration. Bronze is more common in this third stratum, and numerous scarabs were

found here, all of types which are usually associated with remains of the middle empire in Egypt (between B.C. 2200 and B.C. 1800). Pottery was abundant, some of the vessels being of elegant forms and wheel-made, some with the peculiar burnishing characteristic of early Amorite ware, and with thickened rims and ledge handles. On the handles of some of these jars are impressions of scarab seals which are of the same general types as the scarabs themselves. In one part of the city of this period was a temenos, or sacred enclosure, in the midst of which was a circular raised sacred hearth, surrounded by a ring of small standing stones.

Not far from the temenos was a cistern of the usual bell shape, filled with débris. When this was cleared out we found lying on its floor fourteen male skeletons, disposed in various ways, usually in the contracted position; with them were numerous bronze and copper spears and axes, as well as a few food-vessels, cooked bones of animals, and much charcoal, as though a funeral feast had been held here. Apparently all the bodies had been deposited at the same time, and may have been, perhaps, those of warriors who had fallen in some combat.