Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

LURING 19 CENTURY: PALESTINE 607
IV
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
RESULTS
The strictly archaeological material that the excavations
have thus far brought to light cannot of course be compared
with the rich discoveries that have been made in Egypt and
Babylonia. This in part is due to the fact that the excavations
were mostly pursued with
the fixed purpose of determining
the topography of Jerusalem. Royal tombs as in
Egypt, or such vast buildings and ostentatious inscriptions
as in Egypt and in Babylonia, have not yet been brought to
light, as can be readily understood. To a certain degree
they will never be found in
Palestine, inasmuch as the Jews
were and are a people without art. One cannot escape a
feeling of envy when he contrasts with the poverty of the
Palestinian monuments the new discoveries which are, for instance,
continually made in Egypt, and which gradually give
an unbroken picture of the whole development of the mental
life of the people. It can be confidently asserted, however,
that the soil of Palestine also still contains within its
bosom much that is valuable. If the Moabite king Mesha
perpetuated his great exploits on stone, a Jeroboam II. or
a Hezekiah may have done the same thing. The places in
which such inscriptions must be supposed to exist, e. g. y
Samaria, are as yet quite unexplored.
Just as Tell el-Hesy,
one of the few mounds so far excavated, at once yielded
an unexpected result, so many others in the land may hide
destroyed cities
under the surface.
In the spring of 1890 Flinders Petrie, who had become
famous through the magnificent results of his excavations
in Egypt, was sent to Palestine by the English Palestine
Exploration Fund, in order to search for the site of the ancient
Lachish, which was supposed to be represented by