The Dead Sea and the Jordan River. Barbara Kreiger
in each decade of the nineteenth century—make their way down to what according to some accounts was not just a mouth of Hell, but a fair approximation of the place itself? Why are the pages of the geographic journals filled with reports and articles ranging from the most carefully analytical to the vastly speculative, all concerning this one small lake? What was the attraction? There are probably almost as many answers to these questions as there were explorers. Certainly the Dead Sea’s uniqueness and strangeness had a lot to do with it. Many travelers, especially early on, were prompted to verify for themselves the strange phenomena about which they had heard. No doubt also the Dead Sea’s connection to the Biblical Cities of the Plain served to attract. More than a few, and they not eccentrics, searched assiduously for the ruins of the ancient towns, and an occasional claim was made that Sodom or Gomorrah had been discovered.
That impulse to bring to light evidence of the Bible’s authenticity suggests another reason. One of the most striking shared traits of those who explored the Dead Sea region was their familiarity with the Bible. Having read it all their lives, they felt they knew the territory, were somehow at home there. The routes these modern explorers took had been walked by their spiritual ancestors; the places they visited had been named by them; the events they recalled as they trudged up and down the cliffsides were some of those that defined western civilization. How available it all must have seemed. And yet it wasn’t. The events and figures that made the Dead Sea and its environs familiar were two thousand years past, and the familiar had receded into shadow. Exploring in the Dead Sea valley was like cutting one’s way through thick underbrush to get to a path marked on the map. No one, not even the most coolly scientific, doubted that the path was there, or questioned that hard work would reveal it.
A well-worn copy of the Bible would be found among the gear of any serious expedition, along with the compasses, thermometers, and barometers. Early in the century one traveler observed that “the manners and customs of the natives of these countries remain unchanged since the days of the passage of the Children of Israel from Egypt into the Land of Promise,” and he went on to say that “the Bible is, beyond all comparison, the most interesting and the most instructive guide that can be consulted by the traveler in the East.” Such was the universal opinion, and so strongly felt that the author of a popular guide, having devoted years to its compilation, opened by agreeing that “the Bible is the best Handbook for Palestine; the present work is only intended to be a companion to it.” No fear of heresy prompted his modesty; all the travel accounts of his day, teeming with Biblical allusions, express the same opinion. So while nineteenth-century explorers of Africa were stepping into darkness, those of the Dead Sea region were walking in a hazy light thrown by antiquity—oblique, but nonetheless considerable.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, it required no small amount of courage to travel to Palestine, let alone to such a remote place as the Dead Sea. The Ottoman Empire was fast coming apart—Palestine was in fact seized by Mohammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt, in 1831 and held for nine years—and the Bedouin tribes who lived in the desert around the lake recognized no outside ruler. The Turks had sole authority to issue firmans (a kind of visa) to those wishing to enter their territory, but Constantinople was far from the Dead Sea valley, and the Turks exercised virtually no control there. The land was divided among the Bedouin much as in Biblical days it had been divided among the tribes of Israel, and the Bedouin did as they pleased, from exacting tribute of European travelers to plundering the villages and farmlands of sedentary Arabs. From time to time the Turks would engage in a bloody show of force, in retribution or capriciously. But for the most part the Bedouin were left to themselves, and their relationships with one another, more than any external influence, determined their lot until late in the century.
Westerners were easy prey, so many studied Arabic and Moslem customs before setting out disguised as Arabs. No explorer traveled unarmed or unguarded, and no account concludes without some pages having been devoted to the skirmishes that were fought, or the care taken to avoid them. Aside from being dangerous, travel was extremely arduous. The most famous Dead Sea explorer, the American William F. Lynch, described what it was like near mid-century to convey his boats overland in order to reach the lake: “The word road means, in that country, a mule-track. Wheel carriages have never crossed it before. In their invasion of Syria [during the Napoleonic wars], the French transported their guns and gun-carriages (taken apart) on the backs of camels, over the lofty ridges, and mounted them again on the plain.” Without the help of their Bedouin guides, who knew the terrain most intimately, knew which regions were impassable, and always knew where at least a little stagnant pool of water could be found, very few Europeans would have been able to make the trip—their Bibles notwithstanding.
By the second half of the century, a trip to the northern, more accessible, end of the Dead Sea took no special courage and had in fact become standard fare for a new kind of traveler—not explorer but tourist. They came in increasing numbers—French, English, Dutch, German, American—often traveling in sizeable groups, their objective usually being a quick glimpse of the lake and a chance to scoop up a jar of water from the Jordan River to take home.
The travel guide book so familiar to modern tourists is no recent innovation; many travelers carried one for help in identifying sites. A particularly popular one was John Porter’s Handbook for Travelers in Syria and Palestine, first published in 1858. Porter’s “route 10” sent tourists on a three-day excursion which took in Jericho, the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, the monastery of Mar Saba, and Bethlehem—a journey more than enough for most. One of these tourists was Mark Twain, whose account of his trip is contained in The Innocents Abroad. He was not very appreciative of eastern life or people and evinced, at best, disappointment in what he encountered in the Holy Land. But for insight into the collective frame of mind of one of these tourist-pilgrim groups, his narrative is singular. He humorously described the reluctance with which his group, having heard rumors of tribal war in the Dead Sea valley, undertook the journey. Tempted to remain in Jerusalem, they found to their chagrin that a little caravan had already been assembled and was waiting for them. “With the horses at the door and every body aware of what they were there for, what would you have done? . . . You would have done as we did: said you were not afraid of a million Bedouins—and made your will and proposed quietly to yourself to take up an unostentatious position in the rear of the procession.
“I think we must all have determined upon that same line of tactics, for it did seem as if we never would get to Jericho. I had a notoriously slow horse, but somehow I could not keep him in the rear. . . . He was forever turning up in the lead. In such cases I trembled a little, and got down to fix my saddle. But it was not of any use. The others all got down to fix their saddles, too. I never saw such a time with saddles. It was the first time any of them had got out of order in three weeks, and now they had all broken down at once. I tried walking, for exercise—I had not had enough in Jerusalem searching for holy places. But it was a failure. The whole mob were suffering for exercise, and it was not fifteen minutes till they were all on foot and I had the lead again. It was very discouraging.”
Jericho was a welcome destination. It was the only town in the vicinity of the lake, it was the point from which pilgrims went to the Jordan River for immersion in the holy water, and, as an oasis, it offered year-round relief to weary travelers. Jericho is the lowest, and probably the oldest, city in the world. By virtue of its location, climate (tropical in summer and mild in winter), and fertility, it first attracted settlers some 12,000 years ago. The very beginnings of civilization are revealed in its strata, and evidence indicates it witnessed the transition early humans made from a nomadic to a sedentary way of life. As early as the eighth millennium BCE, the settlement was organized into an urban unit. Archaeologists believe that some 2,000 people lived in the town, which suggests a dependence on agriculture that brought with it advances in irrigation and the need for communal fortifications.
Josephus, writing nineteen centuries ago, referred to one section of the town as Old Jericho. According to the Bible, it was the first town conquered by Joshua and the Israelites on their entry into the Promised Land in the late Bronze Age, Joshua instructing his spies: “Go view the land, and Jericho” (Joshua 2:1). Yet archaeological evidence suggests that Jericho was destroyed in the second half of the fourteenth century BCE—a century before the Israelites appeared—and had not yet been rebuilt.
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