310 . Lknt.-Colond C. B. Cornier [Feb. 20, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, February 26, 1897. 



Basil Woodd Smith, Esq. F.R.A.S. F.S.A. Vice-President, 



in the Chair. 



Lieut.-Colonel C. R. Conder, R.E. D.C.L. LL.D. M.K.A.S. 

 Palestine Exploration. 



The object of exploration is to obtain accurate knowledge of a country, 

 its inhabitants, and its extant monuments and texts. That of 

 Palestine has special interest to Christian races and to Jews, as serving 

 to explain more clearly the sacred literature of their Faith. 



The results of such exploration may be judged by looking back a 

 century to the time of Bayle, Voltaire and Astruc, when what was 

 regarded as advanced scientific work assumed that the Hebrews were 

 a savage race without literature, that history only began to be written 

 about 500 B.C., and that the oldest civilisation was that of China and 

 India. It is now known that the art of writing was practised in 

 Egypt and Chaldea as early as 3000 B.C., that the Canaanites about 

 the time of Joshua had a civilisation equal to that of surrounding 

 nations, as had also the Hebrew kings ; while, on the other hand, 

 Chinese civilisation is only traceable to about 800 B.C., and that of 

 India was derived from the later Persians, Arabs and Greeks. These 

 results are due solely to exploration. 



The requirements for exploration demand a knowledge not only 

 of Syrian antiquities but of those of neighbouring nations. It is 

 necessary to understand the scripts and languages in use, and to study 

 the original records as well as the art and architecture of various ages 

 and countries. Much of our information is derived from Egyptian 

 and Assyrian records of conquest, as well as from the monuments of 

 Palestine itself. As regards scripts, the earliest alphabetic texts 

 date only from about 900 B.C., but previous to this period we have to 

 deal with the cuneiform, the Egyptian, the Hittite and the Cypriote 

 characters. The explorer must know the history of the cuneiform 

 from 2700 b.c. down to the Greek and Roman age, and the changes 

 which occurred in the forms of some 550 characters originally hiero- 

 glyphics, but finally reduced to a rude alphabet by the Persians, and 

 iised not only in Babylonia and Assyria but also as early as 1500 b.c. 

 in Asia Minor, Syria, Armenia, Palestine, and even by special soribes 

 id Egypt. He should also be able to read the various EgyjDtian 



