THE SURVEY OF WESTERN PALESTINE. 409 
GOGAT EY. 
THE SURVEY OF WESTERN PALESTINE. 
The Palestine exploration fund has just issued the first installment of the pub- 
lished results of its work on the Holy Land, consisting of a map, in twenty-six 
sheets, of Palestine west of the Jordan, to be shortly followed by volumes of 
memoirs containing all the information that has up to the present time been as- 
certained respecting the geography, history and archeology of the country. 
The importance of this map to the study of the bible can scarcely be exag- 
gerated. All previous maps have been constructed from the imperfect observa- 
tions of the individual travelers, and distances and names were given for the 
most part conjecturally and at random. Now we havea survey of the country 
executed by English Engineer officers, and setting forth the topography and no- 
menclature with as impartial accuracy as an Ordnance map of an English county. 
It is now for the first time possible to read the narrative of Joshua’s marches, of 
Judas Maccabzeus, etc., and to follow the Biblical histories generally, in an in- 
telligent way, mountains, valleys, roads, villages and towns being for the first 
time accurately laid down. 
About I0,ooo0 names incorporated in this map were found by Lieutenants 
Conder and Kitchener, the officers to whom the survey was intrusted, and the 
memoirs include a number of others discovered by the French and German ex- 
plorers Guérin, Renan, Sepp, and others. Among all these exist in some form 
or other all the Biblical names, only 622 in all, of Western Palestine. These 
older Hebrew, Canaanitish, and Phoenician names, although they never disappear 
and leave no trace behind, are often very difficult of recovery, and their satis- 
factory identification is impossible without the aid of a work like the present, 
where exact topography and authentic information as to the present nomenclature 
are available to supplement and verify the deductions of archzeological and phil- 
ological research. In some cases, and these are comparatively few, the old name 
has survived almost unaltered, such words as Beit-Lahm and Bethlehem, Akka 
(Acre) and Akko, Bir Seba and Beersheba being such obvious survivals that, 
taken in conjunction with the collateral evidence from topography, no doubt 
whatever can be left as to their identity. Sometimes the older name has locally 
survived a later, though still remote, attempt to change it, as in the case of the 
ancient Bethogabra, which, though known for centuries as Eleutheropolis, 1s still 
called by the inhabitants Beit-Jibrin, a form that is, if anything, older than 
Bethogabra itself. In other cases the identification is equally certain, 
though not by any means apparent to the uninitiated; for instance, Laish has in 
_ the Bible the superimposed name of Dan, meaning ‘‘ Judge,” and the spot where 
