222 DR. E. W. G. MASTERMAN^ ON RECENT DISCOVERIES 



" The relation of the modern Semites to the * saints ' is entirely 

 different from that to God. The people are in fear of them, and 

 seek to secure their favour through gifts and to avert misfortune by 

 timely and satisfactory offering. . . , They are the deities whom 

 the people fear, love, serve and adore . . . practically many people 

 know no other God. An oath by a JP^ely or a sacred tomb is often 

 far more binding than one in the name of God. They will swear 

 falsely by God when they dare not do so by the JP^elyJ'^ 



These holy places are all over Palestine and Syria, while 

 sacred groves, marking ancient " High places," are common 

 everywhere. There is no part of the country without them and 

 thci/ are reverenced to-dcnj. The spirit of some saint — or jinn — 

 is supposed to reside in the grove, and he visits any injury to 

 Ms property with death. Often at such shrines — or at sacred 

 groves — articles are left in the safe keeping of the saint, such 

 as ploughs, bundles of wood, jars, etc. ; no one dares touch them, 

 for the spirit of the grove, or of the saint, is guarding them. 

 The " holy men " who guard some of these shrines usually have 

 a hereditary right to the post ; when sacrifices are made there 

 the guardian " priest " usually receives the hide and one 

 quarter of the sacrificed animal {rf. Deut. xviii, 3). According 

 to Professor Curtiss many of the "holy men" at these shrines 

 follow the example of the sons of Eli {cf. 1 Sam. ii, 22). 

 Many go about half clad and are credited with a gift of 

 prophecy. They also practice exorcism. Such then are some 

 of the deepest beliefs of the uneducated fcllahin of the Holy 

 Land to-day ; as will be shown the earliest traces of religious 

 belief found in the excavations point to much the same ideas 

 thousands of years ago. 



The most important recent additions to our knowledge of 

 Ancient Palestine have come from ihe Excavations of the 

 Palestine Tells. 



The word tell has become such a familiar one now in Oriental 

 Archaeology as to have practically been adopted into our 

 language. It is applied by the Arabic speaking peoples of 

 Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia to a hill of a special kind — a 

 Hat-topped artificial mound consisting, a^> a rule, of the 

 crumbling remains of successive towns built one above the 

 other. All over the East the process of the foi-niation of such 

 tells" can be seen in the sites of modern villages, which stand 

 to-day on the accumulated dirt and ruins of their predecessors 

 of a few generations back. AVhen such towns were destroyed 



♦ This i.s true cf Moslem, Christian and Jew. 



