PALESTINE MONTGOMERY. 439 
excavations and their innumerable monographs on every learned de- 
tail. The French have contributed very much, especiall}^ in the ex- 
plorations of the lands on the fringe of Palestine. The Austrians 
have taken a part. In addition to the work of the British Explora- 
tion Fund the French have a most admirable Bible school at the 
Dominican convent in Jerusalem, and the Evangelical German 
Church has also its excellent school. Each of these institutions pub- 
lishes its journals and researches, while another German society has 
a journal devoted to the Holy Land. Against this record for Europe 
America has not much to show except in the enterprise of individual 
scholars. It gave Robinson to the cause, and one of the most dis- 
tinguished of the excavators for the British is an American, Dr. 
Frederick J. Bliss. The one great excavation work accomplished by 
American enterprise is that done at the ancient site of the ancient 
capital Samaria, undertaken by a Harvard expedition and financed 
by Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, of New York, in 190cS-1910. These excava- 
tions have not yet been published, and so the genernl knowledge of 
the results has not been given to the world. One other very illus- 
trious task has been accomplished by American scholarship, under- 
taken largely by Princeton scholars, the xVmerican Expedition to 
Sj'^ria in 1899-1900, and the Princeton Archeological Expeditions of 
1904 and following. These explored the ruins in northern Syria and 
in the country east of the Jordan, and have found rich spoil in the 
remains of the Graeco-Eoman civilization and of early Christianity. 
As so little persistent and solid interest has been taken by us in 
America in Palestinian archeology, although we are far better ac- 
quainted with what has been done in Egypt and Babylonia, it may 
be well to give a resume of what has been accomplished in that land.^ 
In the first place, a great deal has been done and a great deal re- 
mains to be done in the way of surface exploration. Much remains 
on the top of the soil which is worthy of study; and especially in the 
outlying lands to the south and east of Palestine, bordering on the 
desert, there are innumerable sites which repay the study of the 
archeologist. Just before the war the Egyptian Exploration Fund 
made some most valuable researches in the Desert of Sin — that is, 
the land to the south of Judah. These revealed the extent to which 
the Graeco-Eoman civilization had pushed itself far out into what 
are naturally desert lands. And the land to the east of the Jordan 
is full of ancient sites once important, even great cities, the centers 
of the trade routes which struck across the desert into Syria. The 
famous city of Palmyra, in the desert east of the center of Syria, is 
typical of this civilization; but there are many other cities, like 
^A very useful review of archeological results in Palestine Is to be found in G. A, 
Barton's Archaeology and the Bible (Philadelphia), pt. 1. 
