We must congratulate the Palestine Exploration Fund on having arranged
to excavate the probable site of the " City of David " on the hill of Ophel outside the present walls of Jerusalem, and the Daily Telegraph on its enter- prise in sharing the cost of the work and promising to distribute reports of the operations to the world's Press free of charge. The Daily Telegraph's co-operation with the British Museum in sending the late Mr. George Smith to Nineveh in 1873, to search for the tablets completing the Chaldean account of the Flood, is still remembered with gratitude, and its new undertaking is an even happier example of what a great newspaper may do to promote scientific research by arousing public interest in the subject. Professor R. A. S. Macalister, our leading Palestinian archaeologist, is to conduct the excavations.
Though lie wisely refused, at the meeting of the Fund on Wednesday, to predict any sensational discoveries, such as the unearthing of David's tomb, he made it clear that the careful exploration of this very ancient site, occupied long before the Hebrews entered Canaan, might throw much new light, not only on David's city and its inhabitants, but also on the relations of Palestine, Egypt and Syria in the second millennium before the Christian era.
Previous page
