150 years of The Palestine Exploration Fund

by Adam John Fraser, Librarian at The Palestine Exploration Fund

The Palestine Exploration Fund is currently celebrating 150 years of scientific study of the geographic region of Palestine. We were founded on May 12, 1865, in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. The location was appropriate for its historical significance but also because the Dean of Westminster, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, was one of its integral founders. He had also travelled with the Prince of Wales extensively throughout Egypt and Palestine.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

Stanley, along with Sir George Grove (who is best known for his work on Crystal Palace) worked together on publishing books about the history of Palestine. It was of great interest to further study the country at the centre of Christianity, but it was evident to both Stanley and Grove that there was a gap in the knowledge of the region. 

In 1864, Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts was involved in a philanthropic effort to provide Jerusalem with a better water supply. The existing one had been highly inadequate and disease was rife. In order for a better water supply to be constructed a survey of the geography of Jerusalem was essential.  Dean Stanley was on the committee for the Jerusalem Water Relief Fund and contacted the War Office to acquire anyone who had expertise in mapping and surveying.Charles Wilson of the Royal Engineers volunteered for the job (unpaid) and set off for Palestine with a small crew. Their work was extremely successful and was quite popular back in Britain. Because of the popularity of the survey of Jerusalem for the Water Relief Fund, Stanley and Grove felt the moment was ripe for establishing a society to specifically study Palestine.

Charles Wilson (centre)

Stanley and Grove did most of the groundwork for lobbying people to join and contributed to the establishment of the Palestine Exploration Fund. There was an extensive letter writing campaign in an attempt to garner as much support as possible and from people with vastly different expertise and backgrounds.

The early committee was made up of a wide selection of individuals; Dr J.D. Hooker, Professor Owen, John Murray, A.H. Layard, Rev H.D. Tristram. These are just a selection of the individuals who formed the committee were some of the leading scientists and researchers of their day and key people in Victorian society in Britain. Some of them came from the British Museum, Kew Gardens, the Natural History Museum. There were friends and enemies of Charles Darwin. Many members of Parliament were eager to join, even the Speaker of the House of Commons had joined!

Letter from Professor Owen

The Palestine Exploration Fund was established to scientifically investigate the archaeology, geography, geology, manners and customs and natural history of Palestine. It was not a religious organization though there were people of faith in the committee. It was not a political organization even though there were politicians in the organization.  The main priority, since day one, has always been the research.

Making to 150 years is a big achievement for us. Many people have devoted their extra time and energy to helping us get this far. It has been a difficult task, bringing an antiquarian society into the 21^st century. We have a loyal band of volunteers who are vital to the digitizing of maps and documents, making a stack of old papers into a workable archive and carrying out important research on our archaeological collection.

The Palestine Exploration Fund HQ today

The volunteers and interns are very important to us, but we would be lost without the direction and guidance of our Executive Secretary and Curator, Felicity Cobbing. Felicity has been with the PEF since 1998. She had previously worked at the British Museum and had also spent many seasons working as a field archaeologist. Felicity is responsible for bringing the PEF to where it is today. She is the one who trains and supervises the volunteers and does hundreds of very important tasks that I cannot begin to list here. Felicity is the backbone of the Palestine Exploration Fund. I know that for my part, I have never learned more from a supervisor and I credit her for getting us to where we are today.

Related links:

Women of the PEF: Baroness Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts

Our First Hundred Years (and fifty more)*

Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey

'One of my cherished remembrances of the Holy Land': Lord Kitchener and Christmas at Bethlehem

It might be all last minute shopping, frantic gift wrapping and over done turkey these days but have you ever wondered what Christmas was like in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century? Well you're in luck as I am celebrating this blog's first Christmas with a detailed account by Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a British Field Marshal and colonial administartor who died during the First World War, of 'Christmas at Bethlehem'. This article, together with another, was found among reports and other papers of the late Lord Kitchener, in his handwriting and over his signature after his death. It was published in the January 1917 issue of Palestine Exploration Quarterly.

'On Christmas Eve of 1875 we rode from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to be present at the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. The road, so well known to all travellers in the Holy Land, passes the Well of the Magi, where tradition relates that the three kings from the East again beheld the guiding star.

"A little farther on is a still more ancient site, the Tomb of Rachel, now an ordinary Mahommedan tomb without any appearance of remote antiquity; yet this spot has been venerated by Christians, Mahommedans, and Jews from the earliest times as the burial-place of the mother of Benjamin. It agrees so well with the Bible narrative of the death and burial of Rachel on the way to Bethlehem, that it seems hard to find objection to the genuineness of its position, and yet there are many difficulties to be reconciled before it can be accepted without any doubts. On our, arrival at Bethlehem we found the inhabitants returning from Beit Jala, where they had been to meet and bring the Latin Patriarch to their town. Any honoured person is thus met in Palestine by the inhabitants before arriving at the town, and conducted the rest of the way with great rejoicings, the mounted portion of the escort performing fantasia in front, galloping wildly about, shouting, and firing their' rusty old flintlocks into the air. On returning from Beit Jala they had started on the Jerusalem road in order to meet the French Consul, who arrives in great state as the representative of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Bethlehemites are well-to-do people, earning a good deal from their speciality of carving religious subjects in mother-of-pearl which they sell to pilgrims and travellers; they are mostly Christians, and their women have a well-deserved reputation for good looks which is enhanced by their rather peculiar costume. It consists of a dress of red and blue woollen stuff, open at the throat, and with long hanging sleeves, a mantle of the same hangs down behind, and a long white veil, sometimes embroidered, and held up by a high cylindrical bonnet, forms their headdress; this resembles the ancient oriental headdress worn by female figures representing Syrian towns seen on coins. The lower part of the bonnet is ornamented sometimes by strings of coins closely packed together, and necklaces of silver coins are worn with full dress. A Bethlehem woman might almost start a money-changer's shop with the amount of coins she wears; some are old family heirlooms, and it is their great ambition to put on as many coins as possible. This desire is fraught with some danger, as several of these women were murdered for their ornaments in the short time we were at Jerusalem. Nothing is prettier than a crowd of these women in their long white veils, bright dresses, and sparkling jewellery. The men delight in very rich and full turbans of all colours, and very bright oriental dresses."

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Not just for decoration? The significance of jewellery in the Iron Age

It was reported last week that the Yorkshire Museum is trying to raise enough funds to buy an Iron Age bracelet found in North Yorkshire before it is sold privately at auction. The torc is one of two found separately in 2010 and 2011 by metal detector enthusiasts at Towton, near Tadcaster, UK and has been valued at £30,000. The torcs have been dated to about 100 BC to 70 BC and are the first examples of Iron Age jewellery found in the north of England.

I took a look in the online archive to find out more about Iron Age jewellery and came across "Iron Age Hoards of Precious Metals in Palestine – an 'Underground Economy'?" an article by R Kletter published in Volume 35 of Levant. In it the author investigates how hoards of precious metals discovered in Palestine may not only have been for ornamental purposes but perhaps also had social and economic significance.

The following is a excerpt from the article's introduction:

"Hoards containing objects made of precious metals (silver/gold), often buried underneath floors, are a source of immense fascination. They are extremely photogenic, even mysterious: we wonder about the living persons who once held them, and why they concealed and never retrieved such hoards. What happened to the owners? In view of this fascination with hoards, this study should open with an apology for not including beautiful illustrations: but the discussion will concern the economics rather than the art-history of hoards. There will not be an exhaustive description of each hoard, nor a detailed typology of the jewelry found in it. Many types of jewelry were manufactured and kept for long periods of time, and their artistic merits have already been discussed at length. Most of the Iron Age hoards from Palestine contain damaged or cut pieces of jewelry and shapeless silver pieces (‘Hacksilber’), rather than whole objects. Hence, they indicate amalgamation of wealth. This is an attempt to understand the meaning of such hoards in terms of economic conditions and possible economic developments in Bronze and Iron Age Palestine."

Although the author goes on the conclude that caution should be used when interpreting hoards of precious metals as anything but that, hoards of precious metals:

"What about the ‘underground economy’ mentioned in the title of this paper? One ponders over the place of hoards in human societies. In dragon-based societies, hoards govern the economy, and influence the neighboring societies of Dwarves and Hobbits alike. By modern economic theory, ‘underground’ hoarding is not logical – capital should be ‘put to work’ to raise more capital (e.g., by interest-bearing loans). There is a famous debate about ancient economics. According to Polanyi, the notion of gain was not crucial, economy was embedded in the society; markets in the sense of price-determining mechanisms did not exist, and modern economic theory is not valid. This has been criticized sharply, and some rule that ancient and modern economics are one and the same. Perhaps Iron Age hoards in Palestine were perfectly logical for a world in which banks were scarce and violent threats common. The age of plastic credit cards and virtual reality, still full of conflicts and wars, does not mark the end of the phenomenon of hoarding."

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