SAMARIA, SEBASTE, SEBUSTIEH. The situation of this royal city, if less beautiful, is more commanding than that of its sister Shechem. Nearly in the centre of a basin, about 5 m. in diameter, rises a flattish, oval-shaped hill, to the height of some 300 feet. On the summit is a long and nearly level plateau, which breaks down at the sides, 100 feet or more, to an irregular terrace or belt of level land; below this the roots of the hill spread off more gradually into the surrounding valleys. The whole is now cultivated in terraces, in the formation of which the stones of the ancient city have been freely used. Groves of luxuriant olives almost cover the southern side, and fill the valley below, while single trees and little groups dot the rest. A wide circuit of picturesque mountains encompasses the basin, having only a narrow opening on the W. through which a winter torrent finds its way to the plain of Sharon. Little villages, with their green corn-fields and gray olive-groves, stud the dark mountain sides or crown their summits, making the whole landscape one of the richest and most beautiful in Palestine.

The modern village of Sebustieh may contain about 60 houses, with a Pop. of 400. It stands upon the broad terrace midway up the eastern side of the hill. The houses are substantially built of old materials, and in their rude walls may be seen many a remnant of ancient taste and splendour. The first object we see on entering it is the church of St. John, perched on the very brow of the declivity E. of the village. It is on the whole one of the most picturesque ruins in Palestine, and attracts the traveller’s attention long before he reaches it. It is now a mosk, and as the inhabitants of the village are a surly, insolent set, they are always unwilling to let travellers enter, and sometimes prevent them by force. The easiest way to avoid an unpleasant struggle is to take a horseman from the governor of Nabulus; he will open all doors, and a present of 5 piastres (not more) to the keeper on leaving does much to calm the grumbling crowd.

We enter the building from a narrow sunk court on the W. through a low door. The roof is gone, but the walls remain entire to a considerable height, and the eastern end is almost perfect. The altar-niche is a segment of a circle, occupying the greater part of the eastern end, and is richly ornamented. The windows are round-topped, but the arches of the chancel, and those remaining in the body of the church, are pointed. The pillars dividing the nave and aisles are in bad taste: their capitals bear some resemblance to the Corinthian style of ornament, reminding one of those in the church at Lydda. The whole building, in fact, may be termed a Gothic imitation of Grecian architecture. In a modern wall inside are 2 or 3 white marble tablets with sculptured crosses of the Order of the Knights of St. John, now, of course, all broken and mutilated. The total length of the interior is 153 ft. and the breadth 75.

The building as it now stands cannot be of an earlier date than the crusades, though it has been generally ascribed, like almost every other ch. in the country, to the piety and munificence of Helena. “The presence of so many crosses of the Knights of St. John, and the circumstance that the spot was regarded as the sepulchre of their patron saint, go to render it probable,” says Dr. Robinson, “that the ch. may have been erected by that order, in connexion perhaps with the Latin bishopric.” Under a wely in the enclosure of the ch. is the reputed sepulchre of St. John the Baptist, the tomb of Neby Yahya, as the Arabs call it; a little chamber excavated deep in the rock, to which the descent is by 21 steps. |In progress of time tradition has confounded the sepulchre of the saint with his prison and place of execution ; and this vault is now, and has been for centuries, shown also as the latter. Yet Josephus relates expressly that John was beheaded in the castle of Macheerus, on the E. of the Dead Sea; and Eusebius copies this testimony, thereby showing that no other credible tradition was extant in his day. In the days of Jerome, however, Sebaste was the reputed place of John’s sepulture; and 3 centuries later it began to be regarded as the place of his imprisonment and execution..

In the village there are no other ruins of importance ; and as the whole hill has been long under cultivation, the stones of the temples and palaces of Samaria have been carefully removed from the rich soil, thrown together in heaps, built up in the rude walls of terraces, and rolled down into the valley below. On ascending from the village to the top of the hill, we reach an open area, once surrounded with columns, 15 of which still stand without their capitals, and 2 are fallen. Some writers of the 12th and 13th centuries mention a Greek ch. and monastery as then occupying the summit of the hill; and though no traces of foundations can now be seen, these columns were probably connected with them. The view is a noble one—embracing the glens and vales round the hill, the circuit of mountains, a section of the plain of Sharon, and the wide expanse of the Mediterranean. No better site for a capital could have been selected in the length and breadth of Palestine,—a strong position, rich environs, central situation, and an elevation sufficient to catch untainted the cool healthy breezes from the sea.

Descending now over some beautiful terraces towards the S.W., we soon reach the flat belt of level ground above referred to, and have betore us the great colonnade. It commences on the W, at a large shapeless mass of ruins—probably the remains of a triumphal arch like that at Palmyra, or a portal like the E. gate of Damascus —and runs eastward about 1000 ft. in a straight line; then curving to the L, and following the sweep of the hill, it extends, or rather did extend, as far as the village. In the western section some 60 of the columns are still standing, all decapitated, and deeply sunk in the soil. Twenty more are counted at irregular intervals eastward, and many others are lying among the terraces and olive-trees. There were 2 ranges 50 ft. apart, extending, so far as can now be ascertained, about 3000 ft. The shafts measure 16 ft. in height, by 2 in diam., tapering slightly to the top. The order was apparently Corinthian. In all my searches on two separate occasions I was only able to discover a single mutilated capital, half concealed in the wall of a terrace. They are all limestone.

There cannot be a doubt that these colonnades were intended, like the similar ones in Palmyra, Damascus, and Gerasa, to ornament the great street of the city. But the street is gone, the city is gone, and the shafts now stand lonely and bare, like the grim skeleton of some departed beauty. When we stand on this hill and look on these solitary columns shooting up from clustering vines and green corn, and on the piles of hewn stones in the little terraced fields, and on the great heaps among the olive-trees in the valley below, we cannot but recall the striking, the fearful prediction of Micah: “I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard ; and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof.” (Mic.i. 6.)

On the north-eastern side of the hill, about 4 m. from the village, is another remarkable group of columns deserving a visit. The path which strikes off from the front of the old ch., and descends the hill diagonally into the valley on the N., passes close to them, so that they may thus be taken on the way to Jeb’a. They stand in a little nook in the slope of the hill, facing the N.W.; and the space round them appears to have been levelled by art. The columns are arranged in the form of a quadrangle, 196 paces in length from E. to W., by 64 in breadth. They are three paces asunder from centre to centre; and there must thus have been about 170 columns when the structure was complete. Fifteen whole shafts, and one half one, are now in their places, and many others are scattered about half embedded in the soil; but not a capital, or a fragment of a ruin, is visible. In size and material they resemble those of the great colonnade, and are probably of the same date. We have no means of fixing the age of any of these colonnades. Herod the Great rebuilt Samaria, and adorned it with magnificent structures when he gave it its new name Sebaste ; and it seems natural to ascribe these remains to him,

History.—...

(pages 344-346)