A *Cave Village of Palestine by Ellsworth Huntington

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 21, 1910

A Cave Village of Palestine

By Ellsworth Huntington

WHEN we went to the house of the cave, the owner pointed out the entrance, and said: “There is the cave, but I dare not take you in. The place is full of underground streets and houses and shops, and one can go for miles and miles in them; but it won’t do to go in, because the caves are full of spirits who hate to be disturbed. The first time any one went in, a boy of my family was killed by the spirits; the next time a girl died, and the one or two other times ill luck fell on the household. If we sacrifice a goat, it will be all right; but I can’t sacrifice one.” We expressed our willingness to pay for a sacrifice, and asked if he had a goat to sell. Yes, he had, and he dived into a shed, and yanked out a kid by the ears. He would sell us the goat and show us the cave for three mejidiehs.

“Go ahead and sacrifice it,” we said, but he seemed in no hurry, and, after pretending to get ready, remarked: “It is getting late now, and you haven’t much time. The cave is very big. If you want to hurry, I will just cut off the beast’s ear, and complete the sacrifice later.”

When all was ready, we were, one by one, let twirling down by a rope into a cistern where straw was stored. The only opening was a hole two feet in diameter, through which we squeezed head first, and found ourselves in a passage of about the same height. Lighting our candles, we went forward, sometimes on hands and knees, and sometimes on our stomachs, like worms trailing over the damp mud of the cavern floor. We were expecting to get to a larger passageway, but never did, although occasionally the tunnel widened into a cave where one could stand and walk around. Three times we came to chambers large enough to furnish shelter to a score of people; again we traversed passages whose branches ended sometimes in blank walls of masonry, or in shafts leading up to the courtyards of houses in the village, or in dry cisterns which once furnished water to the people of the caves. We crawled for an hour and a half, and came out plastered with mud from head to foot. No one knows just when the caves were made, but their use is evident. They were places of refuge from the Arabs. Each house seems to have had a well communicating with the underground chambers. When there was an alarm, the people and their chief valuables could promptly be hidden in the caves. The enemy might plunder or burn the houses, but no one would ever risk attacking the refugees in their dark burrows, where death might lurk at any corner. There are probably other cave villages of the same sort, for an inscription at Kanawat, thirty miles northeast of Edrei, has been interpreted as an exhortation of Agrippa I to the people to give up the practise of living like wild beasts in caves.—Ellsworth Huntington, in Harper’s Magazine for April.