CHAPTER XII.
WESTERN ASIA.
Palestine.
Palestine is one of those countries in which dolmens exist, not in thousands and tens of thousands, as in Algeria, but certainly in hundreds—perhaps tens of hundreds; but travellers have not yet condescended to open their eyes to observe them, and the Palestine Exploration Fund is too busy making maps to pay attention to a subject which would probably throw as much light on the ethnography of the Holy Land as anything we know of. Before, however, retailing what little we know about the monuments actually existing, it is necessary in this instance to say a few words about those which we know of only by hearsay. All writers on megalithic remains in the last century, and some of those of the present, have made so much of the stones set up by Abraham and Joshua that it is indispensable to try to ascertain what they were, and what bearing they really have on the subject of which we are treating.
The earliest mention of a stone being set up anywhere as a monument or memorial is that of the one which Jacob used as a pillow in the night when he had that dream which became the title of the Israelites to the land of Canaan. "And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it."[1] The question is, What was the size of this stone? In the East, where hard pillows are not objected to, natives generally use a brick for this purpose. Europeans, who are more stiffnecked as well as more luxurious, insist on two bricks, and these laid one on the other, with a cloth thrown over them, form by no means an uncomfortable headpiece. The fact of Jacob being alone, and moving the stone to and from the place where it was used, proves that it was not larger
- ↑ Genesis xxviii. 18; xxxv. 14.
