Research: More on the Bekes (Beeks)

Emily and Charles Beke were early travellers in what is now Jordan. Emily was a particularly notable traveller simply as that rarity amongst western travellers up to that point – a woman. But even in 1862 she was not the first known western women to travel in Jordan – Charlotte Rowley had visited Petra with her husband and a friend in 1836 and Mary Ann Roberton Blaine was in northewestern Jordan with her husband in 1849.

The Beke family had also had a member in the region before Charles and Emily. In 1839 Charles’ younger brother, William Beek (he kept the old spelling of the family name), an engineer in The East India Company had worked with the Irishman, George Moore around the Dead Sea ('On the Dead Sea and Some Positions in Syria', JRGS 7 (1837): 456). Various hints point to William having also been to Petra and Jarash at least. William is an interesting character in his own right. A few years earlier he had apparently served as an adventurer in the army of the Persian Crown Prince, Abbas Mirza. It was reported that ‘he led a siege and an escapade against a Turkoman fortress in Khorasan’, in what is now Turkmenistan.

William later appears in Sicily and Italy apparently managing mining operations. An infant son died there as a gravestone from the English Cemetery at Messina in Sicily records:
“William James Beek born 1st December and died 25th June 1840, the son of Ann and William George Beek”.

Another son – Charley, survived to work alongside his father until the 1870s at least and a further son – Reginald Maitland Beek, married a girl in Queensland in September 1888.

A fascinating family and deserving of further investigation, not least for their activities ‘east of Jordan’.

DLK

Research: Emily Beke's description of a 'Kite'

Our research into 19th century travellers' accounts of Syria and Transjordan, and more specifically what they encountered in the 'Hinterland of Roman Philadelphia' continues. Every now and then we turn up something fantastic, but not necessarily on our current topic of research.

Portrait of Emily and her husband Charles Tilstone Beke photographed by Ernest Edwards (Lovell Reece, 1867, 'Dr. and Mrs. Beke', in Portraits of Men of Eminence, Vol. 6, London: L. Reeve & Co.: 21. Original in the Natural History Museum, London: 051942).

Recently, we found a description of the function of a kite by Mrs Emily Alston Beke, wife of Charles Tilstone Beke. She wrote the following:

"It is curious how these animals are caught by the Beduins in the desert country lying to the east of Harran. Two walls of considerable length are erected, commencing at some distance from each other, and converging to a point. Before the two ends quite meet, a mound of earth is thrown up between them, and the two walls, being continued beyond this mound, are united by a cross-wall of about half their height; behind this lower wall is a large pit, the earth dug out of which had served to form the mound. Horsemen now contrive to drive a herd of gazelles between the two walls, where they are furthest apart. The timid animals rush forward towards the extremity of the enclosure, at first not seeing the low cross-wall, which is hidden by the mound of earth; and when, at length, they find themselves closed in on both sides, they naturally try to escape by ascending the mound and leaping over the low wall, when they fall into the pit beyond it, and are taken, often as many as twenty or thirty at a time."

Mrs Beke 1865 Jacob's Flight; or a Pilgrimage to Harran and thence in the Patriarch's footsteps into the Promised Land, with illustrations, London: 145-6.

The entry is dated Tuesday December 24th, 1861 when Emily and her husband were visiting a Dr. Wetzstein in Damascus where they were sampling wine made from Helbon/Halbon grapes. The description must be that of a Kite. The description is particularly useful as what we currently know about the function of a kite is almost entirely derived from their remains and some inscriptions, whereas here we seem to have a contemporary account of their use, and what's more, it implies that Kites were still being used to trap gazelle into the 19th century. The area she refers to 'in the desert country lying to the east of Harran' is the northern tip of the Harrat ash-Sham east of Harran al 'Awamid. A large group of kites are located in this area, beginning roughly 15 km east of Harran al 'Awamid (or 40km east of Damascus), which we have located using satellite imagery freely available through Google Earth and Bing Maps. These kites were first photographed by Poidebard - one is published in La Trace de Rome (1934: Pl. XIV) (see Bewley & Kennedy, 2012, 'Historical Aerial Imagery in Jordan and the Wider Middle East', in Hanson & Oltean (Eds), Archaeology from Historical Aerial and Satellite Archives: Fig. 13.2 p. 226).

In exploring Harran in pursuit of a theory about an Old Testament place name, the Bekes discovered an inscribed stone (p. 199 ff.) which was later identified as a Roman milestone (p. 124ff.). Another was later found in a neighbouring village the name of which Emily gives as Ghassule (p. 125). Very unexpected.

Emily was 37 years younger than her husband but a fitting companion and his equal in many respects. Her published diary, and notes in the archival material of her husband show that she is highly intelligent, independent and active woman- accompanying her husband on at least one journey, helping him in his academic pursuits and publications as well as running their household as smoothly as she could with the expenses from research tours and publishing. After her husband's death she remained a staunch advocate for his lifetimes work, continuing to publish his research at considerable cost to her financial position.

Miss Mary Arnold - Missionary at Kerak

Image: T. Durley, 1910, Lethaby of Moab; a record of missionary adventure, peril, and toil, Marshall Brothers, London: 190.

In the 1880s and 90s an intrepid British missionary called Willian Lethaby took up residence at Kerak in what is now west central Jordan. The indigenous population was mixed Muslim and Christian but fairly uniformly lawless, preying on each other and on any travellers passing by. Lethaby and his wife lived a hard life and suffered a great deal there from neighbours who often could be aggressive and even violent. Some of the burden of their efforts to proselytise and provide basic health care and education was shared when they were joined by Miss Mary Arnold. She appears in books of the time as a robust character and well-able to deal with the harsh neighbours and environment. One of the reports she sent back to Britain concerns a journey she made from Kerak to Jerusalem. In it she explains that because of feuding between beduin north of Kerak, she travelled south, down from the plateau to the valley south of the Dead Sea then north through Hebron to Jerusalem. The description makes it clear she was following the old Roman road known as the Zoar Ascent. This is the route I followed on the ‘walk’ organised by Prof. Haim Ben-David last year (blog post) and readers might like to read Mary Arnold’s account (see below). Of interest, too, is that when the missionaries were all forced to leave Kerak in 1894, it was said that she returned to her family in Western Australia. In the 1890s, the population of WA was small and the numbers who belonged to the Weslyan Methodist Church must have been tiny. A remarkable woman indeed.

DLK

LETTER FROM MISS ARNOLD extract from A. Forder (1902) With the Arabs in Tent and Town, an account of missionary work, life and experiences in Moab and Edom and the first missionary journey into Arabia from the north, 3rd ed., London, Marshall Brothers: 16-25.

"Jerusalem,

"August 15th, 1893.

"To Major General Haig,

"Dear Sir,

"Knowing you take such interest in all our movements and work both in and out of Kerak, I thought you would also be interested in my last journey from our mountain  home to the Holy City; and more especially so, as you yourself have also been over part of the road by which I came, viz:- through the Ghor Es-Safeah and Hebron.

Publications: Settlement and Soldiers in the Roman Near East

Ashgate Publishing contacted us last year regarding publishing a compilation of David Kennedy's past papers in a 'Variorum' volume. The unifying theme of this collection is Settlement and Soldiers in the Roman Near East, and the final result is a compilation of thirteen papers originally published in different sources from 1980 through to 2006. The volume includes a Preface, Addenda and Index for the included papers, as well as all images from the original papers.

David Kennedy

Settlement and Soldiers in the Roman Near East

Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS 1032 

Ashgate Publishing

2013

ISBN: 9781409464365

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409464365
Hardback, 300 pages
66 black and white illustrations
244 x 169 mm format
Contents
Preface



From the Ashgate website:
The Roman Near East has been a source of fascination and exasperation - an immense area, a rich archaeological heritage as well as documents in several local languages, a region with a great depth of urbanisation and development … yet relatively neglected by modern researchers and difficult to work on and in. Local archaeologists are often under-funded and the Roman period viewed as an earlier phase of western colonialism.

Happily, the immense surge in archaeological and historical research on the Roman period everywhere has included the Roman Near East and there have been significant academic developments.

This collection of studies on the Roman Near East represents Professor Kennedy’s academic assessment of the region, which began with his doctoral thesis on the contribution of Syria to the Roman army. Although the thesis was never published, several articles owe their genesis to work done then or soon after and are included here (VI, VII, IX, XII). Initial visits to military sites in Syria and Jordan swiftly brought out the presence in many cases of associated civil settlements and - though often now gone, the traces of ancient field systems. Hence, the two prominent sub-themes in this collection are the Roman military and various aspects of society and settlement - settlement types, farming, logistical underpinning and communications.

Searching APAAME Flickr by location

Perhaps one of the easiest way to search for images of a place is to search by its location. You will now be able to search using this method on our Flickr archive because we are currently uploading our geo-referencing metadata with our images. We'll let you know when it is all uploaded - check our Twitter @APAAME.

We geo-tag our images in one of two ways:

1. a digitised image from the collection is georeferenced based on the site it represents
2. a digital photograph is georeferenced based on the GPS of the flight path or camera when the photo was taken in real time.

The resulting scatter of location 'dots' will reflect these two methods of geotagging:

• many photographs may be represented by one 'dot' where they have been georeferenced based on the location of the site
• sequences of dots may indicate the path taken on a particular flight

To help you search our Flickr archive by location, we have composed this short tutorial.

How to search for a location in Flickr: (to expand images simply click on them)
1. Go to http://www.flickr.com/apaame/map

What www.flickr.com/apaame/map looks like when you first get there.

2. Zoom to the area you are interested in finding photographs for

Here I have zoomed in onto the ancient and modern town of Umm el-Jimal.

3. 'Refresh' the image list (pink dots will populate the map area if there are images for it)

This is where you find the refresh button when you have chosen the area you are interested in.

Notice the cluster of pink dots in the centre of Umm el-Jimal and that the list of photographs has gone down from around 60,000 to 200 or so in this instance.

4. If there are more images listed than what shows on the thread, click on the arrow to the right to scroll through them.

Click on the arrow to the right of the thread to scroll through available images for this area. Notice the distribution of pink dots has changed to suit those images now showing in the thread.

5. If you click on the pink dot that represents photograph/s georeferenced to that point - the thread of images will highlight those images that correspond to that geographic location. Click on an image thumbnail to view a larger thumbnail, and click on the larger thumbnail to open the image in a new window.

Notice the 'dot' clicked on has a white selection cloud around it and the two images for that location are indicated to the left of the thread - one of which has an expanded thumbnail to allow you a better look.

Note: the map will only show the locations of those images that are visible in the thread, not all the images in the archive. To access all of the images for the viewable area you must scroll through the thread.

We hope this quick tutorial has been helpful. If you would like some clarification, or think we should include something else, please let us know. Likewise, if you have any pointers for us.

More tutorials about how to use our archive are available on our YouTube feed: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhsAYi0XrGzZg75WIYZEEWqdJ0h1kxQpx

Conferences: ARAM Decapolis-History and Archaeology 29-31 July

The ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies Conference on The Decapolis: History and Archaeology is held this year at The Oriental Institute, Pusey Lane, Oxford from the 29-31 July and will host a wide variety of speakers including many colleagues and friends.

You may recall from our last blog that David Kennedy spent some time in Princeton last month with the Achaeological Archive of Brünnow and von Domaszewski. If you wish to know more, David will be presenting on Monday, July 29 16:30 on what they did and didn't have to say about the Decapolis cities.

Brünnow and von Domaszewski in the Jordanian Decapolis.
David Kennedy, Monday, July 29 16:30pm Oriental Institute, Pusey Lane Oxford 
(Afternoon session begins at 14:30 and will be chaired by Prof. Amos Kloner of Bar Ilan University. Speakers include Dr. Kenneth Lönnqvist (University of Helsinki), Dr. Steven Bourke (Sydney University), and Prof. Ben Zion Rosenfeld (Bar Ilan University)).
Abstract: The publication by the two great German scholars of their magisterial Die Provincia Arabia (1904-9) was a landmark in research on Roman Arabia. It remains a marvellous source for an archaeological landscape now transformed by development and a testimony to energy in the field and superb research. Nevertheless, it was never a comprehensive review of the evidence with considerable weight being given to the Hauran and to Petra. The lands in between were treated unevenly and the region encompassed by of the Decapolis cities of Philadelphia, Gerasa, Pella and Gadara were relatively neglected. Research today needs to appreciate both the limitations of the publications of the German scholars and investigate for themselves the rich reports of 19th century travellers in the region. Many of the latter were know to the Germans; others have only come to light in recent years as libraries and archives are digitised and easily accessible.

The ARAM website is not yet updated but you can find out more information by contacting them at
ARAM, the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, England.
Tel. 01865-514041 Fax. 01865-516824. Email: aram@orinst.ox.ac.uk

According to information provided by ARAM, the Conference fee is £50 and can be made in person upon arrival at the venue on Monday morning. We hope to see you there.

Since last we met...

You last heard from us in Berlin where four of our team were giving papers at ICHAJ 12 - well, things have not slowed down.

David Kennedy took a direct flight to Oxford where he spent four weeks before leaving to research in Princeton University for a month. Here are held the archaeological archives of Brünnow and Domaszewski authors of Die Provincia Arabia, one of the foremost early works on the archaeological record of the former Roman province of Arabia - well worth burrowing into if you have the chance. You can read about the archive here: http://www.princeton.edu/researchphotographs/archaeological-archives/brunnow-and-domaszewski/.

Hardly was David back in Oxford from Princeton before he was off to Aston University, Birmingham for four days for a conference held by ASTENE - the Association for the Study of Travellers to Egypt and the Near East.

Two presentations were given by the APAAME team: David presented 'More journeys and travellers to Petra, 1812-1914', and Don presented 'The relative contributions of William John Bankes and Charles Barry to the early plans of Gerasa/Jarash (Jordan): evidence from the Bankes and Barry archives'. You can find the conference abstracts and program at ASTENE: http://www.astene.org.uk/.

We learned a lot from the conference, and as ever, made useful contacts. The audience included team member Francesca Radcliffe, and an old acquaintance in Nicholas Stanley-Price whom David last met in Jerusalem in 1976 when he was staying at the British School (of which he was then Assistant Director).

David is now back in Oxford and has been joined by Rebecca.