House & garden Volume 1
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...three very remarkable ancient cities survived in a surprising state of completeness until afew years ago. They were not mere collections of makeshift houses, but cities of monumental importan...
MoreThis historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...three very remarkable ancient cities survived in a surprising state of completeness until afew years ago. They were not mere collections of makeshift houses, but cities of monumental importance, provided with temples, colonnades, theatres and all that the ancients deemed necessary for the proper conduct of life. The plans published even in Baedeker show how important were the buildings that covered two such sites, Gerasa and Amman, cities on the east of the Jordan in the hill country that separates Palestine from the Syrian desert. The photographs given in Oliphant's " Land of Gilead " are evidences of the extraordinary preservation of their streets, their public places and their buildings; which, until recently, remained in a state of untouched neglect, compared with which the Roman Forum of to-day is a mere collection of fragments. Of the destruction steadily being wrought in these cities sundry travellers give the same sad account. Gerasa is in the hands ofa band of Mohammedans from Bosnia, who are pulling down the RomanoGreek ruins for use in building their wretched houses and in enclosing their bits of land. A " khan" is being put up, and carving, marvellously preserved through fifteen centuries, is hacked away from the old blocks to fit them for their places in the wall. Even the columns from the famous street of columns are being carried off to Damascus. At Amman (the ancient Philadelphia) the destruction is even more complete. The famous theatre is now quite gone. The temples are but a memory. The destruction of these two cities, though perhaps more rapid, is but an example ofwhat is going on in other places. Assos on the coast of Asia Minor, thoroughly explored by an American expedition twenty years ago, has suffered awf...
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