Jerusalem: The Biography

The British were every bit as committed as the Russians. On 1 April 1862, Albert Edward, the plump, twenty-year-old Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII), rode into Jerusalem, escorted by a hundred Ottoman cavalrymen.

The prince, who stayed in a grand encampment outside the walls, was very excited about getting a Crusader tattoo on his arm and his visit made an indelible impression both in Jerusalem and back home. Not only did his presence accelerate the recall of James Finn, accused of financial improprieties after twenty years of his domineering presence, but it intensified the feeling that Jerusalem was somehow a little piece of England. The prince was guided around the sites by the Dean of Westminster, Arthur Stanley, whose immensely influential book of biblical history and archaeological speculation convinced a generation of British readers that Jerusalem was ‘a land more dear to us from our childhood even than England’. In the mid-nineteenth century, archaeology suddenly became not just a new historical science to study the past but a way to control the future. No wonder archaeology was immediately political – not only a cultural fetish, social fashion and royal hobby, but empire-building by other means and an extension of military espionage. It became Jerusalem’s secular religion and also, in the hands of imperialist Christians such as Dean Stanley, a science in the service of God: if it confirmed the truth of the Bible and the Passion, Christians could reclaim the Holy Land itself.

The Russians and British were not alone. The consuls of the Great Powers, many of them religious ministers, also fancied themselves as archaeologists, but it was American Christians who really created modern archaeology.^*

The French and Germans were not far behind, pursuing archaeological spectaculars with ruthless national esprit, their emperors and premiers keenly backing their digs. Like the space race in the twentieth century with its heroic astronauts, archaeology quickly became a projection of national power with celebrity archaeologists who resembled swashbuckling historical conquistadors and scientific treasure hunters. One German archaeologist called it ‘the peaceful crusade’.

The Prince of Wales’ visit encouraged the expedition of a red-coated British officer and archaeologist, Captain Charles Wilson, who, in the tunnels close to the Western Wall under the Gate of the Chain Street, discovered the monumental Herodian arch of the great bridge reaching across the Tyropaean Valley to the Temple. It is still known as Wilson’s Arch, and this was just the start.

In May 1865, an array of patricians, from Earl Russell the foreign secretary to the Duke of Argyll, founded the Palestine Exploration Fund with contributions from Queen Victoria and Montefiore. Shaftesbury would later serve as its president. The visit to Palestine of the first heir to the British throne since Edward I ‘opened the whole of Syria to Christian research’, explained the Society’s prospectus. At its first session, the Archbishop of York, William Thompson, declared that the Bible had given him ‘the laws by which I try to live’ and ‘the best knowledge I possess’. He went further: ‘This country of Palestine belongs to you and me. It was given to the Father of Israel. It’s the land whence comes news of our redemption. It’s the land where we look with as true a patriotism as we do this dear old England.’

In February 1867, Lieutenant of Royal Engineers Charles Warren, twenty-seven years old, began the Society’s survey of Palestine. However, the Jerusalemites were hostile to any excavations around the Temple Mount so he hired plots nearby and sank twenty-seven shafts deep into the rock. He uncovered the first real archaeological artefacts in Jerusalem, the pottery of Hezekiah marked ‘Belonging to the King’; forty-three cisterns under the Temple Mount; Warren’s Shaft in the Ophel hill that he believed was King David’s conduit into the city; and his Warren’s Gate in the tunnels along the Western Wall was one of Herod’s main entrances to the Temple – and later the Jewish Cave. This adventurous archaeologist personified the glamour of the new science. In one of his subterranean exploits he uncovered the ancient Struthion Pool and sailed on it on a raft made of doors. Fashionable Victorian ladies were lowered in baskets down his shafts, swooning at the biblical sights as they loosened their corsets.