The Maccabaean

as will be vouchsafed to the country, Palestine will develop material resources sufficient to realize the purposes of Zionism.

There are many problems in Palestine which await solution—the relations of capital and labor, the land question, the instruments and methods of agricultural and industrial development. Perhaps it would have been too much to have

expected the author to cover all of these subjects within the compass of one small volume.

Sa HRS vi VII Sllialı YUVLUILLC, Mr. Bentwich holds a position in the present English administration of the country which in the United States would be known as the attorney generalship, and as such enjoys an opportunity for observation and study given to far. "Wassgetithatssachall havazıham LA Te fa

W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, Eastern Exploration, Past and Future.London: Constable & Co., 1918.

THIS small volume of 115 pages consists of lectures, apparently three in number, delivered by Petrie before the Royal Institution. An almost unbelievable amount of information is put into it, and it is rendered still more useful by a short but practically sufficient index. Indeed, the enhancement of value that any book receives by an index—even the briefest—is so obvious that no book that conveys information ought to receive a publisher’s imprima- tur without it.

The first lecture deals with Palestine and rapidly reviews in reverse order the various civilizations that existed there. The most striking archeological discoveries are referred to, with an indication of where fuller material will be found. Those unfamiliar with the subject will learn with amazement of the extraordinary and important finds that the merest scratching of the surface has brought forth. The mosaic pavements of southern Palestine, the carvings at Meshetta, the palaces of Samaria—these are only a few of the many things mentioned, and all that is mentioned is meant only to suggest what has actually been recovered. The high civilization of the Amorite age which Professor Petrie ranks above that of contemporary Egypt, is duly—some archeologists will doubtless say excessively—emphasized. But Professor Petrie is chiefly concerned with pointing out the places where excavation is likely—is practically certain—to add enormously to our knowledge of the history of the country and of the civilized world.

The second lecture deals with the history of Mesopotamia in the same way, running rapidly from the Sassanians to the lowest stratum of Sumerian remains and to Elam, before Sumer. Here, too, he indicates the places where the spade can do a great deal, and in some cases, everything, to dispel the obscurity in which this capital stage in the history of civilization is enshrouded. There are few handbooks indeed in which so admirable a summary of our knowledge and ignorance of the subject is given as in this accurate and concise resume. Limited as the space is of which Professor Petrie disposes, he finds room for vigorous argumentation against certain widely received opinions, i.e., the identification of Keftiu with Crete, the meaning of Che- rethi and Pelethi, the miscalled “Philistine” tombs, the superior age of Mesopotamian culture and its high rank as compared to the contemporary culture of the Nile. It is especially on the high antiquity of the Sumerian strata that he joins issue sharply with German investigators who find it easier to assert that they “cannot believe the time was so long” (pp. 63 seq.), than to discuss the evidence. Professor Petrie does not hint— what his reviewer may do—that

at least one element in the German position was to disparage by indirection any culture even partially connected with a Semitic race. But it is really too bad to make Naram Sin or Hammurabi (Professor Petrie evidently prefers this to the ultra modern reading Hamurapi) suffer for the distaste a modern German feels toward his Tewish romnetitors.

a te er Set Sg Kern a An A en A kargakaere The third lecture, called The Future, is the one that I should like to commend most earnestly to the attention; of all Zionists. Wise and severely practical, with full appr»- ciation of the difficulties of the subject, Professor Petrie sets forth the imminent danger that the monuments of ancient history and art—no inconsiderable part of the priceless heritage of the human race—both above and below the soil of Palestine will be destroyed and wiped out by the negligence or worse of the present generation. He recounts frankly and bitterly the sins of omission and commission of which the English government has been guilty in Egypt and Cyprus in this regard, and shows the complete ineffectiveness of severe legislation or administrative decrees. In his opinion nothing will meet the situation but the common-sense and human appeal to an enlightened self-interest, -by giving the finder a share in the objects discovered, whether by adequate payment or in some other way. The Archeological Commission of the new Palestinian state will as little disregard his advice in this matter as its investigators will fail to consult his Methods and- Aims in Archeologey.

Professor Petrie accepts, without arriere pensee, the situation created by the Balfour Declaration. It is a Jewish control both of Palestine as a whole and of the Holy Places to which he looks forward. His tone of frank admonition, to which his experience and distinction amply entitle him, is a refreshing contrast with the petulance of Sir George Adam Smith in his much-discussed and not wholly ingenuous pamphlet. That Professor Petrie has a strangely inadequate idea of what the Talmud may be, or what the mental make-up is of a “Lemberg Talmudist,” is unimportant. His warning is thoroughly needed. There are many Zionists who seem to hold ihat they cannot better show their appreciation of the vital and pressing economic problems involved in building a state, than by professing a scorn for the dead and buried past. It is not necessary to argue against this position but to spend every energy in combating it. Shall we indeed do, in the words of the old pasquinade, as the barbarians did not do, and as the Barberini did? When a fully developed Jewish Palestine comes into existence it will stand arrayed as much in the glory of its past as in the success of its present: If we spurn the records of five thousand years of high civilization in an eagerness to erect a hideous shop, we shall be selling our inheritance for a mess of pottage; and while it is undoubtedly true that Edom was our kinsman, we are not prone to boast of the connection.