Endnotes

1.

The primary source of information about the purpose, plan and progress of the Ashkelon dig is the account written by Lady Hester’s personal physician, Charles Lewis Meryon, The Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope (London, 1846), Vol. 3, pp. 86–187.

Subsidiary details have been provided by: James Silk Buckingham, Travels Among the Arab Tribes (London, 1825); Charles Irby and James Mangles, Travels in Egypt, Nubia, Syria, and Asia Minor (London, 1823); T.R. Joliffe, Letters from Palestine (London, 1854); and Charles Meryon’s other three-volume work, The Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope (London, 1846).

The best biography of Lady Hester is Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope by Frank Hamel (London, 1913). For a brief account of Lady Hester’s expedition and for the background of Biblical exploration in the early decades of the 19th century, see the author’s Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archaeology and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land, 1799–1917 (New York, 1982), Chapter 3.

2.

Cf. Hamel, Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope, p. 129.

3.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 87.

4.

Such discoveries were known at least as early as the Middle Ages. For a report of an ancient hoard of coins discovered by Crusaders at Athlit in 1218, cf. C. N. Johns, Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine 2 (1932), p. 41. In 1660, the Ottoman governor of Gaza, Hussein Pasha, conducted some excavations at the traditional site of the “Temple of Dagon” and discovered a porphyry bust with eyes of crystal, cf. Martin A. Meyer, History of the City of Gaza (New York, 1907), p. 99. Meryon goes to great length to justify the belief in buried treasure in Palestine, cf. Travels, Vol. 3, pp. 87–90.

5.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 85.

6.

For the history of antiquarianism and the early development of classical archaeology, see Glyn Daniel, A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology, pp. 16–21.

7.

Cf. Fani-Maria Tsigakou, The Rediscovery of Greece (New Rochelle, New York, 1981), pp. 22–3, and William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles (New York, 1967), pp. 203–4.

8.

See Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, pp. 156ff., for a description of the subsequent course of the excavation.

9.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 162.

10.

Michael Avi-Yonah, ed., Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (London, 1975) Vol. I, p. 121.

11.

Ze’ev Vilnay, The Legends of Eretz Israel (Jerusalem, 1950), Vol. 2, pp. 299–300 [Hebrew].

12.

William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles pp. 224–6.

13.

Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, ed. John D. Jump (London 1975), p. 38. Lady Hester met Byron during her visit to Athens in 1812, but it seems each of them gained a negative impression of the other. Cf. Meryon, Memoirs, Vol. 3, pp. 218–9, and “Famous in My Time”: Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (London, 1973), Vol. 2, p. 21.

14.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 162.

15.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 166.

16.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 163. On Muhammad Aga’s later perfidy against Suleiman, cf. Ibid., pp. 180–1.

17.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 166.

18.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 166.

19.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, p. 167.

20.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 2, p. 307.

21.

Meryon, Travels, Vol. 3, pp. 178–80.

22.

For the identification and summary of the excavations, cf. Avi-Yonah, Encylopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Vol. 4, pp. 963ff. For the Arabic name of the site, cf. Benjamin Mazar, “The Excavations at Tell Qasile,” Israel Exploration Journal 2, (1950–51), p. 62, n. 3.

23.

Travels, Vol. 3, pp. 185–6.

24.

Hamel, Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope, pp. 238ff.

25.

The best description of Lady Hester’s later behavior and strange preoccupations can be found in Alexander Kinglake, Eothen (London 1844), pp. 111–149.

26.

The later career of Charles Meryon is detailed in the Dictionary of National Biography.

27.

John Garstang, “The Fund’s Excavation of Askalon,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement [PEFQSt] January 1921, p. 12.

28.

Garstang, p. 14.

29.

John Garstang, “The Excavations at Askalon,” PEFQSt July 1922, p. 115.

30.

John Garstang, “The Excavations at Askalon,” p. 115.

31.

John Garstang, “The Excavation at Askalon, 1920–21,” PEFQSt April 1921, p. 74.