Bible Lands

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To anyone accustomed to America’s interstate highway system, it is easy to give a misimpression by referring to the “International Coastal Highway,” the important ancient transportation route we will be discussing in this article.

Indeed, even by the standard of Roman highways a thousand or two thousand years later, this International Coastal Highway must be considered crude.

Do you recall the poetic tribute Ethelyn Miller Hartwich wrote to the great Roman roads?

“Great roads the Romans built that men might meet, And walls to keep strong men apart, secure. Now centuries are gone, and in defeat The walls are fallen, but the roads endure.”¹

No such tribute would be penned of the International Coastal Highway from Egypt through Canaan to Babylonia, on which caravans and armies coursed throughout most periods of biblical history.

Critical though it was to life, commerce and war, the International Coastal Highway was merely a narrow, winding path—clogged by mud after winter rains, dusty and rutted during the many months of dry, searing heat. Travel along it was both primitive and perilous, especially in the hilly and mountainous terrain of Canaan.

According to the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmosis III (1490–1436 B.C.) part of this road was so narrow that his horses had to proceed single file, in a line several miles long. As a result, his vanguard and rear guard were separated and were especially vulnerable.²

In the late 13th century B.C., an Egyptian official traveling through Syro-Palestine described its main roads. At one spot he reported that “the sky is darkened by day [because the road] is overgrown with cypresses and oaks and cedars which reach the heavens. Lions are more numerous than leopards or bears, [and it is] surrounded by Bedouin on [every] side of it.”³

Elsewhere in this same papyrus, the author offers a similar assessment of a portion of the road near Megiddo:⁴

“Behold, ambushers wait in a ravine 2,000 cubits deep, filled with boulders and pebbles …. The narrow valley is dangerous with Bedouin hidden under the bushes. Some of them are four or five cubits [from] their noses to the heel, and fierce of face. Their hearts are not mild, and they do not listen to wheedling. You are alone; there is no messenger with you, no army host behind you. You find no scout, that he might make you a way of crossing. You come to a decision to go forward, although you do not know the road. Shuddering seizes you, [the hair of] your head stands up, and your soul, lies in your hand. Your path is filled with boulders and pebbles, without a toe hold for passing by, overgrown with reeds, thorns, brambles and ‘wolfs’-paw.’ The ravine is on one side of you, and the mountain rises on the other. You go on jolting, with your chariot on its side, afraid to press your horse [too] hard.”

This Egyptian text deals with an individual’s journey; the previous text, with troop movements. But both describe the same reality: Travel throughout Canaan ill the biblical period was a difficult and hazardous business.

For the Assyrians, as well, international travel was generally freighted with peril. Rulers like Tiglath-Pileser I (c: 1100 B.C.) tell of having to hack through difficult paths with copper pickaxes in order to make passable a road for chariots and troops,⁵ of riding in chariots when the way was smooth but of going on foot when the way was rough,⁶ and of taking with the army a corps of engineers (ummanu) whose task it was to level tracks and clear roadways.⁷

Even in the Persian and Greek periods (sixth to third centuries B.C.) the situation did not improve much: Diodorus of Sicily⁸ refers to stretches of the Persian Royal Road in modern-day Iran and Turkey that were difficult to negotiate because of steep slopes; Xenophon’s description of the “March of the 10,000,”^9a includes a number of stories about chariots stuck in the mud and the need to clear and repair roads.

As late as the Roman period (in the third century B.C. to the third century A.D.), when larger and heavier military machinery had to be moved and roads were sometimes paved, the same sort of personnel were needed. According to Josephus,¹⁰ road workers preceded most of Vespasian’s army, to cut down trees that hindered a march, to remove stones from the road and to build it up and make it even and straight; a similar procedure was followed by Titus.¹¹

We can imagine people in the early biblical period trudging beside their laden beasts, a few lucky ones on wheeled carriers or donkeys. They probably tried to avoid the oppressive heat of the Mediterranean sun by traveling at night whenever the moon 037offered enough light. Nighttime travel provided an added advantage of protecting them from detection by brigands and bandits. One wonders whether the practice of travel in darkness might have contributed directly to the ubiquitous nature of moon-cult worship, the most prevalent form religion across the Fertile Crescent. Is it to fear of the moon’s influence that the psalmist refers: “The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night” (Psalm 121:2)?

Most international travel was undertaken by caravans; in numbers there was some protection against bandits. Considerable evidence from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor indicates that caravans were generally quite large and were almost always escorted by security guards. Caravans often included 100 to 200 donkeys. One text from Mari, in modern Syria, refers to a caravan of 3,000 donkeys.¹²

The distance a traveler could go each day was quite limited. The nature of the terrain, the different purposes of travel and seasonal variations all affected the distance covered in a single day. The ancient world knew exceptional distances traveled in one day: The messengers who carried news of Nero’s death to the western limits of the empire averaged almost ten miles per hour;¹³ Tiberias rode some 600 miles in 72 hours to be at the bedside of his dying brother;¹⁴ and couriers in the Roman postal service averaged about 95 miles per day.¹⁵ But these were rare exceptions.

Considerable evidence—numerous archival texts, itineraries and military annals Psalm from all parts of the ancient Near East, from Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia and Asia Minor, dating as early as the second some millennium B.C.—allows us to estimate daily mileage with considerable accuracy. The evidence is generally consistent, leading to the conclusion that a normal day’s journey in the biblical world covered between 17 and 23 miles, with slightly higher daily averages when traveling downstream by boat Similar daily averages continued to be the norm in later classical, Arab and medieval itineraries, from Egypt to Turkey, and to Iran. Even as recently as 100 years ago or less, some modern itineraries and travel accounts document the same sort of meager daily averages.¹⁶

Journeys described in the Bible are also consistent with these figures. The first sidebar to this article summarizes a number of these biblical journeys.

Mindful of these descriptions of actual road conditions in biblical times, we can better understand the metaphors of Isaiah when he said:

“ ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall averages become level, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ ”

Isaiah 40:3–5 (These same verses from Isaiah are quoted in Luke 3:4–6.)

Eschatological implications aside, to 038“prepare the way” entailed clearing obstructions from a path—no easy task! Isaiah returns to similar allusions in later verses:

“And it shall be said, ‘Build up, build up, prepare the way, remove every obstruction from my people’s way.’ ”

Isaiah 57:14

“Go through, go through the gates, prepare the way for the people; build up, build up the highway, clear it of stones, lift up an ensign over the peoples.”

Isaiah 62:10

Knowing the condition of roads in biblical times gives no clue, however, about their location. How can we reconstruct road maps from the biblical period? How do we locate major ancient roadways for which there is not a shred of direct archaeological evidence and not a single surviving map from the period?.

Four sources of evidence are available: (1) unchanging geographic features of the land, (2) literary records, (3) archaeological discoveries that provide indirect evidence and (4) Roman milestones.

The terrain over which caravans, migrants and armies passed eliminated certain routes and facilitated others. In general, the lowland areas offered the least hindrance to human movement and the most scope for the development of trade networks or the deployment of troops. By contrast, deeply incised canyons cut by sometimes raging rivers impeded travel and in all periods were to be avoided, or, if unavoidable, were forded at places offering a minimum of difficulty. Disease-infested swamps, barren, unbearably hot deserts, badlands created by ancient beds of congealed lava—all these were formidable obstacles to be shunned at any cost. Densely forested mountain slopes, oftentimes with twisting gorges, were consistently navigated at passes, however narrow or hazardous those passes. Alternatively, mountain ridges uninterrupted by gorges and valleys were used for travel in all periods. And routes were always chosen to include reliable sources of fresh water.

In addition to these geographical factors that limited or encouraged particular travel. routes, literary evidence helps us to delineate many Canaanite roadways. This literary evidence is both contemporaneous and from much later periods. Even the later sources are helpful because they suggest routes, and stops along those routes, that may follow earlier roadways. Written descriptions of transportation arteries may be deduced from the Bible, Apocrypha, extra biblical ancient sources (Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman), classical writers (for example, Herodotus, Eusebius, Strabo, Josephus, Pliny the Elder), early Christian pilgrim itineraries (such as those of the Pilgrim of Bordeaux, Egeria, Theodosius, Antonius Martyr and Willibald), Crusader and post-Crusader writers (including Fetellus, Peter the Deacon, Benjamin of Tudela, Burchard of Mt. Zion, Rabbi Eshtori Haparhi and Ludolph Von Suchem).

Some of these sources attempt to survey. the Holy Land, describing both distances and directions; others are travel diaries, simple itineraries or lists of stations along a route. Sometimes the distance or time between two or more points is given, requiring that a particular intermediate course be assumed. Sometimes details of terrain or points of interest along the way are described. Only rarely do these sources trace a definitely ascertainable route. Still, their cumulative value is critical because these writings often give precise details upon which a roadway can plausibly be reconstructed, or they provide a nuance that, when combined with other lines of evidence, can lead to reasonable assumptions regarding the route in question.

In addition to these aids, archaeological evidence helps to reconstruct the location of ancient roads in Canaan by unambiguous identification of sites repeatedly mentioned in literary itineraries. For example, because a place such as Laish/Dan (Tel Dan) is positively identified from an inscription excavated at the site, greater specificity is automatically conferred upon the journeys of Abraham (Genesis 14) and Ben-hadad (1 Kings 15; 2 Chronicles 16), and upon texts describing itineraries of tin traders, which mention this place as a regular stop along the way.

Archaeology may disclose settlement patterns during particular periods. For example, many Middle Bronze Age (roughly 2000–1500 B.C.) settlements are adjacent to established transportation and communication arteries. These Middle Bronze Age sites probably functioned as local market centers and, perhaps also, as distribution points in a trading network that linked Canaan with the rest of the Fertile Crescent and Egypt. Artifacts uncovered at sites may suggest whether movements to and from these sites were the result of migration of people with their flocks or from trading caravans carrying wares. Flocks require routes with pasturage; trading caravans do not. The roadways each followed may have differed. Imported objects such as scarabs, cylinder seals or commodities not native to Canaan, or even the entire ancient Near East—for example, tin, amber, cloves, spikenard, silk and cotton—are evidence of foreign trade. The geographical origin of these objects or commodities and the dates for their passage from one point to another may suggest who was involved, the location of markets and intermediate entrepôt and, therefore, 039possible routes.

In the ancient world, certain fixed commodity routes to the Near East emerged: the Baltic amber route from Europe, the silk route from southeast Asia, the spice route from western Saudi Arabia. Sometimes archaeological data are reinforced by literary documentation, as in the case of tin, where itinerary texts from Mari, in modern Syria, spell out tin distribution stations across the Fertile Crescent, including stops within Canaan.

Beside linkage with trade and migration, archaeological finds may suggest the use of certain routes for military invasions. Such finds include monumental victory stelae or earthen ramps built against the exterior of city walls (perhaps with concurrent destruction layers). The demands of military strategy, troop maintenance and materiel procurement would eliminate some routes from consideration as military conduits.

The final piece of evidence for reconstructing road maps from biblical times is Roman milestones. To date some 450 milestones have been found in Israel. Of these, about 120 bear inscriptions, which may include the date they were erected and the name of the reigning emperor. The earliest milestone found in Israel is dated to 69 A.D., during the reign of Vespasian, although specimens dating as early as 56 A.D. are known from Lebanon.¹⁷

These milestones precisely mark the course of Roman roads, which frequently followed the paths of much earlier roads. The locations of milestones give us evidence that certain towns were linked in the same sequence as recorded in earlier literature.

Here are two examples. Twenty-five milestones representing 20 different mile-stations have been discovered along stretch of Roman coastal road between Syrian Antioch and Ptolemais (Old Testament, Acre). This stretch of road is 313 Roman-miles long (about 235 airline miles). These milestones enable us to discern the route employed by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III in his campaign into Israel (841 B.C.). King Jehu of Israel is said to have paid tribute to the Assyrian during this campaign.¹⁸ The route of this campaign confirmed by the discovery of Shalmaneser’s victory monument carved into a cliff alongside the mouth of the Dog River, just south of Byblos. The milestones also enable us to configure the route of Sennacherib’s famous third campaign (701 B.C.), in which the Assyrian boasts that he shut up King Hezekiah in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage.¹⁹

While written descriptions of movements along ancient roadways have survived, roadmaps themselves from the biblical period have not However, the insistent demands of physical terrain, the persistence of settlements in the same location, the unchanging human needs associated with migration, war and trade all make even a much later roadmap potentially valuable our reconstruction.

The sole surviving example of roadmap from the Roman period is known as the Peutinger map (see photo of the Peutinger map). Named for the map collector with whom the piece was first associated, the Peutinger consists of 11 parchment sheets, plus fragments, which show the Roman world from Britain to Sri Lanka (Ceylon); it contains some 3,500 geographical names. Oriented essentially to the north, the most obvious feature of the map is that its total width (89.5 feet) is about 20 times greater than its height (4.5 feet). Drawn primarily as a road map, it delineates approximately 65,000 statute miles of roads, drawn in straight lines, with no attempt to show their most true course or scale. Distances between places are shown in Roman miles. The copyist seems to have been accurate 041because names and distances compare favorably with ancient written itineraries and known locations. Based on the form of the letters on the map, which experts can date, the map was probably made about 1265 A.D.

By the 13th century, Christian cartographers a moved mapmaking from objective science and placed emphasis on ecclesiastical symbolism. The cartographers were more concerned with propagating theology than geography. Why bother mapping the next town when paradise was out there waiting to be depicted in all its glory! Thus, for example, some 13th-century maps show the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark perched atop Mt. Ararat, the Red Sea painted red, and Adam and Eve standing in a place labeled “Paradise.” Because the Peutinger map does not display these typical 13th-century symbols, we conjecture that the archetype map on which the Peutinger map was based displayed the Roman world of about 450 A.D., and perhaps as early as the late first century A.D.

Evidence for a possible first century date includes some particular places named and some peculiarities of spelling. The Peutinger map shows Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. Almost no Christian influence is evident (although several sites sacred to Christians, rather than to Romans, are mentioned—including the Mt. of Olives, Mt. Sinai and the tomb of St. Peter), Names and spellings of some cities conform to the work of Claudius Ptolemy (c. 90–168 A.D.), who is considered by many to be the father of geography, Ptolemy’s cartographic attempts to project a round earth on a flat sheet of paper using meridians and parallels governed scientific mapmaking efforts almost until the time of Napoleon.

Based on the four kinds of evidence I have described, scholars have mapped out a major international highway, often referred to (erroneously) as the Via Maris. This international route began at Memphis near the southern end of the Nile Delta and coursed north all the way to Damascus. Along the way, it skirted sand dunes and volcanic badlands, followed the flanks of mountains an veered through valleys and strategic passes, A detailed depiction of the sites on this international highway appears in the second sidebar to this article.

Why is it erroneous to call the International Coastal Highway the Via Marts? Because the International Coastal Highway and the Via Maris have always been separate entities. This assertion, I know, runs counter to the popular opinion that “Via Maris” is the name for the Canaanite sector of the major international transportation artery that extended from Egypt to Syria and that has been in use since biblical times. But the evidence is reasonably conclusive.

Jerome first used the term “Via Maris” when he translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, a translation called the Vulgate. “Via Maris” was Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew derekh hayyam (way of the sea) in Isaiah 8:2 (9:1 in the Vulgate and in English versions). The Hebrew phrase also occurs in Ezekiel 41:12 and in 1 Kings 18:43; in these appearances the phrase is at best ambiguous, and in one case it clearly cannot mean a roadway.

The verse from Isaiah reads:

“But there will be no gloom for her that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.”

The “way of the sea” in this verse could be understood as westward (that is, a compass point), as a roadway that goes to the Mediterranean, or as a roadway that goes to the Sea of Galilee.

The phrase is also ambiguous in 1 Kings 18: “And he said to his servant, ‘Go up and look toward the sea [derekh hayyam].’ ”

Elijah could be instructing his servant to look toward the see, that is westward, or to look at “the way of the sea.” But a translation that envisages the International Coastal Highway is definitely out of the question. Elijah’s servant is atop Mt. Carmel (verse 42). Accordingly, even if on linguistic grounds a route could be posited, that route could not be the International Coastal Highway, for the servant’s attention was directed to precisely the opposite direction.

In Ezekiel, derekh hayyam is embedded in a passage describing the Temple: “And the enclosing wall that was facing the Temple yard on the west side [derekh hayyam] was 70 cubits broad.” Clearly the phrase here cannot mean a route of any kind.

If equating derekh hayyam (Via Maris) with the International Coastal Highway can be questioned on the basis of its biblical contexts, on the basis of the antiquity of the Latin name the equation can be virtually demolished. The term Via Maris just isn’t that old. It makes its initial appearance in Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible, completed in the early fifth century, and it didn’t become popular as a designation of a road within Canaan until the 17th century.

In the interval between those centuries, “Via Maris” is mentioned on some maps and in the writings of a Dominican pilgrim, Burchard of Mt. Zion, in 1283. A native of 042Magdeburg, Germany, Burchard spent 10 years traveling around the Holy Land and wrote extensively of his experiences. His remarks about the Via Maris appear in a passage about a road mat went through Capernaum, which is nowhere near the “sea” (that is, the Mediterranean).

My own research has turned up about 15 medieval maps that delineate and label the “Via Maris”; on each the roadway connects Ptolemais (Acre) with Capernaum. The maps date between 1474 and 1659 and come from Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. The cartographers are Jewish or Christian.

Perhaps the most important of these maps is Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, published in 1584 by the Augustinian priest Christian von Adrichom. Von Adrichom’s work is arresting for two important reasons. First, he refers frequently to Burchard, even calling the pilgrim his “surveyor.” Second, von Adrichom clearly delineates two separate roads mat intersect at Capernaum. One road may be likened to what I call the International Coastal Highway; it extends from Capernaum past Megiddo and on towards Egypt. The other road links Capernaum directly with Ptolemais; it is labeled “Via Maris.” Describing this latter roadway, von Adrichom states:²⁰

“The way of the sea, of which mention is made in the prophecy of Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew [4:14–16, in which Isaiah’s prophecy is quoted], gets its name from the fact that it leads from Syria to the west, to the Great Sea, or the Mediterranean.”

By the early 17th century, Theatrum Terrae Sanctae had been translated into all the major European languages. In fact, until the advent of modern archaeology in the 19th century, von Adrichom’s map remained the definitive cartographic representation of the Holy Land.

Although von Adrichom’s map shows two distinct roads through Canaan, the two became confused. One road, labeled Via 043Maris, starts in Syria and ends at Acre; the other, longer one extends all the way from Syria to Egypt, Somehow the name of the shorter road, Via Maris, became attached the longer road. The attachment proved tenacious, and the muddle has persisted this day.

To anyone accustomed to America’s interstate highway system, it is easy to give a misimpression by referring to the “International Coastal Highway,” the important ancient transportation route we will be discussing in this article. Indeed, even by the standard of Roman highways a thousand or two thousand years later, this International Coastal Highway must be considered crude. Do you recall the poetic tribute Ethelyn Miller Hartwich wrote to the great Roman roads? “Great roads the Romans built that men might meet, And walls to keep strong men apart, secure. Now centuries are gone, and in defeat The walls are […]