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Kilwa: a Review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Extract

Transjordanien: voregneschichtliche Forschungen, edited by Hans Rhotert, with contributions by Prof. Franz M. Th. Böhl and Dr K. Willman. pp. XII, 251, 63 photographs, 294 line-drawings and 3 maps. Verlag Strecker und Schröder, Stuttgart, 1938.

During December 1932, a joint expedition of the Transjordan Department of Antiquities, and the American School of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, under the direction of Mr and Mrs George Horsfield and the reviewer, undertook a trip of archaeological reconnaissance through the desert of eastern Transjordan from Mafrak to Kilwa. The existence of ruins at Kilwa was known to us, and they formed the ultimate objective of our journey. Gertrude Bell seems to have been the first European to have visited these ruins on her way to Hayil in 1914, merely recording the fact in her Letters. We were able to establish the fact that the buildings there belonged to a Christian community of c. A.D. 1000. They housed a monastic settlement, marked also by numerous small cells in the vicinity of the main buildings, which existed in the midst of a Moslem world. The early Christian settlement at Kilwa was well situated.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1939

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References

1 G. and Horsfield, A. Nelson, Glueck: ‘Prehistoric Rock-Drawings in TransjordanAmerican Journal of Archaeology, 1933, 37 381386, 3529, plates XXXIX-XLV;Google Scholar Nelson, Glueck: ‘Christian KilwaJournal of the Palestine Oriental Society, 1936, 16, 916.Google Scholar

* The insertion of irrelevant political comments in a scientific publication is rightly criticized. Such comments merely serve to create ill-feeling, and thus prejudice future expeditions. —EDITORS.

2 Cf. Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, 1936, 16 pi. 1, and pp.1213,Google Scholar where Prof.Mayer, L.A. of the Hebrew University discusses these inscriptions.Google Scholar

3 For the most recent and correct summary of the discussion about the Ghassulian culture, Cf. Ernest Wright, G. The Pottery of Palestine from the Earliest Times to the End of the Early Bronze Age, pp.1441,(reviewed ANTIQUITY, March 1939, pp. 126–8).Google Scholar