The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria's Holy Places

First published in 1865. - Porter spent 10 years in Syria and travelled extensively. Very popular description of the massive buildings to be found in Bashan and an account of his theory explaining their construction. Porter believed that the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, before its occupation by the Jewish tribes, had constructed these buildings.-Print ed.

“BASHAN is the land of sacred romance. From the remotest historic period down to our own day there has ever been something of mystery and of strange wild interest connected with that old kingdom. In the memorable raid of the Arab chiefs of Mesopotamia into Eastern and Central Palestine, we read that the “Rephaim in Ashteroth-Kamaim” bore the first brunt of the onset. The Rephaim,—that is, “the giants,” for such is the meaning of the name,—men of stature, beside whom the Jewish spies said long afterwards that they were as grasshoppers (Num. xiii. 33). These were the aboriginal inhabitants of Bashan, and probably of the greater part of Canaan. Most of them died out, or were exterminated at a very early period; but a few remarkable specimens of the race—such as Goliath, and Sippai, and Lahmi (1 Chron., xx.)—were the terror of the Israelites, and the champions of their foes, as late as the time of David;—and, strange to say, traditionary memorials of these primeval giants exist even, now in almost every section of Palestine, in the form of graves of enormous dimensions,—as the grave of Abel, near Damascus, thirty feet long; that of Seth, in Anti-Lebanon, about the same size; and that of Noah, in Lebanon, which measures no less than seventy yards!”-Introduction.