Faithful readers will know I spent a month last fall trekking over archaeological sites in Israel and Jordan. Apparently I was not the first. Here is the estimable Sir John Mandeville, Kt., the granddaddy of all travel writers. “And I, John Mandeville, Knight, left my country and crossed the sea in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1332,” he reports (in the Penguin translation of C.W.R.D. Moseley). It seems I was following in his footsteps:
In the marches of Galilee, among the mountains, was the Ark of God taken. On the other side is the hill of Endor in Hermon. … Five miles from Naym is the city of Iesrael [Jezreel], also called Zaraym. Iesabel [Jezebel] the wicked queen was of that city; she had Naboth slain unrighteously for his vineyard. A little way from this city is the field of Mageddo [the plain of Megiddo], where the King of Samaria slew Josias the King of Judah, who was afterwards carried to Mount Sion and buried there. A mile from Jezreel are the hills of Gilboa, where King Saul, his son Jonathan and a great number of the Children of Israel were killed. For this reason King David cursed those hills. A mile to the east is a city called Citople [Scythopolis], or Bethsaym [Bethshan]. The Philistines hung the head of King Saul on the walls of that city.
--The Travels of Sir John Mandeville 94
Penguin Paperback ed. (C.W.R.D. Moseley, trans. 1983)
Unlike some parts of the Travels, which are pretty clearly pure fantasy, the incidental detail here suggests that “Sir John” may actually have seen the sites he describes here.
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