Palestine Exploration Fund

Rock used by the PEF to mark the level of the Dead Sea in the beginning of the 20th century

The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society, it is often simply known as the PEF. Founded to carry out surveys of the topography and ethnography of Palestine. The fund was launched with the assets of £300 with a remit that fell somewhere between an expeditionary survey and military intelligence gathering.^[1] Whose members sent back reports on the need to salvage and modernise Palestine.^[2]

History

The PEF was founded on 22 June 1865 by a group of Biblical archaeologists and clergymen.^[3] The most notable of these were the Dean of Westminster Abbey, Arthur P. Stanley, and Sir George Grove (who also founded the Royal College of Music, and was responsible for Grove's Dictionary of Music). It was established "for the purpose of investigating the Archaeology, Geography, manners, customs and culture, Geology and Natural History of the Holy Land."^[4] It had a complex relationship with Officers of the Royal Engineers.^[3]

The first preliminary meeting of the Society of the Palestine Exploration Fund was held in the Jerusalem Chamber of the Palace of Westminister. The original prospectus for the Palestine Exploration Fund was read out by Archbishop Thompson at the first organisational meeting;

“our object is strictly an inductive inquiry. We are not to be a religious society; we are not about to launch controversy; we are about to apply the rules of science, which are so well understood by us in our branches, to an investigation into the facts concerning the Holy Land. "No country should be of so much interest to us as that in which the documents of our Faith were written, and the momentous events they describe enacted. At the same time no country more urgently requires illustration ... Even to a casual traveller in the Holy Land the Bible becomes, in its form, and therefore to some extent in its substance, a new book. Much would be gained by ...bringing to light the remains of so many races and generations which must lie concealed under the accumulation of rubbish and ruins on which those villages stand ..."^[4][1]

The PEF conducted many early excavations of biblical and post biblical sites around the Levant, as well as studies involving natural history, anthropology, history and geography.

Among other noteworthy individuals associated with the fund were:

• Charles Warren,
• Horatio Kitchener,
• Edward Henry Palmer,
• George Grove,
• T. E. Lawrence,
• Kathleen Kenyon,
• Arthur Stanley
• Conrad Schick.

Early Projects undertaken

• Excavations in Jerusalem (1867 - 1870): conducted by Charles Warren and Henry Birtles
• The Survey of Western Palestine (1871 - 1878); undertaken by Claude R. Conder and Horatio H. Kitchener (among others)
• The Ordnance Survey of Sinai (1872) undertaken by E. Ii. Palmer, M.A.
• Excavations at Tell el-Hesi (1890 - 1893); under the direction of Sir William Flinders Petrie, and Frederick J. Bliss
• The Wilderness of Zin Archaeological Survey (1913 -1914); conducted by Sir Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence.

The PEF Today

Today the fund is based in Marylebone, London, and holds regular events and lectures as well as providing for an annual grant for various projects. Their offices also house collections of photographs, pictures, maps and various antiquities.

See also

• Syro-Palestinian archaeology
• Israel

References

External links

• Palestine Exploration Fund - official web site
• The PEF map published in 1880
• The PEF usage differs from Biblical usage: Palestine is a name which in the Authorized Version is applied only to Philistia, and not to the rest of the country at all. As such it is used by Milton, when he speaks of " that twice battered God of Palestine." The country of Palestine is spoken of in the Bible by more than one name. It is called the Land of Canaan, as opposed to the Land of Gilead, lying on the opposite side of the river Jordan. Our Work in Palestine, PEF, 1877.
• Definition, from PEF website - The term 'Palestine' is a widely-attested Western and Near Eastern conventional name for the region that includes contemporary Israel, the Israeli-occupied territories, part of Jordan, and some of both Lebanon and Syria. Its traditional area runs from Sidon on the coast, to Damascus inland, southwards to the Gulf of Aqaba, and then north-west to Raphia. The Sinai Desert is usually considered a separate geographical zone to the south. 'Palestine' is first attested in extant literature in the 5th cent. BC, when it appears in the Histories of Herodotus (Hist. 2: 104, etc.) as Palaistinê. It seems to have its origins in the root form p-l-s-t , denoting the land of the Philistines, though it has generally in Western usage referred to a much wider region than coastal Philistia, including the area that is known in Biblical, Rabbinic and Samaritan literature as the Land of Israel (Eretz-Yisra'el) or ancient Canaan. The term 'Palestine' has over many centuries retained its relevance as an apolitical geographical term regardless of the nation-states and administrative entities that have existed in this region. It has no political associations when used by the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Bibliography

• Shehadeh, Raja (2007), Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, Scribner, ISBN 9781416569964, 1416569969 

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