Palestine Exploration Fund
Its founders established the fund "for the purpose of investigating the Archaeology, Geography, manners, customs and culture, Geology and Natural History of the Holy Land".
William Thomson, the Archbishop of York, publicly read the original prospectus at this meeting; [O]ur 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.
Warren and his team improved the topography of Jerusalem and discovered the ancient water systems that lay beneath this city.
[10] A 2013 publication, The Walls of the Temple Mount, provides more specifics about Warren's work, as summarized in a book review:[11] "... he concentrated on excavating shafts down beneath the ground to the level of the lower parts of the external Temple Mount walls, recording the different types of stonework he encountered at different levels and other features, such as Robinson's Arch on the western side and the Herodian street below it.
"In 1875, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a prominent social reformer, told the Annual General Meeting of the PEF that "We have there a land teeming with fertility and rich in history, but almost without an inhabitant – a country without a people, and look!
And, he added: "But let it return into the hands of the Israelites..."[12] In 1878, the Treasurer's statement listed over 130 local associations of the PEF in the United Kingdom (including Ireland).
Its chapters and persons mentioned include the following: In his opening address (p.8), Archbishop Thomson laid down three basic principles for the Society: Regarding the latter, great emphasis was placed upon the nomenclature "Holy Land", so the notion of religion could never have been far away.
)[citation needed] Elsewhere the following activities have been reported: The Palestine Exploration Fund was also involved in the foundation of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem in 1919.
[14] Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women were frequently employed by the Fund to carry baskets of soil from the excavations to the dump.
Most of the men slept at camp, "digging little shallow graves for a bed", but "the women and girls had the long walk both before and after work.
Subsequent directors only referred to the women in their employ as anonymous labourers, sometimes complaining that they brought too much gossip—though in Bliss' journals, he recounts more familial and romantic tension that caused trouble on site among the men.
In partnership with the British Museum Department of Middle East, the Palestine Exploration Fund hosts free lectures that reflect the diverse interests of their membership.
Items on display include artefacts from excavations by Charles Warren, Sir William Flinders Petrie, Frederick Jones Bliss, and John Crowfoot.
Macalister at Gezer (1902–06), Duncan Mackenzie's excavations at Ain Shems-Beth Shemesh in 1910–1912, C. L. Woolley and T. E. Lawrence on the Wilderness of Zin Survey (1913–14), and many others.
[23] In addition to these items, the PEF also maintains a collection of photographs of expeditions, coins, natural history, models, and historic forgeries.
The journal of the PEF devoted to the study of the history, archaeology and geography of the Levant has appeared under two successive titles: For more see below under Further reading.
