Principal surveyor for the Survey of Western Palestine (1871-1877). Conder, who as a colonel was to spend much of his career attached to the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1870, having distinguished himself in surveying and drawing. After a two-year professional course at tlie School of Military Engineering at Chatham, his services were requested by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEE) for the Survey of Western Palestine, which he joined, as officer in charge, in 1872. Conder also earned honorary Doctor of Civil Law and Doctor of Laws degrees (the latter from Edinburgh, 1891).
The survey’s ambitiously wide-ranging undertaking embraced not only tire topographical survey itself, but also the recording and investigation of all potential biblical sites, geology, and natural history. To all this, Conder brought his graphical skills and undoubted learning, but these were not matched by his ability to interpret the evidence correctly and many of his identifications were subsequently disproven. Lilte Charles Warren before him, Conder lacked the technical skills which characterized excavations of the last decade of the nineteenth century and beyond. His outstanding contribution to the archaeology of Palestine lay in his major share of the production of the twenty-six-sheet map of western Palestine which tlte PEE published at a scale of 1:63,360 in 1880. This project is acloiowledged to have contributed more to the understanding of the archaeology and ancient history of Palestine than any other undertaking in the nineteenth century. Conder’s popular account of the survey, Tent Work in Palestine, first published in London in 1878, had achieved six editions by 1895.
Apart from the maps, the most important publication to result from tlie survey was The eight-volume Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology (1881-1885), of which Conder was a principal author and which includes the earliest site-by-site reconnaissance of Palestine. Misinterpretations are substantially compensated for by tire richness of meticulous detail Conder recorded. Similarly, his unfinished Survey of Eastern Palestine (1881) is notable for tire recording and drawing, in the published maps and Memoirs, (London, 1889), of the unusually large number of dolmens in that region. In addition to his prolific contributions over tlrirty-five years to the PEE Quarterly Statement, Conder was the author of fifteen major books on subjects related to the ancient Near East.
[5(32 also Palestine Exploration Fund; and the biography of Warren.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
No full biography of Conder has been published, but a brief resume of
His life is given in tlie Dictionary of National Biography, supp. vol. i,
Pp. 401-403 (Oxford, 1912). Informadon on Conder’s life and work
Is available in the Archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund, London.
Conder, Claude R. Tmi Work in Palestine. London, 1878.
Conder, Claude R., and H. H. Kitchener. The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs oj the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. 8 vols. and set of maps. London, 1881-1885.
Conder, Claude R. The Sinvey of Eastern Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, and Archaeology. London, 1889,
Watson, Charles M. “Memoir of Colonel C. R. Conder.” Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund (April 1910): 93-96.
Yolande Hodson
World History
