Stamp text: "Seen. Permit-Office. Jerusalem. Date 4-6-20. Permit Officer []."
Leaving Damascus, the capital of the Arab State, Breasted and his team returned to areas under British control. Instability had only increased, as Breasted noted: "Hanging from a telegraph pole beside railway line, we saw swaying in the wind the body of one of the Bedouin who had been cutting the Haifa-Damascus line! He had shot two Jews and resisting arrest, he had been properly quieted by the Indians [i.e., British soldiers from India] sent to bring him in." The instability was so great that Breasted made only one attempt to visit a site in Palestine—the site of Megiddo that had been a focus of his own research. A combination of bad roads, mechanical breakdowns, and drivers unfamiliar with the way kept him from reaching the site itself.
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