I was now fortunately in a position to compare the dimensions, ground-plan, and architectural fragments which were strewn about, with those which distinguish the synagogues already discovered, in regard to whose original character there can be no doubt, as the Hebrew inscriptions and sacred Jewish symbols carved on the lintels prove it. The building measured forty-five feet by thirty-three, which is exactly the measurement of the small synagogue at Kefr-Birim. The columns were exactly of the same diameter. The floor was depressed, and reached by a descent of two steps, which were carried around the building in benches or seats each a foot high, the face of the upper one ornamented by a thin scroll of floral tracery. These features occur in the synagogue at Irbid. There was a single large stone cut into the shape of an arch, which had evidently been placed on the lintel of the principal entrance, like the one which stands to this day over the doorway of the great synagogue at Kefr-Birim. The niches, with the great scallop-shell pattern which distinguishes them, almost exactly resemble those of the synagogue of Kerazeh or Chorazin; while the cornice, which was extremely florid, and not unlike what in modern parlance is called “the egg-and-dart pattern,” though differing in some respects from the cornices hitherto observed, was evidently of the same school of design. The capitals were two feet three inches high, and Corinthian, in the same style and of the same dimensions as those of the small synagogue of Kefr-Birim, and there was the upper fragment of two semi-attached fluted columns, with Doric capitals, the ditto of which is to be found at Irbid. The two columns in situ exactly answer in position those of several of the synagogues, and though the position of the door, which was in the centre of the western wall, was somewhat unusual, this was accounted for by the fact that the building had been excavated from the hillside, so that the top of the east wall, nine feet of which was still standing, was level with the surface of the slope of the hill.
The only convenient entrance was in the wall of the side immediately opposite to it. The name of this most interesting locality was ed-Dikkeh, a spot hitherto unvisited by any traveller. Indeed, if it had been visited, it would have been passed unnoticed, for its antiquarian treasures have only been revealed for the first time a few months ago. The word ed-Dikkeh means “platform,” a name, considering its position, not inappropriate; but I have not been able to identify it with any Biblical site.