i. 7, 3, where he states that Pompey found it a difficult business to

fill it up. This valley commences to the north of the city wall, passes down west of the Church of St Anne, and runs into the Kedron, past the Sanctuary wall, at a distance of 145 feet south of the north-east angle. The great reservoir, called the _Birket Israil_, which extends along the northern side of the Sanctuary for 360 feet, lies across this valley. It is 126 feet wide and 80 feet deep. The west wall of the reservoir is rock, and the east wall is partly rock and partly masonry; while the south wall of the pool is at the same time the north wall of the Sanctuary.

The excavations on all sides of the Sanctuary, and the examination of the cisterns within the enclosure, show that Mount Moriah was originally somewhat pear-shaped in contour, the rock shelving off on all sides from the summit, which is now under the Dome of the Rock. At the north-western corner, however, the rock was high, and there was a narrow neck which joined this hill to Bezetha and made it a sort of peninsula in form. This neck has been artificially cut through.

_The Tunnels from the Virgin’s Fountain._--From the Virgin’s Fountain, about 320 yards south of the Triple Gate, and on the eastern side of Ophel, a tunnel has been excavated through the hill to the Pool of Siloam. The distance between these two places is not much more than 300 yards, but the tunnel winds about and its length is 1708 feet (or 569 yards). Robinson and others had been through it, and found it difficult to traverse, for it is necessary to go part of the way crawling on hands and feet. Colonel Warren, accompanied by Serjeant Birtles and a fellah, patiently explored it, taking compass bearings at every turn, and giving us at last an accurate plan of it. It was no easy work crawling in three or four inches of water, recording observations with pencil and paper, and carrying candles at the same time. Nor was the business unattended with danger, for the flow of water being intermittent, and an unexpected flow occurring while they were in the tunnel, it proved very difficult to keep their mouths above water.

An inscription within this tunnel escaped the notice of all explorers until lately, and was not detected even by Warren.

The present Pool of Siloam measures about 55 feet, north and south by 18 feet east and west, and is about 20 feet deep. At the north end an archway, 5 feet wide, appears, leading to a small vault, 12 feet long, in which is a descent from the level of the top of the pool to the level of the channel supplying it. In the year 1880 one of the pupils of Herr Conrad Schick, the architect of the Church Missionary Society, while climbing down fell into the water, and on rising to the surface noticed the appearance of letters on the wall of the rock. The rock had been smoothed so as to form a tablet about 27 inches square, which contains six lines of writing on its lower portion. The inscription is about 5 yards from the mouth of the channel, and is on the right hand of an explorer entering from the Siloam end. It could hardly be read at first, because a deposit of lime had formed over it. Dr Guthe removed this by washing the tablet with a weak solution of hydrochloric acid. Major Conder, with the aid of Lieutenant Mantell, expended much labour and patience in taking a “squeeze,” sitting for three or four hours cramped up in the water in order to obtain a perfect copy, and repeating the experience in order to verify every letter. Conder’s squeezes were the basis of the earliest correct representation published in Europe. Professor Sayce, who had already visited the tunnel and made a provisional translation of the text, was now enabled to improve it; and the following is the translation:--

“1. (Behold the) excavation! Now this is the history of the excavation. While the excavators were still lifting up

“2. The pick, each towards his neighbour, and while there were yet three cubits to (excavate, there was heard) the voice of one man

“3. Calling to his neighbour, for there was an _excess_ (?) in the rock on the right hand (and on the left?). And after that on the day

“4. Of excavating the excavators had struck pick against pick, one against another,

“5. The waters flowed from the spring to the pool for a distance of 1200 cubits. And (part)

“6. Of a cubit was the height of the rock over the head of the excavators.”[23]

The meeting of the two parties of excavators near the middle of the tunnel accords with Warren’s discovery of two false cuttings, one on either side, at a distance of 900 feet from the Siloam end.

The inscription is in ancient characters, very much resembling those on the Moabite Stone, but possessing certain peculiarities. It is probably the oldest bit of Hebrew writing on stone that we possess, and opens out a new chapter in the history of the alphabet. It gives the first monumental evidence of the condition of civilisation among the Hebrews in the days of their kings; and altogether it is the most important discovery of the kind since the finding of the Moabite Stone.

Major Conder says that the general impression resulting from an examination of the conduit is that it was the work of a people whose knowledge of engineering was rudimentary. It is well known that in mining it is very difficult to induce the excavator to keep in a truly straight line, the tendency being to diverge very rapidly to one side. It is possible that this is the real reason of the crooked run of the canal; but another reason may have been the comparative hardness of the strata met in mining at a uniform level through a hill, with beds having a considerable dip. It will, however, be observed, that, after passing the shaft, the direction of the tunnel changes to a line more truly directed on the Virgin’s Fountain. The excavators from the Siloam end became aware, probably by the impossibility of seeing a light at the head of the mine, when standing at the mouth of the tunnel, that they were not going straight, and the only means they had of correcting the error consisted in making a shaft up to the surface to see where they had got to. After ascertaining this they went straight for about 140 feet, and then diverged gradually to the left; but their general direction, nevertheless, agrees roughly with that of the rock contour, which may be due to following a particular seam of rock.

It is recognised by Colonel Warren that the tunnel running southward to the Pool of Siloam was not the first tunnel excavated in connection with the Virgin’s Fountain. A channel had previously been made from the Virgin’s Fountain due west, for a distance of 67 feet, into the heart of the hill, and there communicated by a shaft and corridors with the surface. When the longer tunnel came to be made the engineers wisely availed themselves of the channel already existing, and began their new excavation at a distance of 50 feet from the Virgin’s Fount. The priority of the channel running due west to the shaft appears to be undoubted; and it is clear that whatever mistakes of direction might be made by unscientific engineers when they had got some distance into the hill, they never would _begin_ by working due west from the Virgin’s Fount when their object was to make a channel south-south-west to Siloam Pool.

At the bottom of the shaft, which is 67 feet due west, Warren found the rock scooped out into a basin 3 feet deep, for the water to lie in, and at the top of the shaft an iron ring to which the rope of the bucket could be tied. The shaft was 40 feet in height, and then the space began to open out westward into a great cavern, there being a sloping ascent at an angle of 45°, covered with loose stones of about a foot cube. Warren says it was ticklish work ascending, for the stones all seemed longing to be off, and one starting would have sent the mass rolling, himself with it, on top of the serjeant, all to form a mash at the bottom of the shaft. After ascending about 30 feet they got on to a landing. The cave now opened out to south-west and north-west. Following it in the latter direction they arrived at a passage 40 feet long, at the far end of which was a rough wall. Creeping through a hole in this they ascended a steep staircase for 50 feet, passed another wall, and found themselves in a vaulted chamber. The exit at last was on the Hill of Ophel, a few feet from the ridge, and almost certainly, some writers maintain, within the ancient walls. The object of the cuttings was to get a supply of water from within; and perhaps the piles of loose stones which were found in the long passage were intended to be thrown down the shaft if an enemy should attempt to ascend it. In the passage were found three glass lamps of curious construction, placed at intervals as if to light the way; and in the vaulted chamber a little pile of charcoal as if for cooking, one of these lamps, a cooking dish glazed inside, for heating food, and a jar for water. Evidently the place had been used as a refuge.

A similar arrangement for closing the entrance to a spring, and using a secret passage from the hill above, has lately been discovered at _El Jib_ (ancient Gibeon),[24] and only a few years ago at ’_Amman_ (Rabbath Ammon). In connection with the latter, Conder quotes Polybius to the effect that when Antiochus the Great besieged the forces of Ptolemy Philopater, at _Amman_, in 218 B.C., the garrison held out until a prisoner revealed a secret communication with a water supply outside the walls.

_Difficulties of the Work._--It is impossible to read the detailed accounts of Warren’s work at Jerusalem without feeling an admiration for the courage and patience of the explorers, and without being sometimes amused at the ludicrous predicaments into which they occasionally got. They have been jammed in aqueducts, wedged in chasms, and walled up behind falling heaps of _debris_. They have had to go down ladders too short for reascending, to squeeze down apertures that have taken the skin off the shoulders, and have been half drowned in cisterns at the bottom. In the Tyropœon the soil is so soaked with sewage that it poisons the flesh wherever it touches a scratch. In the Kedron Valley the soil is so loose that it rushes into the galleries, almost flowing like a fluid, and drives the men out. In the Siloam tunnel they more than once ran the risk of being drowned. In the Ophel shaft a loose stone, weighing eight cwt., threatened momentarily to fall upon their heads. Once when the Arab labourers had gone down a shaft, where the ancient bed of the Tyropœon runs out, 90 feet from the south-west angle, they had descended 79 feet when they came upon a stone slab. They began breaking it up with a hammer, when presently the pieces fell in, the hammer disappeared, and the men, in terror lest they should fall into unknown depths, rushed to the surface, sought out the serjeant, and assured him that they had found the bottomless pit! The awful depth proved to be just 6 feet more to the solid rock!

Warren had often to dig in people’s gardens, or to mine under their houses, or sink shafts near to their sacred places, and it required much tact to deal with the prejudices of the Mohammedans, and to satisfy all claims for compensation. In the neighbourhood of Jerusalem a piece of garden ground may belong to one man, be rented by another, while a dozen people claim an interest in the crops that grow upon it. Sometimes Warren’s labourers have been dragged before the judges and threatened with imprisonment, or told that they shall be sent to do forced labour on the Jaffa Road. When Warren was working at the Virgin’s Fountain there was much commotion among the people of Siloam. Work was to be resumed in the morning; but one cantankerous sheikh, taking it into his head that Englishmen had no business out of their own country, effectually stayed proceedings by sending a bevy of damsels to the Fount to wash. On one occasion a Turkish officer of Engineers, dressed in full uniform, approached, in no friendly spirit, to examine one of the shafts. If he had chosen to give an adverse report the work would have been stopped. He knew that Warren was in command, but he marched magnificently past him without deigning to notice him, and was going straight for the head of the shaft. But Warren passed on rapidly before him, threw over the ladder which some lady visitors had been using, blew out the light, and descended by a rope. The Turk, hearing a crash, and seeing Warren disappear in the darkness, was afraid that something terrible had occurred, which he did not wish to be responsible for, and lost no time in turning his steps away. But, after all, when we consider that the Sanctuary at Jerusalem is as sacred to the Mohammedans as the precincts of Westminster Abbey to ourselves, it is marvellous how much Sir Charles Warren succeeded in effecting, and with how little friction he did it.

[_Authorities and Sources_:--“Quarterly Statements of P. E. Fund.” “Recovery of Jerusalem.” Sir C. Warren. “Tent Work in Palestine.” Major Conder.]

4. _Jerusalem as it was._

_The Hills and Valleys._--Sir Charles Warren was the first to point out the necessity of ascertaining the depth of the rock below the present surface, in as many places as possible, and of referring all the measurements to one fixed datum, the level of the sea. In the study of the ancient topography the original appearance of the ground is the first consideration, for although a certain amount of soil may always have existed, still the ancient surface must have conformed far more closely to that of the rock than does the present.

To this work very great attention has been given, first by Warren himself, in his exploration of numerous tanks and sinking of scores of shafts; next by Herr Schick, who, in his professional capacity of architect, has measured the position when sinking foundations for houses in every quarter of Jerusalem. Contours had also been given in the Ordnance Survey conducted by Sir C. Wilson in 1864. At length Conder was able to take all the data and send home a plan of rock levels for the entire city. From this he also prepared a reduced shaded sketch of the original rock site of the town. The sketch is here reproduced, and by the help of it the reader will find it comparatively easy to understand Josephus’s description, as well as the reconstruction of the ancient city which will be attempted in this section.

Josephus says--“The city of Jerusalem was fortified with three walls, on such parts as were not encompassed with unpassable valleys, for in such places it had but one wall. The city was built upon two hills, which are opposite to one another, and have a valley to divide them asunder, at which valley the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end. Of these hills that which contains the Upper City is much higher and in length more direct. Accordingly it was called the Citadel (φρούριον) by King David, but it is by us called the Upper Market Place. But the other hill, which was called Akra, and sustains the Lower City, is curved on both sides (ἀμφίκυρτος).[25] Over against this was a third hill, but naturally lower than Akra, and parted formerly from the other by a broad valley. However, in those times when the Maccabees reigned, they filled up that valley with earth, and had a mind to join the city to the temple. They then took off part of the height of Akra, and reduced it to be of less elevation than it was before, that the temple might be superior to it. Now the Tyropœon Valley, as it was called, and was that which we told you before distinguished the hill of the Upper City from that of the Lower, extended as far as Siloam.” (Wars, v. 4, 1.)

In the next section Josephus tells us that as the city grew more populous it crept beyond its old limits, “and those parts of it that stood northward of the temple and joined that hill to the city, made it considerably larger, and occasioned that hill, which is in number the fourth, and is called _Bezetha_ (or New City), to be inhabited also. It lies over against the Tower of Antonia, but is divided from it by a deep valley, which was dug on purpose, and that in order to hinder the foundations of the Tower of Antonia from joining to this hill.”

When we read these descriptions in the light of our plan, things become tolerably plain. The south-western hill was the Upper City--a large flat-topped hill surrounded with deep valleys, and having a level of about 2550 to 2500 feet above the sea. The eastern hill is known to be the Temple Hill, which is number three in Josephus’s description. Bezetha (number four) is distinctly described as the hill north of the Temple Hill, and only divided from it at one point by an artificial cutting. The explorers have found this cutting, carried through a narrow neck of high ground, at the north-western corner of the Haram. Thus there is no room to question that “the second hill, which was called Akra and sustained the Lower City” is the hill projecting down from the north-west like a promontory, gibbous in its form. The Upper City was divided from Akra “by a broad valley,” now partly filled up, which was called the Tyropœon Valley, and beginning near the Jaffa Gate, “extended as far as Siloam Fountain.” The summit of Akra is not more than 2480 feet above sea level--considerably lower than the Upper City--and looks lower than it is, because the whole site of Jerusalem is tilted up from the west like an inclined plane, and because the valleys about the Upper City are deeper. Josephus says the Akra hill used to be higher, and sustained the Macedonian fortress called the Akra, which dominated the Temple. Being so near and so high, it enabled the garrison to look down into the Temple courts. They used also to run out and molest the Jews who were passing from the Upper City into the Temple by the western gate (Joseph. Ant. xii. 9, 3; 1 Macc. i. 36; and Warren in “Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology,” vii. 314).

The Macedonian fortress was a thorn in the side of Jerusalem until Simon Maccabæus captured it and demolished it. At the same time he cut down the top of the hill itself; and perhaps it was with the material so obtained that he filled up the valley between Akra and the Temple. By the filling up of this valley, which it is convenient to call the Asmonean Valley, the two hills were joined together; and it would not be surprising if the terms “Akra” and “Lower City” soon after began to have an extended meaning, and to embrace all the buildings on both the hills which were now united into one.

Having now a definite conception of the original lie of the ground, and knowing the four hills of Jerusalem by name and location, we can proceed to plant a few of the ancient buildings in their proper places.

_The Temple of Solomon._--We have already seen reason for placing the Temple over the very summit of Moriah; but we must now make our reasons quite conclusive, and also show the limits of the Temple courts.

In the first place the summit of the mountain is the natural position for the Temple, rather than any position on the slope. The rock called the Sakhrah and the Foundation-stone of the World has been sacred from time immemorial. It seems to be referred to in Isaiah xxviii. 16--“Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner (stone), of sure foundation.” Ezekiel also, with Josephus and the Talmud, all agree in placing the temple on the summit of the mountain (Ezek. xliii. 12).

As remarked by Dr Chaplin,[26] the question whether the “stone of foundation” was a portion of the solid rock or a movable stone is one of considerable interest in connection with the topography of the Temple. If the former, it will be easy to fix with all but absolute certainty its position, and from it as a starting-point, to lay down the sites of the temple, altar, and courts with no more uncertainty than the uncertain value of the cubit renders inevitable. The use of the word _Eben_ would imply that it was a movable stone, but its (supposed) history, as given by the Rabbis, quite removes it from the category of ordinary stones, and represents it as the centre or nucleus from which the world was founded. The _Toldoth Yesu_ represents it as a movable stone, and states that King David, when digging the foundation of the temple, found it “over the mouth of the abyss” with THE NAME engraved upon it, and that he brought it up and placed it in the Holy of Holies. “On the whole” (says Dr Chaplin) “it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the stone which the Rabbis write about was a portion of rock projecting three finger-breadths upwards from the floor of the Holy of Holies, covering a cavity which was regarded as the mouth of the abyss, reverenced as the centre and foundation of the world, and having the ineffable name of God inscribed upon it.”

The statements made in the Talmud and repeated over and over again with great accuracy by Rabbinic writers, supply us with the following precise information: (1) The stone of foundation (in other words, the solid rock) was the highest point within the Holy of Holies, projecting slightly above the floor, and from it the rock sloped downwards on all sides. (2) A “solid and closed foundation,” 6 cubits high, was made all round the house in order to raise the floor to (within three finger-breadths of) its summit. On the eastern side this solid foundation was covered by steps leading down to the court, 22 cubits below the summit on that side. We must agree with Dr Chaplin that the summit of the Sakhrah under the great Dome of the Rock is the only spot in the whole enclosure which answers to these data.

The Holy House, with its courts, was not in the centre of the enclosure, but had a position north-west of the centre. The altar court was at a lower level than the Holy House; and lower still, by successive descents, were the court of Israel, the court of the women, and the court of the Gentiles. The courts being in terraces one above another, and the Holy House at the summit, the temple was a far more conspicuous object than is the Dome of the Rock at the present day.

The Talmud describes the Temple area as 500 cubits square. The prophet Ezekiel says “it had a wall round about, the length five hundred and the breadth five hundred, to make a separation between that which was holy and that which was common” (xlii. 20). Then we are told by Maimonides, the learned Jewish writer, that “the men who built the second temple, when they built it in the days of Ezra, they built it like Solomon’s, and in some things according to the explanation in Ezekiel.”

Taking then the centre of the Sakhrah as the centre of the Holy of Holies, and allowing ourselves to be guided by the Talmud measurements, which are given with great exactitude, we shall not be far wrong if we draw the boundaries as follows:--On the north, the northern limit of the present platform, the line of which if continued eastward would cut the east wall of the Haram a little north of the Golden Gate. The platform is raised 12 feet above the present general surface of the Haram enclosure. One day when the rain had loosened a stone near the north-eastern corner of the platform and revealed the existence of vaults, Warren went down and took measurements; and it appears that the northern end of the platform consists of rock which has been scarped away perpendicularly. On the south the boundary would come to within a few feet of the entrance of El Aksa mosque, and would fall short of the south wall of the Haram by 300 feet. On the east and west the boundaries would fall a little way within the present walls of the Haram. We may reasonably conclude that the present east and west walls of the Haram either represent walls of the Temple enclosure, or else were built a little without them, as retaining walls for gradually accumulating _debris_.

When the Temple of Solomon was destroyed, with all the buildings that surrounded it, the _debris_ would be piled up in the courts. Probably it would never be thought worth while to remove it all from the lower courts, but rather to cover it over and lay a neat pavement on the surface. Spaces and corners where the rubbish was less gathered would be filled in or built up to complete the levelling; and as the rubbish increased, both within and without the walls, after successive sieges, the walls themselves were further built up, to keep them of sufficient height. It never was intended in the first instance, to build walls up from the foundation and make them 150 feet high. By successive changes, the result of calamities as much as the fruit of improvement, the terraced mountain grew to be an elevated plateau, such as the Haram enclosure is at the present day. Josephus says that when Herod rebuilt the Temple he extended the area of the courts and made it twice as large as it was before. With that, however, we need not concern ourselves while we are seeking to restore the city of Old Testament times.

_Solomon’s Palace_ we find reasons for placing south of Solomon’s Temple, on the slope of the terraced mountain, with its south-eastern angle coinciding with the present south-eastern corner of the Haram. Those deep-buried stones with the Phœnician masons’ marks upon them may be the very foundation stones of the palace. The palace was a great work, and occupied thirteen years in building. It was necessary to build up at this corner, but as soon as a level was reached that permitted the work to be carried through from east to west, the six-feet course was laid as the true base for the more splendid superstructure. This six-feet course extends for 600 feet westward from the south-east angle, and gives us the limit in that direction. Northward we are limited by the courts of the temple to 300 feet. This, then, is where Sir Charles Warren places Solomon’s palace, and these are the dimensions he assigns to it. Mr James Fergusson had already been led, from architectural reasons, to consider it an oblong of 550 feet by 300. The level of the six-feet course is 60 feet below the summit of the mountain. A patient examination of the wall led Warren to the conclusion that all below this great course is old work, and that the walls of the Haram generally correspond to the description of Josephus, in whose day the great wall of Solomon still existed.

The Temple and the palace being thus located, there is left, beyond the west end of the palace, a plot of ground, 300 feet square, not enclosed at the time we are speaking of, although at the present day it forms the south-western corner of the Sanctuary and has the mosque El Aksa covering it. But the great depression of the Tyropœon Valley falls just there, and it would not be raised and enclosed until a late day. Warren says, in the “Recovery of Jerusalem”: “Our researches show that the portion of the wall to the west of the Double Gate is of a different construction to, and more recent than that to the east. This is a matter of very great importance, and, combined with other results, appears to show the impossibility of the Temple having existed at the south-west angle, as restored by Mr Fergusson and others. The only solution of the question I can see, is by supposing the portion to the east of the Double Gate to have formed the south wall of Solomon’s palace, and that to the west to have been added by Herod when he enlarged the courts of the Temple.”

Before this addition was made the south wall was but 600 feet in length. The Triple Gate stood in the middle of it, and as we have seen, it is exactly on the ridge of the hill. The sill is 38 feet below the present level of the Sanctuary, and from the gate three avenues ascend gently to the Sanctuary floor. May they not represent “the way by which Solomon went up to the House of the Lord”?

_The Wall of Ophel_, as already described, has been discovered by Warren, and abuts against the south-eastern angle of what we are now prepared to regard as Solomon’s palace.

_The Tower of Antonia._--Josephus tells us that the tower which Herod built and named in honour of Antony stood on a rock 50 cubits high, at the north-west corner of the Temple. The rock was separated from Bezetha by a cutting made on purpose, yet the tower was so near to Bezetha that it adjoined the New City. At the same time it was so near to the Temple that the south-eastern turret overlooked the Temple courts, while passages from the tower led to the west and north cloisters. This description is precise enough. As Conder says, there is just such a rock fortress in the north-west part of the Haram. It is a great scarp, with vertical faces on the south and north, standing up 40 feet above the interior court, and separated from the north-eastern hill of Jerusalem by a ditch 50 yards broad, in which are now the Twin Pools--the Bethesda of St. Jerome. This block of rock is “the top of the hill” spoken of by Josephus, and occupies a length of 100 yards along the course of the north wall of the Haram. No other such scarp exists in or near the enclosure of the High Sanctuary. Can we then hesitate to place Antonia here?

Herod, after all, only repaired and strengthened this tower, for it had been built by Hyrcanus and passed under the name of Baris before being renamed Antonia, and even Hyrcanus was not the first at this work (page 265).

[_Authorities and Sources_:--“Quarterly Statements of P. E. Fund.” “The Recovery of Jerusalem.” Sir C. Warren. “The Works of Josephus.”]

5. _The Walls and Gates of the City._

“Even stone walls,” says Mr Lewin, “cannot fail to awaken some degree of interest, when it is remembered that upon the result of the inquiry depends the question, Where was Calvary? and where the Holy Sepulchre?” If we desire to understand Old Testament events as well as those of the Gospels we shall take some interest in the question of the correct line of the walls. The walls were perambulated by Nehemiah’s two companies on the Thanksgiving Day; certain of the gates are mentioned by name in connection with events of the history; and our reading of the narrative will gain in vividness if we can follow the events like those acquainted with the ground.

_The First Wall, or Wall of the Upper City._--Josephus says there were three walls; but as the third or most northerly was not built until A.D. 43, we will leave it out of account for the present. We shall endeavour to fix the lines of the walls and the positions of the gates as they were in Nehemiah’s time, and then we shall have those of still earlier date, for Nehemiah only repaired walls and gates which had been thrown down, and did not build afresh.

Beginning at the remarkable neck of land near the present Jaffa Gate a wall ran eastward along the northern brow of the hill, and in the line of the Causeway, and ended at the west cloister of the Temple. This was the north wall of the Upper City. That city had a wall all round it; and on the west, south, and east the wall simply followed the brow of the hill. From the Jaffa Gate it ran southward (facing westward) along the brink of the Valley of Hinnom, by Bethso (the Hebrew term for Dung place) to the Gate of the Essenes. At the south-west corner of the hill an escarpment of the rock was noticed by Robinson; was further traced by Mr Maudslay, who in 1872 found there a tower, reached by rock-cut steps; and is clearly marked in Conder’s plan. From this corner the wall faced the south for a while, and then, according to Josephus, made a bend above Siloam; and this must have been, as Mr Lewin points out, a bend up the Tyropœon Valley, along the edge of the High Town (to the Causeway), and then back again along the edge of the Low Town on Ophel (until it joined the Wall of Ophel discovered by Warren). The wall from Siloam, we learn from Josephus, bending there, faced to the east at Solomon’s Pool, and holding on as far as the place called Ophla, joined the eastern cloister of the Temple.[27] The eastern cloister of the Temple--_i.e._, the south-eastern angle of the enclosure--was, in Josephus’s day, coincident with the south-east angle of Solomon’s palace of earlier time; and the city wall which joined it was the Wall of Ophel itself.

According to this description Solomon’s Pool was in the Tyropœon Valley, between the two walls of the High Town and the Low Town. Probably at a very early period many houses were built in this valley, and it became an intramural suburb. In view of war it would be deemed necessary to protect it; and for its defence the most obvious plan would be to build a dam or a wall athwart the valley. Such a work would greatly strengthen the city itself, by preventing all access up the valley, especially if the mound or wall was aided by a castle at the Ophel end of it. We shall see reason to believe that the dam and the castle were built and were called Millo and the House of Millo. The suburb thus became immured in the city, but continued to be called the Suburb; and we read that the west wall of the Temple enclosure had two gates leading to the Suburb (Josephus, “Antiquities” xv. 11, 5; 1 Chron. xxvi. 16, the gate Shallecheth).

The course of the first wall as thus described by Josephus does not appear to differ much from its course in Nehemiah’s time; and in all essentials it seems to be the wall of David’s day, preserved upon the old foundations. Josephus indeed states as much in the following passage:--“Now of these three walls, the old one was hard to be taken, both by reason of the valleys and of that hill on which it was built, and which was above them. But besides that great advantage as to the place where they were situated, it was also built very strong; because David and Solomon and the following kings were very zealous about this work.”

_The Second Wall._--The description of the second wall, given by Josephus, is short, and may be quoted entire: “It took its beginning from that gate which they called Gennath, which belonged to the first wall; it only encompassed the northern quarter of the city, and reached as far as the tower Antonia.”

The necessity for this wall arose as follows. Through the increase of the population a suburb had sprung up, not only in the upper reach of the Tyropœon Valley, but on the hill beyond it. On the spur of this hill, which projected toward the Temple, stood the Akra fortress, but north-west of the fortress the ground was high and open, and unprotected by any deep valley. To protect this suburb it was necessary to carry a wall across the saddleback, sweeping round from the corner of the High Town to the north-west corner of the eastern hill; and this was probably done as early as David’s day.

There is not now much difficulty in finding approximately the position of the gate Gennath, the starting point of this wall. We observe on Conder’s plan of the rock site that a narrow ridge runs north and south, immediately east of the Tower of David, and separates as a shed the broad head of the Tyropœon from the western valley. The Tyropœon deepens very suddenly, and any wall carried across it would of necessity be commanded by the ridge to the west of it. The only sensible course for the builders was to carry the wall along the ridge itself, on ground commanding all without it. Exactly along this ridge, at its western side, a wall was discovered in the year 1885, during the rebuilding of the Greek Bazaar. At a depth 15 feet below the present street Dr Merrill found two layers of stone, and at some points three, still in position; and the stones were of the same size and character as the largest of the stones in the Tower of David opposite. Broken Roman pottery was found in these excavations, and a stone ball, such as the Romans used in warfare. The discovery of these foundations enables us to lay down the second wall for a distance of 40 or 50 yards, with accuracy.[28] Thus we know where the wall began, and where it ended. Its intermediate course can only be ascertained by arguments of probability, and by mapping every bit of ancient wall uncovered in connection with building operations and the making of drains. Upon the true course of this wall depends the answer to the question whether the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was without the city or within. We are contented here to adopt the line of wall arrived at by Herr Conrad Schick, who has studied the question on the ground, who is acquainted with every bit of ancient wall that has come to light, and has a reason for every twist and turn and every gate and tower here represented. It will be seen by his plan that he does not stop at the Tower of Antonia, but continues his line of wall so as to defend the northern and eastern sides of the Temple. This is required by Nehemiah’s descriptions. But when Herod enlarged the Temple courts, if not before, these portions of the wall would be interfered with--the northern portion would be removed, the eastern portion had perhaps become buried--and so Josephus is silent about them.

With the course of the walls thus definitely marked out, it becomes possible to follow the descriptions in the Book of Nehemiah, and to identify the towers and gates and places there mentioned.

_Nehemiah’s Night Ride to Survey the Ruins._--Jerusalem had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s general, and although the Chaldeans entered by a breach on the north side, they afterwards burnt the palace and every great house, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem round about (2 Kings xxv. 4). Nehemiah returned from the captivity to rebuild the city of his fathers, and prudently decided to make first a quiet survey of the extent of the destruction.

In chapter ii. 13, we read, “I went out by night by the Valley Gate, even towards the dragon’s well, and to the Dung Gate.” This Valley Gate was at or near the Gennath Gate, at the head of the Tyropœon Valley, and at the same time close to the Valley of Hinnom. It could not be far from the present Jaffa Gate. The Dung Gate--Josephus’s “Bethso”--comes between the Jaffa Gate and the south-west corner of the city; a position also required by chap. iii. 13. “Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King’s Pool.” The Fountain Gate would be a convenient exit from the city to a path leading down to Siloam Pool; The King’s Pool (_el-Berekath_) was probably Solomon’s Pool, mentioned by Josephus as being by the east face of the old wall. In after times it would be called in Scripture the King’s Pool, because it was appropriated and used by Solomon’s successors, just as Solomon’s Palace is called the king’s house in Neh. iii. 25. This pool would be within the protected suburb. Nehemiah continues, “But there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass.” Why? Because here we have two walls in a narrow space, and the destruction of both of them had filled the valley with _debris_. “Then I went up by the brook (_nachal_, the Kedron) and viewed the wall: and I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned.”

_The Rebuilding of the Walls and Gates._--Nehemiah decides that the walls can be and shall be rebuilt; and he parcels out the work among forty-six of the principal people, who each have their retainers. The work is sacred, and is appropriately begun by the high priest, who naturally selects a spot near the Temple--the Sheep Gate of the city wall, which would seem to have been about midway between the north-eastern and north-western corners of the temple area of that time. The description of the repairs takes us westward, or to the left, and carries us all round the city to the same point again. “Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests, and they builded the Sheep Gate; they sanctified it, and set up the doors of it; even unto the tower of Hammeah[29] they sanctified it, unto the tower of Hananel.” These two towers, we may suppose, with Mr Lewin and Herr Schick, already occupied the site of the future Antonia. In fact they were parts of the Baris or Castle where Nehemiah himself intends to reside (Neh. ii. 8, where the Hebrew word is the _Birah_).

After these towers of the Baris the various gates and places come before us in the following order:--

The Fish Gate, placed in Herr Schick’s plan where the first main line of street ran out into the country.

The Old Gate, where the next main line of street ran out. It is where these two roads cross one another that we get, at a later period, the Damascus Gate set up. Streets running direct towards a city wall seem to demand a gate in that wall to complete their usefulness.

Next we have the Throne of the Governor-beyond-the-River. This, like the preceding, is some structure occurring in the course of the wall. In chap. ii. 7, 9, the phrase “beyond the river” seems to mean westward of the Jordan, where the district was governed by a viceroy of the king of Assyria. The viceroy lived or had lived in Jerusalem,[30] and his castle appears to have come into the line of the second wall, in the part which is south-east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and perhaps exactly at the re-entering angle.

The Broad Wall, which is named next, was not necessarily broad in itself. Open spaces, such as we should name Squares, were in Jerusalem called Broads. There was one such broad space south of the Temple water gate, on Ophel, in which the people sometimes assembled (Neh. viii. 1; Ezra x. 9). There seems to have been another near one of the city gates, where Hezekiah addressed the people, alarmed at the approach of Sennacherib (2 Chron. xxxii. 6). Sennacherib would approach the city on the north-west, and the people were very likely gathered by the Valley Gate discussing the matter, in an open space afterwards utilised by the construction of the “Pool of Hezekiah.” The “Broad” wall might be so called from running along one side of this broad space. It perhaps started from the second wall at the point which Nehemiah’s description has now reached, and extended southward to the wall of the high town, and so constituted an inner line of defence. Nothing is said of repairing it: perhaps it had not been thrown down; or, as an inner wall, Nehemiah neglects it for the present, as he does also the north wall of the Upper City. At any rate the description carries us beyond it. At the north-west angle of the second wall there was a Corner Gate (2 Kings xiv. 13; 2 Chron. xxv. 23), which is called also the Gate that Looketh. A gate here would command a view of the city walls as far as the Fish Gate on the one hand and the Valley Gate on the other. But this gate also is passed over in the present description.

We have next the Tower of the Furnaces, probably west of the “Pool of Hezekiah.” The word may mean hearths furnaces, ovens, or altars; but we cannot say to what it related.

And then we come to the Valley Gate, which we have already seen must have been near the present Jaffa Gate, and probably was exactly where the present David Street passes the end of the wall discovered, by the Greek Bazaar, in 1885. Unless a gate existed there, the street would lose half its use. Yet there is Herr Schick’s alternative, that the name was given to a gate south-west of the Citadel, and opening on to the Valley of Hinnom.

In verse 13, from the Valley Gate it is “1000 cubits on the wall to the Dung Gate.” This forbids any identification with the present dung gate, in the Tyropœon, and fixes within a little the position of _Bethso_.

In verse 15, Shallun, who repairs the Fountain Gate, repairs also “the wall of the Pool of Shelah by the king’s garden.” Allow that Shelah is Siloam, yet this need not be a wall running down to Siloam--if we were to take that line we should go wrong all the rest of the way--it is the transverse wall in the same valley above. Through a gate in this wall the Pool of Siloam would be conveniently reached from the Suburb; and this would be the “Gate between two walls,” through which Zedekiah fled away (2 Kings, xxv. 4; Jer. xxxix. 4; lii. 7). The wall was by the king’s garden (_le_ = by or near). Shallun pursues his work along the transverse wall eastward “unto (_ad_) the Stairs (_maaloth_) that go down from the City of David.” So the City of David includes Ophel, and the Stairs descend the Ophel slope westward into the bed of the Tyropœon.

Verse 16, “After him repaired Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, unto the place over against (_neged_ = in front of) the sepulchres of David.” The wall of the Pool of Shelah was an offshoot from the wall of the High Town, so the writer returns and continues his description of the wall of the High Town. Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, takes up the repairs at the Fountain Gate and works northward. He comes over against the royal sepulchres, which are therefore on the Ophel side of the Tyropœon, a little north of the Stairs. The entrance would have to be low down in the valley bed to be outside the wall which protects Ophel on the west; but there is no reason why it should not be low down. The only doubt we need have is whether the spot marked in the plan is quite far enough north. In either case the excavations for royal tombs were so extensive as at length to approach the south wall of the Temple, perhaps even to touch the wall (at a point now under the mosque El Aksa). This is complained of by the prophet Ezekiel as a desecration. “The house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, and by the carcases of their kings in their death; in their setting of their threshold by my threshold, and their door-post beside my door-post, and there was but the wall between me and them” (Ezek. xliii. 7, 8).

Nehemiah, the son of Azbuk, continues working northward “unto the pool that was made” (_berekah_, probably the “king’s pool” of ii. 14, and the “reservoir between two walls” of Isaiah xxii.). He goes on “unto the house of the mighty men.” If this is the house of the king’s bodyguard, the men of war mentioned in 2 Kings xxv. 4, we shall find that they are conveniently placed about midway between the armoury and the king’s house.

In the remaining short space on the west side of the Tyropœon we have no less than four bands of workers, indicating that the destruction had been very great, as indeed Nehemiah found it to be when there was no possibility of his beast getting along; and the next indication of locality is in

Verse 19, “the turning” of the wall, “over against the ascent to the armoury.” The armoury, therefore, was in or near the north-eastern angle of the suburb.

Verse 20. We are now carried from “the turning” of the wall by the armoury, southward, “unto the door of the house of Eliashib, the high priest;” and we are not surprised to find his house here, for we are close alongside the Temple courts. The workers come _unto_ the door of Eliashib’s house, which thus seems to project westward, so as to be quite near to the line of wall; but they only come _over against_ the less important houses which follow.

Verse 24. The sixth worker down this side comes to “the turning” of the wall and “unto the corner.” The turning is not the same as the corner; the Hebrew language uses different words for a re-entering and a salient angle. Each of the two turnings at the causeway (vv. 19, 20) is called a _miqtzoa_ (= a re-entering angle); but now, in v. 24, they come to a _miqtzoa_ and to a _pinneh_ (= a projecting angle). It is to be observed that we should not have such angles at this part but for the vacant square which Warren’s examination of the masonry compelled him to leave--the wall for 300 feet each way from the south-west corner of the Haram being more recent than the rest.

The first salient angle is passed over because the worker who begins north of it continues his labours till he comes south of it, and so its mention is not necessary in defining the work done. (In like manner, in