Volume 53 — THE BRITISH QUARTERLY JANUARY 1871 (continued 3)

The synagogue at Capernaum was only one out of nine synagogues examined in the district north of the Sea of Galilee, and the investigation was so thorough that the plan of the building was made out, and careful drawings made and measurements taken. The result has been to dissipate the idea that the synagogues were barn-like structures, and to prove that they had considerable architectural pretensions.

'They all lie north and south, have three gateways in the southern end, the interior divided into five aisles, by four rows of columns, and the two northern corners formed by double engaged columns. The style of decoration does not always appear to have been the same. At Tel Hum (the strongest claimant for the site of Capernaum) and Kerazeh (Chorazin), Corinthian capitals were found; at Irbid, a mixture of Corinthian and Ionic; whilst Kefr Birim, Meiron, Um el-Amud have capitals of a peculiar character. The faces of the lintels over the gateway are usually ornamented with some device; at Nebartein there is an inscription and representation of the seven-branched candlestick; at Kefr Birim the ornament appears to have been intended for the Paschal lamb; and at Tel Hum there are the pot of manna and lamb. A scroll of vine leaves, with bunches of grapes, is one of the most frequent ornaments. The investigator cannot fail to be struck by their resemblance in plan—accidental or otherwise—to the palaces of Persepolis and to the House of the Forest of Lebanon, built by Solomon.'

For particular description and measurements our architectural readers must be referred to Captain Wilson's paper in Quarterly Statement No. II. These synagogues date either from the Christian era or the centuries immediately following. Mr. R. Phené Spiers, M.R.I.B.A., says, from the third to the sixth centuries, inclusive. The Rev. George Williams, of Cambridge, assigns them to a period prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, both because the depopulation of the country after that event made it almost impossible that they should have been built subsequently, and because the style of ornament so much resembled that of the tombs of the kings (so-called) at Jerusalem. In that case they may have been trodden by the feet of Christ; and the ruins of Capernaum may be remains of the very building concerning which the Jewish elders said, the centurion is worthy—'for he loveth our nation, and hath built us the synagogue.' Yet Dr. Robinson, whose ears and eyes seemed to be open to hear and see all that was really to be heard and seen in connection with sacred topography, did not mention these various ruins till his second journey in 1852, giving then only a brief account of them, while previous to that year there had been no account of them at all.

Another admirable paper of Wilson's, also illustrated with plans, is 'On the Remains of Tombs in Palestine.' Rock-hewn tombs appear to be the earliest in date, and are the tombs most commonly met with, the softer strata of limestone, especially the white chalk in some districts, being well adapted for excavation. Sometimes a natural cavern is made use of, sometimes a square or oblong chamber is cut in the rock, while in a third class one entrance leads into a number of sepulchral chambers; and in all these cases loculi or resting-places for the bodies are either sunk in the surface of the rock much after the manner of a modern grave, or driven into the rock-face like a small tunnel or pigeon-hole. In the so-called tomb of Joshua at Tibneh, after passing through a chamber with fourteen loculi, a smaller one is reached which has only one loculus at its extreme end, an arrangement not noticed elsewhere; the face and sides of the porch are nearly covered with niches for lamps, and round the door are traces of plaster. The tombs of the kings at Jerusalem come into this class, and are described, as well as the tombs of the prophets, the tombs of the Judges, and a large tomb discovered by Lieut. Warren in the Kedron valley. Masonry tombs, which constitute the second class, are few in number, and confined to the northern portion of the country. It is possible that at Tel Hum, where the (basaltic) rock is so hard as to make excavation difficult, this form of tomb was commonly used. If the tombs in which the demoniac lived were of this description, their disappearance is not at all surprising. Besides these two classes of tombs, and their subdivisions, sarcophagi are sometimes found, those at Kedes (Kadesh Naphtali, the city of refuge in the midst of Canaanite strongholds) being the most elaborately ornamented. The material is hard white limestone, almost marble, and the workmanship is excellent: the usual design on the sides is a garland held up in two or more loops by nude figures, with some device over each end and a bunch of grapes hanging from the bottom. Two sarcophagi have been shipped to England by Lieut. Warren, and were exhibited, with other articles, at the Dudley Gallery in the summer of last year.

A paper in these Quarterly Statements, which has greatly pleased the architects is that on the ruined temples of Cœle-Syria. In the summer of 1869, Captain Warren (we are glad to notice his promotion) was obliged to take his party to the Lebanon in consequence of their having suffered severely from fever in Jerusalem. While there they occupied themselves in investigating the ruined temples of Cœle-Syria and Mount Hermon, and the exhaustive manner in which the work was done, places us in possession of so much information that we may be said to have previously known nothing at all on the subject. The extremely careful tracings (fifteen in number) sent home by Captain Warren are to be seen at the office of the Fund; but two of them, selected by the advice of Mr. Fergusson, are given to subscribers with Captain Warren's complete and detailed account of the temples in Quarterly Statement No. V. The temples of Cœle-Syria date from Roman times, and the inscriptions found on them are mostly Greek. The small temples about Mount Hermon appear to be somewhat more ancient, their architecture being of the Ionic order. On the summit of Hermon stands the ruins of a sacellum, i.e., a rectangular building without a roof, which has nothing in its construction in common with the temples on the west below, and which probably had to do with a different and more ancient form of worship. Captain Warren's investigations led him into a discussion of the question of the orientation of heathen temples. It had been surmised by Dr. Robinson and several other writers that the temples about Hermon were turned towards it as to a kibleh, so that the worshippers might face it when they prayed; but now that the directions and angles are taken, it is found that they all have their entrances more or less towards the east, and in no case does the entrance or any side of the building face direct upon the summit of Hermon. The Jewish tabernacle and afterwards the temple at Jerusalem faced the east—according to Josephus—in order that when the sun arose it might send its first rays upon it; according to some of the Jews of the present day, in order that the priest might watch for the first dawn of day in offering up the morning sacrifice.

The principle which accounts for the eastward aspect of the temple at Jerusalem, accounts also for the southward aspect of the synagogues of Galilee: as that was open to the east, so they were open to the temple. It would be a crucial test of this theory to examine the remains of a synagogue said to exist near Beersheba, the only ruin of the kind which is not due north from Jerusalem.

The mention of temples reminds us that on Mount Gerizim numerous excavations were made under the direction of Lieut. Anderson. Within the ruins known as the 'Castle,' the foundations of an octagonal church were laid bare, probably the church known to have been built there by Justinian. On the eastern side of the church is an apse, on the northern side the main entrance, and on each of the others, doors leading to small side chapels. In the interior are the piers of a smaller octagon, apparently intended to carry a dome. The church and castle were found to be built on a rough platform of large stones laid together without mortar, and of this—which may possibly be the platform on which the Samaritan Temple stood—the 'twelve stones,' fabled to have been brought up by the tribes from the bed of the Jordan, form a portion. No trace of large foundations could be found on the southern portion of the small plateau on which the castle stands. Close to the Holy Rock of the Samaritans a number of human remains were dug up, but no clue could be obtained to their age or nationality. The study of the synagogue remains of Galilee, as well as the temples, mosques, churches, tombs, inscriptions, aqueducts, castles, theatres, ruined cities and general aspect of the country, is much facilitated by the series of 350 photographs taken by the two expeditions, which are most of them beautifully executed and very many of them taken for the first time.

We must now follow Captain Warren to Jerusalem, where the longer course of the operations supplies us with larger results for criticism; and the reason for the more extended labours is a reason for our devoting more space to their consideration; it being simply the paramount interest of Jerusalem and the richness of the field Scripturally, historically, and archæologically. The ground on which the city of Jerusalem stands is included in a fork between two ravines, whose point of union is to the south-east of the city, near the Well of Joab, and which, if we trace them backward, may be said to clasp the city, the one on the south and west, the other on the east. The eastern ravine is known as the Valley of Jehoshaphat or of the Kedron, the westernmost as the Valley of Hinnom. On the north side they run up to the level of the northern part of the city; so that Jerusalem is not an isolated hill, but the southern tongue of a great plateau which stretches away northward. This table-land is one of the highest in the country, and Jerusalem is about 2,500 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, while the Dead Sea, only twelve miles to the east, is 1,300 feet below the same. Of the cities of Palestine, Jerusalem alone is thus entrenched with deep ravines—a mountain fastness, with natural defences on every side except the north; and to this circumstance she owed in a great measure her early strength and subsequent greatness. After Joshua's conquest, the aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine, who elsewhere lingered only in the plains, were, able here to maintain a position in the hills;[13] and Joshua, Barak, Gideon, and Saul passed away without seeing the Jebusites conquered. When David became king of all Israel, it was necessary to fix his capital farther north than Hebron, and no city appeared so suitable as Jebus, both on account of its strength and its central position, and perhaps also from the circumstance that it was partly in the tribe of Judah, to which David belonged, and partly in Benjamin, the tribe of Saul. So strong was the citadel that the blind and the lame were thought sufficient to defend the walls; but the steep ascent was climbed by Joab, and David 'took the stronghold of Zion.' Before David's time the men of Judah and the men of Benjamin had gained some partial successes at Jerusalem, and perhaps before the Israelitish invasion the city had experienced varied fortunes in the wars of the aboriginal tribes among themselves. But in the 3,000 years since David's time, how eventful has been its history! From David to Nebuchadnezzar, from Nebuchadnezzar to Pompey and Titus, from Titus to the Crusaders, from Saladin to Sultan Suliman, who built the present walls in 1542, the sieges have been no fewer than twenty; while the city has been four or five times sacked or utterly destroyed.

It is very much in consequence of the repeated destruction of its walls and buildings that its topography has become so much obscured. This could hardly have been the case with any other city of which we had such full descriptions, nor with Jerusalem if ravines had not run through the city as well as round it; the débris has found its way into these intramural valleys, from which its removal was difficult and perhaps inadvisable. The description which Josephus gives of the city is as follows:—

'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 by king David (he was the father of that Solomon who built this temple at the first); but it is by us called the Upper Market Place. But the other hill, which was called Akra, and sustains the lower city, is of the shape of a crescent moon. 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 Asamoneans 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 valley of the cheesemakers, as it was called, being that which we told you before distinguished the hill of the upper city from that of the lower, extended as far as Siloam; for that is the name of a fountain which hath sweet water in it, and that in great plenty also. But on the outsides these hills are surrounded by deep valleys, and by reason of the precipices to them belonging on both sides, they are everywhere unpassable.[14]

'In section 2 of the same chapter, he says, "It was Agrippa who encompassed the parts added to the old city with this [third] wall, which had been all naked before; for as the city grew more populous it gradually 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, to be inhabited also."'

It would be easy from these descriptions to trace an ideal map of Jerusalem with its ancient hills and valleys; but such a map would not correspond by a long way with Jerusalem as it is now. The city, as enclosed by its walls to-day, approximates to the form of a parallelogram whose eastern and western sides run north and south, but whose western side as a whole stands more southerly than its eastern side as a whole. From outside the Damascus Gate, near the middle of the north wall, a very marked valley traverses the city, deepening as it runs southward, and terminating by a junction with the Kedron valley outside the south wall, near the Pool of Siloam. The half of the city to the west of this valley is the higher of the two, and is itself highest at its north-western part; the half of the city to the east consists of the Haram esh-Sherêf—a raised platform about 1,500 feet from north to south and 900 feet from east to west, and of about an equal space of streets and houses. The Haram is the southern portion and is separately enclosed with walls, though its entire east wall and two-thirds of the south are coincident, so far, with the walls of the city. The one valley from Damascus Gate gives us two hills within the city; but according to Josephus there were four, and even if we suppose that Bezetha, the 'new town,' last added to the city, was afterwards excluded from it by a narrowing of the compass of the walls, we must still find a second valley to give us a third hill. In the part of the city to the north of the Haram area a valley runs down from Herod's Gate in the north wall towards St. Stephen's Gate in the east wall; but the narrow ridge on the north-east side of this valley is connected with the high ground outside the city, and can hardly be of itself the third hill we are in search of. There must have been a valley then which has become obliterated—in fact, Josephus tells us that the Maccabees did fill up a valley, to connect the city with the temple, in the second century b.c. But inasmuch as the valley is not now apparent, it has to be supplied from conjecture, and in consequence we have had a mass of topographical controversy unequalled for its extent, its confusion, and its bitterness. The valley from the Damascus Gate is usually identified with Josephus's Tyropœon valley or valley of the cheesemakers; but some writers bring a valley across from the Jaffa Gate, which is near the middle of the west wall, into this north-and-south valley, and call it the Tyropœon from Jaffa Gate to Siloam. The valley from Damascus Gate, again, is often made to send off a branch to the east across the Haram platform, cutting it sometimes near its northern wall and sometimes farther south than the dome of the rock or Mosque of Omar, which stands on a smaller platform near the centre of the larger. It is disputed, also, which is the valley of Hinnom, which the valley of Kedron, whether Hinnom was not on the east of the city, and whether Gihon did not come down through the middle of the city.

The fate of the valleys determines the fate of the hills, and we are perplexed to know which was Mount Zion, which Moriah, and which Akra, nothing seeming to be certain except that the modern Zion (the western hill) is not the ancient Zion, that the Temple (and therefore Moriah) was somewhere within the Haram enclosure, and that the hill to the east of the present Kedron valley is the Mount of Olives. The position of the hills and valleys determines the course of the streams; for the brook Kedron presumably followed the valley of that name, the Pools of Gihon were in the valley of Gihon (if there was a valley of Gihon); and when Hezekiah 'brought the upper watercourse of Gihon straight down to the west side of the city of David,' the direction of the new channel depends on the position assigned to 'the city of David, which is Zion.'[15] On the position and contour of the hills, again, depends the direction of the ancient walls; for these would in general follow the brow of the hill, except on the north side, where the ground made no descent, while Zion appears to have been separately enclosed, so as to need a siege by itself. Until we know the direction of the walls, we know not where to look for the gates and towers, nor for the sepulchres of the kings, which were most of them within the city of David;[16] nor for the Holy Sepulchre, which was outside the gates. A grand point also is the exact site of the temple, which carries with it that of Antonia, which Josephus says was at the junction of the north and west cloisters, and may also help us to find Solomon's palace, and to determine the position of the king's gardens. It must be evident that, while these points remain unsettled, the history of Jerusalem, from David's age to that of Titus, must lack for us the definiteness and vividness which are so essential to its complete understanding. Of theories we have had enough—they are guesses not without a certain value, but guesses almost in the dark—facts are wanted, to test and correct the theories; and these facts the Palestine Exploration Committee promised to supply.

Captain Warren saw that two courses were open to him, in his endeavours to recover a first thread of the old topography—(1) to obtain the contours of the ground as they existed in olden times; (2) to dig about the supposed site of some remarkable building, in hopes of finding its remains. Both these methods were adopted; and although excavation is not allowed in the sacred places, and the work has been crippled elsewhere for want of funds, enough has been ascertained to settle several disputed points, and to alter the conditions of controversy for time to come. First, as regards the hills and valleys, the Tyropœon valley, which it was conjectured might contain thirty or forty feet of débris, is found, by excavation, to be filled up in some places to nearly one hundred feet; and instead of presenting an even slope, its western side is nearly level, the final descent being very steep, and the lowest course of the valley being inside the Haram, about sixty feet east of the south-west angle. The Kedron valley is found to contain sixty or eighty feet of loose stone chippings and other débris, forming a sloping bank, with an inclination of about thirty degrees, and having its base resting against the western slope of Olivet. One effect of this accumulation has been to alter the bed of the stream, so far as there is now any stream at all, pushing it forty feet to the east, and raising it thirty-eight feet from its old level. At what must have been the ancient bed of the brook the remains of a masonry wall were touched; between that line and the east of the Haram several other walls were encountered, and at last progress up the hill was stopped—at a point fifty feet east of the Haram—by a massive masonry wall, into which Warren drove a hole five feet, and then had to give up the business. A contribution from M. Clermont Ganneau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, affords Mr. Warren an argument in favour of the identity of Kedron and Hinnom. There have always been several reasons for considering the Virgin's Fount, in the Kedron, to be the same with En Rogel, where Adonijah was saluted as king, though many place it at the Well of Joab, lower down. Near to En Rogel was the stone of Zoheleth (1 Kings i. 9), and near to the Virgin's Fount M. Ganneau discovers a rock called Ez Zehwele; so that the statements of Joshua xv. and xviii., which make the border between Judah and Benjamin to pass Zoheleth to En Rogel, and thence up the valley of Hinnom, seem to identify Hinnom with what is now called Kedron. As the Kedron has three names to-day in different parts of its course, there would thus far be no objection to a fourth, but the statements in Joshua seem to us to point to some valley more westward than that now called Kedron. The principal reason for tracing the Tyropœon from the Jaffa Gate arises from Josephus's description of the valley as an open space or depression within the city, 'at which the corresponding rows of houses on both hills end.' This was held to be more applicable to a valley running from the Jaffa Gate than to that from the Damascus Gate when the slope is so gradual that the rows of houses now run across it without interruption, besides which it probably had formerly a wall on either side of it. Mr. Lewin[17] speaks positively as to the Tyropœon commencing at the Jaffa Gate, and says it can be traced thence to the Haram by the rise of ground which is still very perceptible on the right hand, as you walk down the street from the gate to the Haram. He makes this valley the boundary of the high town on the north, and puts his first wall on the southern brow of it. It is difficult to see on this hypothesis how the hill of the high town could be 'in length more direct' than the eastern hill, as Josephus says it was; or how the corresponding rows of houses could meet any more readily than near Damascus Gate. However, Mr. Warren, after excavation, tells us that 'a very decided valley runs down from the Jaffa Gate to the Tyropœon, near Wilson's arch;' and he found under the causeway leading westward from Wilson's arch, vaults and chambers, and a secret passage, at a depth which serves to confirm his view. There is no disputing facts, though it seems to us still questionable whether this valley is any part of the Tyropœon of Josephus. The valley running south-east from Herod's Gate, in the north-east part of the north wall, proves to be longer and deeper than any theorist had imagined, running into the Kedron at a point between the north-east angle of the Haram and the Golden Gate, and being filled in with more than 100 feet of débris. The Pool of Bethesda, which is 360 feet in length, is imbedded in this valley, and stretches across it, having its ends formed by the rocky sides of the valley, and its sides built up of masonry; and since it is found lined with concrete, it must have been a reservoir, and not the fosse of Antonia, which Robinson supposed it to be.[18]

The valley which Simon Maccabeus filled up[19] is made by Mr. Lewin to coincide with the northern half of what is usually called the Tyropœon—the part from Damascus Gate, down to near Wilson's arch. Other writers identify it with a supposed branch of the Tyropœon, curving to the east across the Haram. Josephus tells us that when Pompey beseiged Jerusalem he took up his position on the north of the temple, in the only part where an assault was practicable; and that even there the temple was defended by high towers, and a trench, and by a deep ravine. The position which various writers give to this ravine depends upon their idea as to the site of the temple. Mr. Fergusson[20] thinks that the valley of the Asamoneans was a 'tranverse cut, separating the hill Bezetha from the Akra or citadel, on the temple hill.' Mr. Thrupp[21] allows a valley on the north side of the temple, and reminds us that traces of a valley debouching into the valley of Kedron, near the middle of the eastern wall of the Haram, and which seemed to have been artificially filled up, were detected by the late Dr. Shultz. Shultz identifies these traces as those of the valley filled up by the Asamoneans; but Thrupp holds him to be mistaken in doing so. Mr. Sandie[22] puts forth the recognition of such a valley as the special characteristic of his view of ancient Jerusalem; but he places it south of the dome of the rock. He moreover identifies it with 'the ravine called Kedron' (τὴν Κεδρῶνα καλουμένην φάραγγα), which Josephus tells us was overlooked by the north-east wall of the temple,[23] and by which he does not mean the valley of Kedron, since he always calls the latter 'Kedron' simply. Mr. Lewin, again, makes this ravine to be 'the slip of ground between the temple and the city wall, reaching from Bethesda on the north to Ophla on the south,' i.e., the eastern side of the present Haram platform, which is, or was, the west bank of the present Kedron valley. It is difficult to see how this could have been a ravine at all; but Mr. Lewin translates 'so-called Kedron ravine,' and seems to think the expression implies that Josephus did not consider the term 'ravine' quite legitimate. Even if this were so, the illegitimacy of the designation might result from the circumstance that what was once a ravine had since been filled up by the Maccabeans and by Pompey.[24] But we must come to facts.

First of all, Captain Warren tells us that there was no ravine south of the dome of the rock, for 'the crest of the rocky spur runs from the north-west angle of the Dome-of-Rock platform in a south-east direction to the triple gate in the south wall; and at these two points, and in the line between them, the rock is at the surface.' Secondly, in December, 1868, when the displacement of a stone by the rains enabled Captain Warren to descend beneath the surface of the Haram, he found a souterrain running east and west, in the line of the northern edge of the Mosque platform, the southern side of it being scarped rock, on which the wall supporting the northern edge of the Mosque platform is built, but the rock itself appearing to 'shelve down rapidly to the north.' In the following month Captain Warren ventured to suggest on plan (lithographed plan 32) the possible course of a valley coming from the Gate of the Inspector in the Tyropœon, and running past the north-western corner of the Dome-of-Rock, out eastward through the Birket Israil (Pool of Bethesda). The souterrain may, as Captain Warren observes, be claimed by one party as the ditch on the northern wall of the temple, and by another as the northern ditch of Antonia; and the valley—which owes its depth in one part of its course to what is doubtingly called a 'natural or artificial ditch'—will of course be claimed as that of the Asamoneans.

It is thus, in our opinion, rendered probable that the ground to the west of that valley which runs from Damascus Gate constituted the old town, the φρούριον of David's time, the upper market-place of the days of Josephus; that the dome of the rock and the space to the south of it represent the old Temple-hill; that to the north of this was the valley of the Asamoneans; that between the latter and the valley from Herod's Gate was the city of David, or Zion,[25] and that north-east of the last-named valley was Bezetha. The name Zion got transferred to the Temple-hill, or was made to include it, before or during the times of the Maccabees, probably after the filling-up of the intervening valley, and in the early centuries of the Christian era was transferred to the western hill, which, after the Akra was cut down, was the highest hill of the city.[26] Certainly there is still room for some controversy on these points, and Captain Warren contributes something to the discussion, in a long paper on the 'Comparative Holiness of Mounts Zion and Moriah,' in which he argues that Zion was considered holy when the ark was there, in David's time; that after the ark (and the holiness) were transferred to Moriah, the name Zion got transferred also, and that Josephus refrains from using the term Zion because he is aware of this confusion.

If the Tyropœon valley extended from Damascus Gate southward, and the city of David was on the eastern side of it, north of the temple, then the water which Hezekiah diverted from its course, and brought down to the west side of the city of David (2 Chron. xxxii. 30), and yet into the city of Jerusalem (2 Kings xx. 20) was probably brought in at Damascus Gate, and ran towards the Kedron, either on the west side of the temple, or by the Maccabean valley, on the northern side. In the southern half of the Tyropœon valley, outside the west wall of the Haram, Captain Warren has found, at a depth of seventy or eighty feet, a rock-cut aqueduct, twelve feet deep and six feet wide, with round rock-cut pools at intervals, and shafts which indicate that pure water was drawn from it. As Hezekiah brought the stream down from 'the upper watercourse of Gihon,' this discovery has a direct bearing on the question of the position of 'the upper pool,' and of 'Gihon, in the valley,'where Solomon was anointed king; but as the upper part of the Tyropœon has not been excavated, it remains uncertain whether the water came in by Damascus Gate or Jaffa Gate, and consequently what position of Zion is favoured by the finding of this aqueduct.

The search for the old walls of the city has only been partially carried out. Here, again, we have Josephus's explicit description, and the usual differences among the commentators.

'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 old wall began on the north at the tower called Hippicus, and extended as far as the Xistus, a place so called, and then, joining to the Council-house, ended at the west cloister of the temple. But if we go the other way westward, it began at the same place, and extended through a place called Bethso to the Gate of the Essenes; and after that it went southward, having its bending above the fountain Siloam, where it also bends again towards the east at Solomon's pool, and reaches as far as a certain place which they called Ophlas, were it was joined to the eastern cloister of the temple. The second wall took its beginning from that gate which they call 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 beginning of the third wall was at the tower Hippicus, whence it readied as far as the north quarter of the city, and the tower Psephinus, and then was so far extended till it came over against the monuments of Helena (which Helena was Queen of Adiabene, the daughter of Izates); it then extended farther to a great length, and passed by the sepulchral caverns of the kings, and bent again at the tower of the corner, at the monument which is called the monument of the Fuller, and joined to the old wall at the ravine called Kedron.'[27]

As many writers make the northern part of the first wall to have run from the Jaffa Gate eastward, Captain Warren spent some time in excavating in the Muristan, a large open space in the city, the old burial-place of the Knights Hospitallers; but he found 'nothing but confusion in the shape of old walls running at one another in all directions.' At Wilson's arch, however, near the Haram wall, and nearly due east from the Jaffa Gate, he discovered an old city gateway at a great depth. If we could find traces of the tower Hippicus we should come upon the first and third walls together, and similarly the gate Gennath would put us on the line of the first and second walls. The theories of some writers compel them to put Hippicus at the Jaffa Gate, where they think they see its representative in the present Castle of David. But we agree with Mr. Fergusson, that the remains called Kasr Jalud at the north-west corner of the city suit better with Josephus's description. To this point Captain Warren has not yet been able to give much attention; but the so-called Gennath Gate was examined both by Wilson and by Warren, and pronounced by the former to be of comparatively modern construction, by the latter to be ancient, 'especially as its style is Roman.' The gate rests in made earth.

The Damascus Gate is built of two very different styles of masonry, one of them apparently very old; and it suits the views of several writers, who differ as to the course of the first wall, that this gate and the portion of wall immediately east of it should be part of the second wall of the city.[28] At the Damascus Gate excavation brought to light 'a very ancient wall ten feet six inches in thickness, built with bevelled stones similar to those of the Jews' Wailing Place;' but the wall would seem to be built out of old materials, since stones of more recent date were found among them; and at the foot of the wall lay a stone with a Templar's cross on it.

The third wall has probably almost or quite disappeared, for when Hadrian was re-erecting the walls in a.d., 136, he would not think it necessary to go out so far; the population had diminished, and to construct armour without, so disproportionate to the shrunken body within, would have been simply ridiculous. If any part of the third wall remained, we might suppose it to be at the northern part of the present east wall; but here excavation shows that there has been 'no destruction of extensive buildings so far north as St. Stephen's Gate,' that the wall itself is 'of no very ancient date,' and that 'of the city wall to the east, the north-east angle of the Haram area is the first sign from the northern end of anything ancient in appearance.'

Perhaps there is here a little room for error; for where the rock is high, the absence of much débris may not imply that there has been no great destruction of buildings; but simply that the rubbish has found its way to the valleys or was not suffered to accumulate.

South of the Haram wall, the hill, which is now chiefly occupied by small vegetable gardens, in terraces of six to ten feet high, must have been at one time covered with houses, for every shaft sunk brought to light remains of buildings, drains, scarped and cut rock, and antiquities of various dates. A cavern cut out of the rock, appears to have been at first a dyer's shop and afterwards a stable, while early Christian glass and pottery was found in a drain above it. Tradition relates that St. James was cast over the outer wall of the temple enclosure, and that 'a fuller took the club with which he pressed the clothes, and brought it down on the head of the just one.' This hill is frequently identified with Ophel, where Jotham and Manasseh built (2 Chron. xxvii. 3; xxxiii. 14; Neh, iii. 26, 27; xi. 21), though whether Ophel referred to the whole of the swelling hill or to a tumour-like tower in some part of it was not certain.[29] In this district Warren has discovered a massive wall, from twelve to fourteen feet thick, which abuts on the Haram wall (but does not bond into it) at a point twelve feet six inches west of the south-east angle of the Haram, which runs first of all sixty feet due south, and then takes a bend to the south-west, in which direction it runs for 700 feet, and then ends abruptly. The wall is still from forty to sixty feet in height, and the rock is scarped for thirty feet below it, while solid towers of masonry are found at intervals along its course. This discovery will have to be taken into consideration by those who bring the south wall of the city up from Siloam, and make it join the third wall at a point 600 feet from the south-west angle of the present Haram, and therefore more than 300 feet from the point where this wall abuts. The curious rock-cut connection which Warren found between the Virgin's Fount and a shaft opening from Ophel, would seem to be a device for supplying the inhabitants of this district with water, in a secret way; reminding us of the work of Hezekiah, and possibly being of the same date.

A question of paramount interest is the site of the successive temples of Solomon, Zerubabel and Herod. It is universally allowed that the temple stood on that hill which we call Moriah, and within the present sacred area; but while Josephus describes it as a square of 600 feet (1 stadium), in the side, the dimensions of the Haram are, according to Catherwood, 1,520 feet on the east side, 1,617 feet on the west, 1,020 on the north, and 932 on the south. The way being thus open for conjecture, we have had the usual differences of opinion, and the temple has been variously placed at the south-west angle, the centre of the area, the southern half of the area, the northern half, or has even been made coincident with the entire Haram. A few shafts and galleries would probably settle this question, and in showing us the foundations of the temple, give us the key to most of the old topography; but unfortunately the reservation made by the Turkish Government has compelled Captain Warren to labour only outside the enclosure. Still, as there was reason to think that one or more of the Haram walls or angles might coincide in position with those of the temple, there was room for discovery by exterior examination. The theory of Catherwood and of De Vogüé, that the whole of the area belonged to the temple, may be dismissed as being inconsistent with the measurements of Josephus. The discovery of the transverse valley and of the prolongation of the valley from Herod's Gate appear to be fatal to Williams's view, that the temple stood in the northern half of the Haram and stretched all across it.

A favourite theory is that of Fergusson, Lewin, and others, that the temple occupied the south-west angle of the area, its south and west walls coinciding with those of the Haram for a distance of 600 feet from the corner. The chief positive evidence for this view consists in the fact that the south-west angle is the only right angle of the present walls, that some of the stones existing in that part of the wall to-day are so immense as to justify Josephus's description of stones 'immovable for all time' and that the spring stones of an arch discovered by Robinson in the western wall, commencing about forty feet from the south-west angle, would be in the centre of the great Stoa Basilica of the temple. This cloister, according to the Jewish historian, was on the south wall, overhanging the valley, and communicated by steps with the upper city.[30] The arch of Robinson was often assumed to be the first of a series, and 'Robinson's bridge or viaduct' was attributed by Lewin to Solomon, and identified as that which was broken away by the followers of Aristobulus, in Pompey's time.[31] Signor Pierotti had scratched up a few feet of earth, and not finding any trace of a pier, declared that there could not have been a bridge. The excavations of Capt. Warren have shown that the south-west angle of the Haram is buried for about ninety feet, while in the Tyropœon valley the rock from the western side rather rises than falls until it is within 200 feet of the sanctuary wall, and then shelves down very rapidly. The actual pier of an arch has been discovered, with three courses of stones in situ, twelve feet two inches in thickness, commencing at forty-one feet six inches from the wall, within a few inches of the span assigned by Robinson. The length of the spring-stones is given by Wilson as fifty feet, and the pier is found to measure fifty-one feet six inches, and has its northern end eighty-nine feet from the south-west angle, nearly corresponding to the spring stones. The stones of the pier are precisely similar to those of the south-west angle, and presumably of the same age; but the inference that they are therefore of the age of Solomon is checked by the next discovery. Stretching between the pier and the sanctuary wall is a pavement, on which some of the fallen voussoirs of the arch are resting, but underneath the pavement are twenty-three feet of débris, covering two older voussoirs, which have crushed into the arched roof of an aqueduct which may be older still—the aqueduct previously spoken of in connexion with Hezekiah. These historical strata seem to yield evidence as follows:—

1. The winding rock-cut aqueduct was constructed.

2. The west Haram wall was afterwards built, the aqueduct arched over, and a bridge thrown across from the Haram area to the western side of the valley.

3. The arch of the bridge fell (two voussoirs still remain), smashing in part of the arch of the aqueduct.

4. Débris began to fill up the valley, a pavement was constructed upon it, which still remains, about twenty feet above the top of the aqueduct; and shafts were constructed at intervals from the pavement down to the aqueduct, in order to obtain water readily. Another arch was built.

5. The arch fell, and now rests upon the pavement.

6. Débris began to fill up the valley over the fallen arch, the pier of which standing out was removed, all except the three lowest courses.

7. Houses were built on a level twenty feet above the pavement.

8. These houses fell into ruin and the débris accumulated to its present level, viz., forty-five feet above the pavement.

No remains of any second arch of the supposed viaduct have been found; but three arches with a staircase to west would have sufficed to bridge the gulf, and there does exist a colonnade in ruins in continuation of the line of Robinson's arch. It is part of the view which places the temple at the south-west angle, that the three other gates and roadways mentioned by Josephus as connecting its west side with the city and suburbs[32] should be traceable between Robinson's arch and a point 600 feet from the south-west angle. The first of these gates—apparently the most northern—'led to the king's palace, and went to a passage over the intermediate valley.' It is remarkable that at a distance of 600 feet from the south-west angle we have a causeway which crosses the valley, while from this point the western wall no longer follows the same direction, but inclines slightly to the westward. This causeway commences with an arch nearly as large as Robinson's, discovered by Dr. Barclay, of the United States, measured by Captain Wilson, and known as Wilson's arch. This arch is now found to be in a perfect condition and elevated 120 feet above the lowest part of the valley, while the causeway to west is a succession of vaults on vaults, and is about eighty feet above the rock. The passage—the way to the king's palace—has also apparently come to light in the form of a secret tunnel, which has been traced westward for 250 feet, at which point it is under the house of Joseph Effendi, and is used as a cistern.

Of the two intermediate gates, the southern should be by calculation 264 feet from the south-west angle of the Haram area; and at 270 feet there is in the Haram wall an enormous lintel, which was first brought prominently into notice in this century by Dr. Barclay, in his 'City of the Great King.' The bottom of the lintel is five feet five inches above the surface of the ground, and Warren has ascertained that the sill is about thirty feet below the lintel, while the road up to it seems to have been by a causeway raised forty-six feet above the rock. We have, then, in the western portion of the Haram wall two bridges and one gate; but the most persevering search has not been rewarded by the discovery of any second gate between the two bridges. Moreover, the spring of Wilson's arch is seven feet above that of Robinson, its pier is for the first nineteen feet built up of rough blocks (that of Robinson's of smooth stones), and the voussoirs are of a style said to be of the later days of the Roman empire; though, like the more southern arch, it appears to have had a predecessor on the same spot.

Of the new evidence furnished by the explorations, the balance seems, after all, to tell against the south-west angle as the site of the temple. It has already been stated that the original bed of the Tyropœon valley comes out through the south wall of the Haram, about sixty feet from the south-west angle; and it is only stating the fact in other words to say that for sixty feet the south wall is carried up the slope of the modern Mount Zion. In the other direction, if we measure off 600 feet from the south-west angle, to find the south-east corner of the temple, the wall at that point rests on the highest part of Mount Moriah, which is not cut by the south front at all. An examination of the lithographed plan, No. 14, makes such a position seem an unlikely one for the original wall; for it would be more like building in the valley than on the hill, would take more material, and be destitute of symmetry. Next, the rock-cut aqueduct running down the Tyropœon has one of its pools half cut through by the west wall; and the north part of the aqueduct, roofed with flat slabs, appears to be older than the south, which is vaulted; everything favouring the conclusion that the aqueduct originally followed the course of the valley, and that when the wall was built the part of the aqueduct lying outside of it was left intact, and new lines of arched passage built to connect the older portions. Unless, therefore, the aqueduct is of pre-Solomonian age, the west wall was no part of Solomon's Temple at least, though it may have been included in Herod's.

Add to all this, that the stones at the south-west angle resemble those at the north-east, and that a temple in the south-west angle would not face due east, and the evidence in favour of this position is by no means conclusive.

The courses of stone in the south wall usually run from three feet six inches to three feet nine inches in height; but between the Double Gate and the Triple Gate there is a course described by Captain Wilson, from five feet ten inches to six feet one inch high. Captain Warren found that this course, with some breaks, is continued to the south-east angle, and thence runs north along the east wall for twenty-four feet. The length of this course in the south wall is 600 feet; and the coincidence of this number with the measurement of the temple cloisters, is enough to suggest that we may here have a clue, especially since, through the rising ground under the Triple Gate, this is the first course of stones which could be carried uninterruptedly through from east to west. Captain Warren, following this clue, not only found, after numerous examinations underground, that a perpendicular dropped from the most westerly stone of this course would pretty well divide the wall into two parts of different character, but that the rough stones to the west of this line resemble those at the north-east angle, thus far favouring the conclusion that these were the parts added by Herod.[33]

The Triple Gate is in the middle of this six feet course of stones, thus agreeing with the description of Josephus, that the south front of the temple had 'gates in its middle,' an expression which some have tried to reconcile with the existence of the Huldah and Triple Gates, at about equal distances from the angles and from one another, or have construed as applying to the Huldah Gate alone, which is, however, 365 feet from the south-west angle.

Under the Triple Gate the rock, as already stated, is highest, and notwithstanding that the slope is greater to the east than to the west, there would thus be an appearance of symmetry in the wall which it could not have if standing entirely west of the Triple Gate. It is worth notice also that at the Huldah Gate, where, on this view, the temple would terminate to west, the wall of the city, coming up from the south, now abuts, indicating that the south-west angle of the Haram is less ancient than the original city wall at this part, and the city wall less ancient than the south Haram wall east of Huldah Gate.

Again, the wall of Ophel, which commences at the south-east angle, and thus favours the view we are considering, runs sixty feet south, then 700 feet south-west, and terminates abruptly at a point nearly due south of Huldah Gate (see lithographic plan, No. 30), to which, it would seem possible, its return course may have run. Even Fergusson's argument for the south-west angle—that the south wall of the platform which now surrounds the Mosque of Omar runs parallel to the south wall of the Haram, at a distance of exactly 600 feet, and for a length of 600 feet—is nearly as much in favour of the south-east angle; and Lewin's argument that Josephus's πύλας κατὰ μέσον must refer to a double doorway, and therefore to the present Huldah Gate, is balanced by Warren's discovery that originally the so-called Triple Gate was a double tunnel.

It is often urged that the sub-structures known as Solomon's stables, in the south-east corner of the Haram, are of too slight a construction to bear the cloisters of the temple, and too modern, as well as too slight;[34] but the floor of these vaults is on a level with the six feet course of stones previously mentioned—above which level few stones remain in situ—and any previous sub-structures would not have survived the destruction of the east and south retaining walls. Between the Triple Gate and the south-east angle is the postern known as the Single Gate, with its sill on a level with the sill of the Triple Gate, but itself of modern construction. Below this gate, and below the vaults within the Haram, at this corner, Warren discovered a passage for carrying into the Kedron some liquid, and yet wholly distinct from the water channels under the Triple Gate. Underground Jerusalem so abounds in aqueducts and passages that it would not be of much force to urge that this channel conveyed the blood from the altar: yet the suggestion may be set against any similar one in favour of another site.

Finally, on this point, at the south-east angle, which some had thought to be modern, the foundations are about eighty feet beneath the surface, the stones are in situ, and some of them have Phœnician masons' marks painted and chiselled on them. That the stones are in situ is proved by the circumstance that a small depth of débris, which had been shovelled away to make room for the lowest tier, still remains close by, and has its layers sloping inwards. That the wall is ancient is thought to be evidenced by the Phœnician characters, which seem certainly to point to pre-Roman times, and possibly to the time when Solomon engaged the workmen of Hiram, King of Tyre, to build the temple.

Still, neither is the evidence conclusive here. While the stones at the north-east angle differ from those at the south-east, and there are several breaks and irregularities in the masonry of the east wall, Phœnician marks—though too much blurred to be deciphered—are found at the north-east angle also; the south-east angle is not a right angle, but measures 92 deg. 5 min. at the surface, and 92 deg. 25 min. at the foundation; at 105 feet from the corner there is a break in the character of the masonry; only the first 120 feet of wall are in the same straight line, and then there is a bend to the north-east.

The platform, called the Haram area, is nearly on one level all over, and near its centre is a second platform, about eighteen feet higher, on which stands the Mosque of Omar, covering the Sakhra, or sacred rock of the Mahometans, which measures sixty feet by fifty or fifty-five, and is said by them to be a morsel of Paradise. Thrupp and Falconer suppose it to be the rock or part of the rock on which stood the tower of Antonia; Fergusson maintains it to be the Holy Sepulchre, over which Constantine built a church, and Professor Willis identifies it with the threshing-floor of Araunah, and therefore with the site of the temple. As this rock is the highest point of Mount Moriah, and contains a cave with an opening to a deeper recess which has not been explored, it was sure thus to suggest itself as the place of the altar whence, according to the Talmud, the blood and offal of the sacrifices were drained off to the Kedron. As excavations have not been permitted within the sacred area, it has not been possible to put this theory to any test; nor can Warren's accidental discovery of souterrains along the northern edge of the platform, and of a natural or artificial ditch crossing beyond its north-west corner, be considered as settling the point either way. It may be worth a thought that the summit of Moriah may have been a 'high place' for heathen worship before it occurred to David to build a temple for God; that on that very account it would perhaps be avoided by the builders of the temple; and that if Araunah worshipped on any high place at all, his threshing-floor would not be on the same spot.

Captain Warren is never forward to theorise, but as a provisional hypothesis during his earlier excavations he favoured the south-east angle as the probable site of the temple; and now, after three or four years of investigation, while he has come to no conclusion, he inclines to a position nearly coincident with the Dome-of-Rock platform. As Josephus states the stones in Solomon's Cloister—the eastern side of the temple—to have been twenty cubits long and six cubits high, and Warren has not found any stones of these dimensions at any point where he has explored, he naturally thinks the cloister may be in the part he has not explored, viz., a space of 600 feet between the Golden Gate and the south-east angle, where a wide Mahometan cemetery makes operations very difficult.

'Place the temple here, nearly coinciding with the Dome-of-the Rock Platform, and it appears to suit exactly. It has the valley to the north; it has the raised platform of the dome of the rock, which is just about the height of the inner court above the outer; it has the unexplored 600 feet of wall south of the Golden Gate, and overlooking the Kedron. But it will be asked, "What about the south-east angle, with its sub-structures and its walls, with Phœnician characters inscribed thereon?" I think it was Solomon's palace.'

One of the objects of the Palestine Exploration Fund is to improve our knowledge of Jewish archæology, about which we have known next to nothing. The discoveries in Assyria show us what may be expected; 'for not only have we been able (says Mr. Layard) through the discoveries of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, and others (Mr. Layard might have added his own name), to read their written history, and trace their connection with other nations and races, but by the aid of the sculptures we can almost learn the details of the private and domestic life of the Assyrian people—their dress, their arms, and their religious ceremonies.' If similar discoveries could be made in Palestine, the greatest light would be thrown upon the political and domestic history of the Jews, and most important illustrations of the Holy Scriptures would be obtained. Such discoveries are indeed considered unlikely, since the Jewish law forbade the representation of the human form in sculpture or painting; but the Jews did not always scrupulously observe their law; besides which, the objection does not relate to the discovery of pottery, glass, coins, metal work, remains of architecture, &c. It must be confessed, indeed, that the legendary golden throne of King Solomon, with its eagles, and lions, and doves, has not been found, and the sceptres of the kings of Judah and Israel have not even been searched for by the explorers; moreover, most of their labour has been expended in uncovering massive structures, which cannot be brought home; yet still, when Mr. Macgregor returned from Jerusalem, he brought with him nine cases of objects incidentally lighted upon by the excavators, and in the summer of 1869 the Society was able to open a Museum of Palestinean Antiquities. The collection included lamps, pottery, glass, coins, weapons, tesselated pavement, sculpture, sarcophagi, geological specimens, and a collection of stone weights; besides photographs, and tracings, maps, and models. Three glass lamps, of curious construction, with several brigs of red pottery, and a cooking dish, glazed inside, were found in the rock-cut chambers and passages leading from the Virgin's Fountain up through the hill of Ophel. The whole of the ground of Ophel, between the south Haram wall and the Pool of Siloam, has been built over, and lamps of a particular type have been found there—two of them with Greek inscriptions—and in no case has any known Arabic pottery been found. On the other hand, at the Birket Israil—so-called Pool of Bethesda, where Warren dug through thirty-five feet of rubbish, and brought up a piece of the concrete bottom—the pottery is totally different. It is in many cases highly glazed, and has patterns on it, and when it is unglazed it has bands of red or brown, or other marks, very similar in appearance to the specimens of pottery found at Athens and Melos; and yet among this there came to light two pieces of glazed jars with raised Arabic or Cufic inscriptions, one of them being the usual invocation to Allah.

Some of the pottery found is older than the south-east portion of the Haram wall, for on the rock there rests an accumulation of eight or ten feet of a clay mould, which, from its slope, appears to have been cut through for the purpose of laying the stones on a solid foundation, and this clay abounds in pottery, broken into fragments. The rock at the south-east angle is very soft for the first two or three feet of depth, and at three feet to the east of the angle a hole was found scooped out of it, one foot in diameter and one foot in depth, in which was a little earthenware jar, standing upright, as though it had been purposely placed there. Warren suggested at the time (February, 1869) that the purpose may have been religious or superstitious, and that in such cases inscriptions might be found upon the pottery, if the jars were properly cleaned. The suggestion has borne fruit in his own experience. Among the fragments of pottery which for a depth of about two inches covers the rich loam overlying the rock at the south-east angle some handles of jars were observed to have a stamp on them, and on this account some specimens were collected. After his return to England, in 1870, Captain Warren, getting these out, and dusting the mud off them, observed Phœnician letters, some of which have since been read by Dr. Birch, of the British Museum, as lemelek Zepha (to the king Zepha), and which exactly resemble those of the Moabite stone, of which all the world has heard. The significance of this discovery will be better understood after we have considered that of the Moabite stone itself.

The paleographical results achieved by the Palestine Exploration Fund, when viewed by the side of the many and varied works in other departments, may seem to be small; but Mr. Deutsch, when speaking at Oxford,[35] was not wrong in desiring his hearers to count the latter, but to weigh the former. In a minaret near Nablus, immured upside down, is an inscribed slab that once belonged to a synagogue, which, though it does not seem to have been seen by Robinson, was copied by Shultz in 1844, and published by Rödiger; and again copied by Wildenbruck, and published by Blau. Finally, in 1860, it was copied and explained by Rosen, whose work left that of his predecessors far behind. Yet even he does not give all the characters, nor are they so accurately reproduced as would seem to be absolutely necessary in the case of the oldest known Samaritan monument; nor has he been able more than to conjecture as to the reading of the very beginning of the tablet. A photograph, taken under Captain Wilson, has rendered everything clear, and it turns out that, owing to the difficulty of the position in which the decipherer is necessarily placed, it was utterly impossible to perceive certain marks on the stone itself which are quite clear in the photograph. The tablet itself exhibits ten lines, the first eight of which contain the Ten Commandments, according to the Samaritan recension, in an abbreviated form. The ninth forms a portion of the celebrated Samaritan interpolation after the Ten Commandments (from Deut. xxvii. 2—7; and ix. 30)—'And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan ... on Mount Gerizim ... and thou shalt build there an altar unto the Lord thy God.' The last line contains the formula from Exodus, of frequent use in Samaritan worship, viz., 'Arise, O Lord; return, O Lord!'[36] Another photograph gives the famous inscription on the lintel of a ruined synagogue at Kefr Birim, in Galilee, with greater clearness than is represented in M. Renan's lithograph, taken from a cast, and is even clearer than the original itself, certain blurred characters of which it was next to impossible to distinguish on the glaring white surface. The gist of the inscription is a prayer for 'peace upon this place and all the places of Israel,' and an indication of the builder's name. In addition to these, some dozens of inscriptions have been copied—in the north of Palestine by Wilson; at Jerash and in the Lebanon by Warren; and in the Haram area and elsewhere by Mr. E. H. Palmer. Ancient characters have been ferreted out, and copied from the walls of Sidon; and a seal, bearing the inscription, 'Haggai, son of Shebaniah,' and dating as far back as the Maccabean period, has been found under the buried pavement near the south-west corner of the Haram. The red-paint characters at the south-east angle of the Haram were examined by Mr. Deutsch on the spot, and pronounced to be partly letters, partly numerals, and partly special masons' or quarry signs. Some of them were recognisable at once as well-known Phœnician characters; others, hitherto unknown in Phœnician epigraphy, Mr. Deutsch had the rare satisfaction of being able to identify on absolutely undoubted antique Phœnician structures in Syria, such as the primitive sub-structures of the harbour at Sidon. Similar marks at the north-east angle afford evidence that the stones of the Haram wall were shaped at the quarry, inasmuch as the paint in one instance has run, and the trickling is upwards with reference to the present position of the stone. Evidence to the same effect is furnished by the marginal drafts, which, present no appearance of pattern or design when the wall is regarded as a whole, but only when each stone is taken by itself.

The paleographic discovery of paramount interest is that of the Moabite stone, with a memorial inscription in what is known to scholars as the 'Phœnician' character, and belonging, there is little doubt, to the first half of the ninth century b.c. In August, 1868, the Rev. F. A. Klein, a Prussian clergyman, in the service of the Church Missionary Society at Jerusalem, in the course of a journey from es-Salt to Kerak, had the good fortune to be shown this monument at Dhibân near Arnon, the old border of Moab. The stone was lying among the ruins, perfectly free and exposed to view, the inscription uppermost, and was in excellent preservation. Mr. Klein ascertained it to be one metre thirteen centimetres in height, seventy centimetres in breadth and thirty-five in thickness, rounded at the upper and lower corners,[37] and containing thirty-four lines of writing. Circumstances prevented his copying more than 'a few words from several lines at random;' and when afterwards M. Clermont-Ganneau, of the French Consulate at Jerusalem, Captain Warren, of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and others, interested themselves to obtain 'squeezes,' the Arabs resented the action of foreigners, quarrelled among themselves, and lighting a fire about the stone poured water on it and broke it to pieces. An Arab employed by M. Ganneau, who when the quarrel arose was engaged in taking a squeeze, tore off the wet impression in rags, and springing on his horse managed to escape, though not without a spear wound in his leg. Through the energy of Captain Warren and M. Ganneau better squeezes were afterwards obtained of the larger fragments, and at a later date the fragments themselves came to hand, so that of 1,000 letters which it is estimated the stone contained, 669 have been recovered.

While the materials remain imperfect, it is impossible to obtain a complete translation of the inscription, though various attempts have been made. M. Ganneau's second translation of June, 1870, differs widely from that which he put forth five months previously; but then his only copy of certain parts of the stone was certain torn rags (lambeaux frifés et chiffonnés), and his method of procedure with the fragments of the stone is thus described:—'La plus grande partie de ces morceaux, même les plus minimes, peut être mise en place facilement, en tenant compte de la correspondance horizontale et verticale des séries de caractères: il suffit de procéder comme pour déterminer la position géographique d'un point par l'intersection des lignes de longitude et de latitude.'[38] Translations have also been attempted by Professor Schlottman, of Halle, Professor Nöldeke, and in this country by Dr. Neubauer; while Mr. Deutsch has consistently asked scholars and the public to exercise patience and wait till the full materials for a translation should come to hand. The general drift of the inscription, however, is clear enough. It appears to be a contemporaneous record from the Moabite point of view of 2 Kings i. 1, set up by King Mesha, commencing with a brief record of himself and his father, commemorating warlike successes over the Israelites, explaining how he rebuilt and improved a number of well-known Moabite cities, and finishing apparently with some further reference to war. The names of Israel, Omri, Chemosh, occur up and down, and the monarch seems to have conceived himself under the special guidance of his god, who was thought to signify his will that this or that city should be attacked, and who was obeyed implicitly. Historically, therefore, the monument is interesting, since it is an unexpected record of a nation now passed away, and adds a trifle to our knowledge.

Paleographically, the stone is of far greater value, and happily of nearly as much value in its mutilated condition, as it would have been if perfect. It is the very oldest Semitic lapidary record of importance yet discovered, the most ancient specimen of the alphabetic writing still in common use amongst us—a century and a half earlier than any other inscription in the same Phœnician character, and three centuries earlier than any other such inscription of any length. Its significance in this respect is, however, only in process of being studied, and uniformity of opinion has not yet been arrived at. The names of the Hebrew letters are all significant of certain objects—aleph, bêth, gimel, daleth, for instance = ox, house, camel, door, &c.; and it has been maintained by Semitic scholars that the letters themselves were originally slight and abridged representations of the visible objects, the resemblance being more clearly seen in the older Phœnician than in the later Phœnician, the Assyrian or square character, and archaic Greek.[39] Mr. Deutsch, who was so careful in the matter of translation, was bold to express himself here, and to assert from the evidence of the Moabite stone that 'the more primitive the characters the simpler they become; not, as often supposed, the more complicated, as more in accordance with some pictorial prototype.'[40] This view is controverted by Professor Rawlinson, in the Contemporary Review for August, 1870, and, as it appears to us, successfully; for while the later characters in some instances present a greater complication to the eye, they are far simpler to the mind as soon as you imagine yourself engaged in writing them and exerting the volition separately for each stroke. 'In samech for instance, apparently the most complicated of the later letters, a gradual diminution in the number of strokes may be traced from first to last. Originally the letter was written like an early Greek xi—thus, (), with four distinct strokes; then the four were reduced to two by changing the three horizontal bars into a zigzag, which could be written without taking the hand from the paper, and adding a vertical bar beneath it; finally, the vertical bar was attached to one end of the zigzag, and thus made a continuation of it, so that a single continuous stroke sufficed for the whole letter.... In like manner, the original zain required three distinct strokes, two horizontal and one oblique ( ), which were subsequently represented by the form still in use (Z), a form producible by a single effort, without any removal of the pen from the paper.'

And so with regard to the pictorial origin of the letters. The early bêth differs from the later solely in having a pointed head instead of a rounded one. But the object which bêth was intended to represent was a tent, the earliest 'house' of pastoral man; and this had in primitive times the simple triangular form, Δ. Thus the early bêth more resembled the object than the later one. The early daleth is a simple triangle; the later has the right side of the triangle elongated, and the other two generally rounded into one. But daleth, 'door,' represented the opening of a tent, the form of which was like that of the tent, triangular. For other instances we must refer our readers to Professor Rawlinson's paper and the plate which accompanies it, merely remarking in the way of adverse criticism that the square letters of the Old Testament present a difficulty, since, while they are confessedly of later origin, such letters as bêth, gimel, zain, ain, kaph, shin, are less simple in the sense explained, than the older. The Moabite stone also throws light on the question of the time at which writing was introduced into Greece, the Greek alphabet of the earliest inscriptions (circ. b.c. 650-500) resembling that of the Moabite stone more closely than it does any later alphabet; so that Mr. Grote's opinion that letters were unknown to the Greeks of Homer's time, and Hesiod's, is in danger of being proved incorrect.

It is remarkable that a stone measuring three feet six inches in length and with thirty-four lines of writing on it should have escaped notice until the year 1868; but since Irby and Mangles visited Moab in 1809, scarcely any European traveller has passed near the spot where this monument was found; so that it has been said that the chief value of this discovery is in the prospect it affords of future successful exploration. It should be remembered that the Arabs are now aware of the price Europeans are willing to pay for such relics, and would no doubt bring others forward if they knew of any existing. Mr. E. H. Palmer, who was in the country in the spring of 1870, is probably right in his conclusion that above ground at least there does not exist another Moabite stone. But there are more fishes in the sea than have ever yet been caught; and if a few intelligent men accustomed to dealing with lawless Arabs could be sent out to Moab to conduct excavations, they might, if liberally supplied with money and other resources, obtain antiquities of great value, inscriptions possibly included. Dean Stanley points us also to 1 Sam. xv. 12, describing Saul's victory over the Amalekites, where it is said, 'Saul came to Carmel, and behold he set him up a place' (מַצִיג which is from the root נָצַג, to set, to put; in the Hiphil to make to stand, and which might be translated pillar or trophy)—the Dean points to this to show the possibility of even Jewish inscriptions coming to light.

To return to the characters at the south-east angle of the Haram—on the wall and on the handles of the jars or vases. The letters on the pottery are like those of the Moabite stone; whence the age of the jars is inferred to be about the same, and their origin Phœnician: the position of the pottery shows it to be of nearly the same age as the wall, and hence the antiquity of the wall is deduced; the wall itself shows Phœnician marks, and so the builders are believed to have been Phœnicians. This seems to us a little too hasty. The Moabite stone gives us the Moabite alphabet of King Mesha's time, which proves to be identical with that of old Phœnicia. Judea was geographically as near to Phœnicia as Moab was, and probably used the same alphabet, a supposition confirmed by the discovery of vase handles at Jerusalem with letters like those of the Moabite stone. It seems gratuitous to conclude that these vases were among the contents of a museum or were ever the property of Phœnicians, when the evidence goes to show that the language inscribed on them was common to all the races of Western Asia. Only for want of a better name has it been called 'Phœnician;' and Mr. Deutsch had already suggested the term 'Cadmean,' while Sir Henry Rawlinson had ventured the prediction that, should any early monument be found at Jerusalem, its inscription would be in this character. The Phœnician character was probably the only cursive character used by the Semitic nations, and the Hebrew character, Sir Henry believes, did not exist till after the return from the captivity. The vase handles therefore show us the kind of letters used by the Hebrew prophets, and the Cadmean masons' marks neither prove nor disprove the Phœnician origin of the Haram wall; but the identity of the vase-handle letters with those of the Moabite stone rather than with the alphabet of Assyrian tablets and gems, or of the inscription on the tomb of Eshmunazer (circ. b.c. 600) indicates the great antiquity both of the pottery and the south-east Haram wall. On this point we may add that we have compared (from the photographs) the letters of the vase-handles with those of the Moabite stone, and find the identity very apparent in the case of the tau, shin, kaph and mem.

The work promised by the Fund in the departments of natural history and geology still waits for want of means; though notes have been made on the occurrence of basalt, trap, hot springs, &c., and among the things sent home have been an occasional animal, a small collection of Coleoptera, a book of dried flowers from Moab, and some specimens of rock. In its zoology and botany, as well as in its human history and arts, Palestine has felt the influence of Africa, Asia and Europe; the heights of Lebanon and Hermon, the depths of Gennesareth and the Dead Sea, assist to make its natural history cosmopolitan. It is curious that the Clarias, a strange-looking fish of the Siluroid family, found by Tristram in the Lake of Galilee, and in one of the fountains near its shores, should be identical in species with a fish found in the Nile; thus far confirming Josephus, who says that the fountain of Capharnaum in Gennesareth produced a Nile fish, and on that account was thought to be a vein of the river of Egypt.[41] But the words of Linnæus are almost true to-day: 'We know more of the botany and zoology of farther India than we do of those of Palestine.' Of the geology we are in equal ignorance, although the depression of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea invites attention as being the most remarkable on the face of the globe, and constituting, in the opinion of Sir R. Murchison, the key to the entire geology of the district. Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Tristram, and a few other gentlemen, if sent out and supported for some years, would probably astonish us by the results of their investigations. In meteorology the Society has made a commencement, by sending out instruments and publishing tabular statements of barometrical readings, temperature, rainfall, &c., observed at Beyrout, Nazareth, Gaza, Jaffa, and in the Lebanon. With all this work on hand, they have also begun the exploration of the Tih—the Wilderness of the Wanderings—sending out Mr. E. H. Palmer, a most accomplished Arabic scholar, formerly of the Sinai Ordnance Survey, who appears to have made some discoveries, but whose full statement is not yet before us.

We had intended to detail the difficulties under which the explorers have done their work, but the list is too long: counting every shade, from the laziness of the native workmen, to the whizzing of native bullets; from the thermometer at 110 degrees to attacks of fever and dysentery; from slips in scaling mountains, danger from falling stones, risk of choking in narrow aqueducts and sewers—we had noted not less than fifty instances.

We are bound to say that the Society has made a good beginning; that it has done fully as much as could be expected under all the circumstances, and with its inadequate funds; and that if it be not well supported for another five years it will be to the lasting disgrace of England. In its scientific and its religions aims, in its practical and its unsectarian character, it suits the present age; supplying facts for theorists, illustrating points of Scripture history, and confirming the general truth of the Bible.

Besides the completion of the work at Jerusalem, much remains to be done, not only in natural history and geology, but in the observation of manners and customs, exploration at other cities, such as Jezreel, Samaria, Hebron, Bethshan, Nazareth, and excavation of the mounds scattered over the face of the country. There will probably never be a better opportunity than the present: for the visit of the Prince of Wales to the Holy Land removed some prejudices, the Turkish Government is favourable to the enterprise, and the work is actually begun. We conclude this review of the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund by heartily endorsing the appeal of Mr. Deutsch at the annual meeting in 1869. 'We, as humble votaries of science, would, in the name of science, urge you to continue that in which both religion and science may join. And let me remind you of one thing. There are ruins enough in the City of Sorrows. Do not add fresh ruins. Do not leave there broken shafts, abandoned galleries; and let it not be told in Gath that this England, the richest, proudest, and most Bible-loving country in the world, undertook one of the greatest undertakings, and abandoned it—for want of money.'

Art. V.—The Early Sieges of Paris. Les Comtes de Paris; Histoire de l'Avènement de la Troisième Race. Par Ernest Mourin. Paris: Didier et Cie.

Robert der Tapfere, Markgraf von Anjou, der Stammvater des Kapetingischen Hauses. Von Dr. Phil. Karl von Kalckstein. Berlin: Löwenstein.

The events of the last few months have, in a special way, drawn the thoughts of men towards two cities which stand out among European capitals as witnesses of the way in which the history of remote times still has its direct bearing on things which are passing before our own eyes. Rome and Paris now stand out, as they have stood out in so many earlier ages, as the historic centres of a period which, there can be no doubt, will live to all time as one of the marked periods of the world's history. And it is not the least wonderful phænomenon of this autumn of wonders that, while our eyes have been drawn at once to Rome and to Paris, they have been drawn far more steadily and with far keener interest towards Paris than they have been drawn towards Rome. We can hardly doubt, whether we look back to the past or onwards to the future, that the fall of the Pope's temporal power is really a greater event than any possible result of the war between Germany and France. Yet such is the greater immediate interest of the present struggle, such perhaps is the instinctive attraction of mankind towards the more noisy and brilliant triumphs of the siege and the battle-field, that the really greater event, simply because of the ease with which it has happened, has passed almost unnoticed in the presence of the lesser. The world has seen the Papacy in several shapes; but the shape of a Pontiff, spiritually infallible, but politically a subject, and the subject not of an universal Emperor but of a mere local King, is something which the world has not seen before. What may come of it, no man can say; but we may be pretty sure that greater things will come of it in one way or another, than can come out of any settlement, in whatever direction, of conflicting French and German interests. Still, at this moment, the present fate of Paris unavoidably draws to itself more of our thoughts than the future fate of Rome. But it is well to keep the two cities together before our eyes, and all the more so because the past history and the present position of those two cities have points in common which no other city in Europe shares with them in their fulness, which only one other city in Europe can claim to share with them in any degree.

The history of Rome, as all the world knows, is the history of a city which grew into an Empire. It grew in truth into a twofold, perhaps a more than twofold Empire. Out of the village on the Palatine sprang the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Pontiffs. From Rome came the language, the theology, the code of law, which have had such an undying effect on the whole European world. Amidst all changes, the city itself has been always clothed with a kind of mysterious and superstitious charm, and its possession has carried with it an influence which common military and political considerations cannot always explain. And from the Old Rome on the Tiber many of these attributes passed—some were even heightened in passing—to the new Rome on the Bosporos. From the days of Constantine till now, no man has ever doubted that, in the very nature of things, Constantinople, in whatever hands, must be the seat of empire. To Western eyes this seems mainly the result of her unrivalled geographical situation; over large regions of the East the New Rome wields the same magic influence which in the West has been wielded by the Old. The City,[42] the City of the Cæsars, is in Christian eyes the one great object to be won; in Mahometan eyes it is the one great object to be kept. By the Bosporos, as by the Tiber, it is the city which has grown into the Empire, which has founded it, and which has sustained it.

Now of the other capitals of Europe—the capitals of the more modern states—one alone can claim to have been, in this way, the creator of the state of which it is now the head. Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Saint Petersburg, are simply places chosen in later times, for reasons of caprice or convenience, as administrative centres of states which already existed. Vienna has grown from the capital of a Duchy into the capital of something which calls itself an Empire; but Vienna, as a city, has had nothing to do with the growth of that so-called Empire. London may fairly claim a higher place than any of the cities of which we have spoken. It was only by degrees, and after some fluctuations, that London, rather than Winchester, came to be permanently acknowledged as the capital of England. London won its rank, partly by virtue of an unrivalled military and commercial position, partly as the reward of the unflinching patriotism of its citizens in the Danish wars. But London in no way formed England, or guided her destinies. The history of London is simply that the city was found to be the most fitting and worthy head of an already existing kingdom. But Paris has been what London has been, and something more. Paris, like London, earned her pre-eminence in Gaul by a gallant and successful resistance to the Scandinavian enemy. It was the great siege of Paris in the ninth century which made Paris the chief among the cities of Gaul, and its Count the chief among the princes of Gaul. Its position first marked it out for the rank of a local capital, and, through the way in which it used its position, it grew into the capital of a kingdom. But it did not, like London, simply grow into the capital of a kingdom already existing. The city created first the county, and then the kingdom, of which it was successively the head. Modern France, as distinguished both from Roman Gaul and from the Western Kingdom of the Karlings, grew out of this County of Paris; and of the County of Paris the city was not merely the centre, but the life and soul. The position of Paris in the earliest times is best marked, as in the case of all Gaulish cities, by its place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It was a city, not of the first, but of the second rank; the seat of a Bishop, but not the seat of a Metropolitan.[43] Lutetia Parisiorum held the usual rank of one of those head towns of Gaulish tribes which grew into Roman cities. But it never became the centre of one of the great ecclesiastical and civil divisions; it never reached the rank of Lyons, Narbonne, Vienne, or Trier. Twice before the ninth century, the discerning eye, first of a Roman and then of a Frankish master, seemed to mark out the city of the Seine for greater things. It was the beloved home of Julian; it was the city which Hlodwig at once fixed upon for the seat of his new dominion. But the greatness of Paris, as the earliest settled seat of the Frankish power, was not doomed to be lasting. Under the descendants of Hlodwig Paris remained a seat of royalty; but, among the fluctuations of the Merovingian kingdoms, it was only one seat of royalty among several. It was the peer of Soissons, Orleans, and Metz—all of them places which thus, in the new state of things, assumed a higher importance than had belonged to them in Roman times. But, as the Austrasian House of the Karlings grew, first as Mayors, and then as Kings, to the lordship of the whole Frankish realm, the importance of the cities of Western Gaul necessarily lessened. Paris reached its utmost point of insignificance in the days of Charles the Great, whom French legends have pictured as a French King, reigning in Paris as his royal city. Whatever importance it had, it seems to have derived from its neighbourhood to the revered sanctuary of St. Denis. By a strange accident, the first King of the new house—the house with which Paris was to wage a war of races and languages—died either in the city itself, or in the precinct of the great monastery beyond its walls. Pippin, returning from a successful campaign in Aquitaine, fell sick at Saintes; from thence he was carried to Tours to implore the help of Saint Martin, and thence to Paris to implore the help of Saint Denis. He died at Paris, and was buried in the great minster which became the burial-place of the next and rival line of kings.[44] But Paris was neither the crowning-place nor the dwelling-place of his son, nor was it the object of any special attention during his long reign. Of the two sons of Pippin, between whom his kingdom was immediately divided, Paris fell to the lot of Karlmann. But he chose Soissons for his crowning-place—the place where his father had been crowned before him.[45] Charles, crowned at Noyon, made Aachen his capital, and, in the course of his whole reign, he visited Paris only on a single progress, when it is incidentally mentioned among a long string of other cities.[46]

But this time of utter neglect was, in the history of Paris, only the darkness before the coming of the dawn. In the course of the next reign Paris begins to play an important part, and from that time the importance of the city steadily grew till it became what we have seen it in our own day. The occasional visits of Lewis the Pious to the city are dwelled on by his poetical biographer with evident delight, and with even more than usual pomp of words.[47]. And the city was now about to appear in its most characteristic; light. In the words of Sir Francis Palgrave, who has sketched the early history of Paris with great power and insight,[48] 'the City of Revolutions begins her real history by the first French Revolution.'[49] In this particular case we do not even grudge the premature use of the word 'French,' for the movement of which he speaks was plainly a movement of the Romanized lands of the West against their Teutonic master. Most likely no such feeling was consciously present to the mind of any man; but nations and parties seek to shape themselves unconsciously, and cities and regions learn to play their appropriate parts, before they can give any intelligible account of what they are doing. The Emperor was leading an expedition against the revolted Bretons; suddenly all the disaffected spirits of the Empire, his own sons among the foremost, gathered themselves together at Paris.[50] They then seized Lewis himself at Compiègne, and their hated step-mother Judith on the rock of Laon. But one part of his dominions was still faithful to the imprisoned Cæsar; the German lands had no share in the rebellion, and eagerly sought for the restoration of their sovereign. In marking out the geographical divisions of feeling, the writer of the ninth century, like those of the nineteenth, is driven, as it were, to forestal the language of a somewhat later time. The Emperor had no confidence in the French, but he put his trust in the German.[51]

Such was the part—a characteristic part—played by Paris in the Revolution of 830. Four years later Paris appears playing an opposite, yet a no less characteristic part. The Emperor Lewis, already restored and again deposed, is held as a prisoner by his eldest son Lothar, and is led in bonds to Paris.[52] Again the men of the East, the faithful Germans, are in arms for their sovereign under Lewis, at that moment his only loyal son. But by this time the city has changed sides. Lothar, for fear of the German host, flees to the South, leaving his father at liberty; the late captive is led by his rejoicing people to the minster of Saint Denis, and there is girt once more with the arms of the warrior and with the Imperial robes of the Cæsar.[53] Once then in the course of its long history, did Paris behold the inauguration of a lawful Emperor. But it was the re-inauguration of an Emperor whom one Parisian revolution had overthrown, and whom another Parisian revolution had set up again; and in the moment alike of his fall and of his restoration the force of loyal Germany forms at one time a threatening, at another an approving, background.