pretty plainly by what method this work was accomplished.

"From these sepulchres we returned towards the city again, and just by Herod's gate were shewn a grotto full of filthy water and mire. This passes for the dungeon in which Jeremiah was kept by Zedekiah, till enlarged by the charity of Ebed Melech, Jer. xxxviii."

66

Dr. Clarke's description will supply the best commentary on Maundrell's honest but homely account. He describes these sepulchres as a series of subterranean chambers, forming a sort of labyrinth, resembling the still more wonderful example lying westward of Alexandria in Egypt, by some called the sepulchres of the Ptolemies. "Each chamber," he says, contains a certain number of receptacles for dead bodies, not being much larger than our coffins, but having the more regular form of oblong parallelograms; thereby differing from the usual appearance presented in the sepulchral crypts of this country, where the soros, although of the same form, is generally of very considerable size, and resembles a large cistern. The taste manifested in the interior of these chambers seems also to denote a later period in the history of the arts: the skill and neatness visible in the carving is admirable, and there is much of ornament displayed in several parts of the work.* We observed also some slabs of marble exquisitely sculp

• This agrees with Dr. Richardson's brief but more specific description, which the reader may compare with the above. "The road down to them (the tombs of the kings) is cut in the rock, and the entrance is by a large door also cut in the rock. It leads into a deep excavation, open above, about fifty feet long, forty feet wide, and about twenty feet deep. Heaps of sand and earth are piled up along the sides, and the whole has much the appearance of a sand-pit. The west end seems to have

tured: these we had never seen in the burial-places before mentioned. The entrance is by an open court, excavated in a stratum of white limestone, like a quarry. It is a square of thirty yards. Upon the western site of this area appears the mouth of a cavern, twelve yards wide, exhibiting over the entrance an architrave with a beautifully sculptured frieze. Entering this cavern, and turning to the left, a second architrave appears above the entrance to another cavern, but so near to the floor of the cave as barely to admit the passage of a man's body through the aperture. We lighted some wax tapers, and here descended into the first chamber. In the sides of it were other square openings, like door-frames, offering passages to yet interior chambers. In one of these we found the lid of a white marble coffin (engraved in Le Bruyn's Travels, 1725): this was entirely covered with the richest and most beautiful sculpture; but, like all the other sculptured work about the place, it represented nothing of the human figure, nor of any animal, but consisted entirely of foliage and flowers, and principally of the leaves and branches of the vine.

"As to the history of this most princely place of burial, we shall find it difficult to obtain much information. That it was not what its name implies, is very evident, because the sepulchres of the kings

been ornamented with the greatest care. A cornice, with triglyph, regulus, and guttæ, passes along the top, and the vine-leaf mantles round the decorations. In the south-west corner, a low, narrow door leads into a series of chambers, in each of which there is a number of excavations, cut in the rock for the reception of the dead, like those which we saw in Malta and Syracuse, all of which are now empty, and the place is damp and disagreeable. The innermost apartment is adorned above all the rest, and has the mantling vine, with clusters of grapes, twined round the pilasters, and inscribed on the sarcophagi."

of Judah were in Mount Zion. The most probable opinion is maintained by Pococke, who considered it as the sepulchre of Helen, queen of Adiabene. De Chateaubriand has since adopted Pococke's opinion.* Indeed it seems evident, that, by the royal caves, nothing more is intended by Josephus than the regal sepulchre of Helena he had before mentioned, thus repeated under a different appellation." +

There can be little doubt that this royal cemetery was without the walls of the ancient city, but at no great distance; so that Jerusalem must formerly have extended towards the north, nearly a mile beyond the modern town. With this agrees the description given by Josephus of the fourth quarter of the city. "For, as the city grew more populous, it gradually crept beyond its own limits, and those parts of it that stood northward of the Temple, and joined that hill to the city, made it considerably larger; and caused that hill which is in number the fourth, and is called Bezetha, to be inhabited also. It lies over against the Tower of Antonia, but is divided from it by a deep valley or ditch, which was dug on purpose."+ Taking in, then, the site of the new town, or Canopolis, as

This is not quite correct. Chateaubriand mentions the opinion as a plausible conjecture; but afterwards urges the text of Josephus, cited above, as an objection; and, from another passage in the Jewish historian, supposes the caverns to have been the sepulchre of Herod the Tetrarch. "Speaking of the wall which Titus erected to press Jerusalem still more closely than before, he says, that this wall, returning towards the north, enclosed the sepulchre of Herod. Now this is the situation of the royal caverns."— Travels, vol. ii. p. 108.

+ See note at p. 83.

He informs us, that it was not till the reign of Claudius that this quarter began to be enclosed within the walls; but it must have been inhabited long before as a suburb.

Bezetha was also called, and that part of Mount Sion which is now without the walls, we shall obtain an area corresponding to the account given us by historians of the extent of the ancient city. Josephus states its circumference to have been thirty-three furlongs, or little more than four miles; that is, nearly twice that of the modern town.

Mount Moriah, on which the Temple stood, was originally an irregular hill, separate from Mount Zion and Acra, as well as from Bezetha. In order to extend the appendages of the Temple over an equal surface, and to increase the area of the summit, it became necessary to support the sides, which formed a square, by immense works. The east side bordered the valley of Jehoshaphat, which was very deep. The south side, overlooking a very low spot, was faced, from top to bottom, with a strong wall; and Josephus assigns an elevation of not less than 300 cubits (or 450 feet) to this part of the Temple; so that it was necessary, in order to a communication with Mount Zion, to erect a bridge across the valley. The west side looked towards Acra; the appearance of which, from the Temple, is compared to a semicircle, or amphitheatre. On the north side, an artificial ditch separated the Temple from Bezetha. The Tower of Antonia flanked the north-east corner of the Temple. It was built on the rock by Hyrcanus the First, but was afterwards strengthened and embellished by Herod the Great, who named it after his benefactor, Mark Antony. That execrable but magnificent monarch is stated by Josephus to have rebuilt the second Temple. According to Josephus, eleven thousand

*

• There is reason to suppose that the second Temple was not pulled down, but that Herod repaired it, and added considerably to its extent.

labourers were employed on it for nine years; the works were prodigious, and were not completed till after Herod's death. To these "buildings of the Temple," which were probably at the time being carried on, the disciples pointed the attention of our Lord, when he said to them in reply: "See ye not all these things? Verily, I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." * This prediction was literally fulfilled. When the Romans took Jerusalem, Titus ordered his soldiers to dig up the foundations both of the city and the Temple; and Terentius Rufus, the Roman general, is stated to have driven a ploughshare over the site of the sacred edifice. When the caliph Omar took Jerusalem, the spot had been abandoned by the Christians. Seid Eben Batrik, an Ara. bian historian, relates, that the caliph applied to the patriarch Sophronius, and inquired of him, what would be the most proper place at Jerusalem for building a mosque. Sophronius conducted him to the ruins of Solomon's Temple. The caliph Abd-el-Malek made additions to the buildings, and enclosed the rock with walls. His successor, the caliph El Oulid, contributed still more to the embellishment of El Sakhara, and covered it with a dome of copper, gilt, taken from a church at Balbec. The Crusaders converted this temple of Mahommed into a Christian sanctuary, but Saladin restored it to its original use.†

THE MOSQUE OF OMAR.

Such is briefly the history of this splendid monument of Saracenic magnificence, which the especial good fortune of Dr. Richardson, in being allowed to * Matt. xxiv. 2. + Chateaubriand, vol. ii. p. 113.