markets of Jerusalem with vegetables. The platform of rock on which this village stands presents at every step levelled vestiges of monuments, which must have been destroyed at a very remote period. The huts of this village rest against a wall of rocks, in which are to be seen everywhere traces of considerable excavations. A single monument has remained entire, above the cliff commanding the gardens planted at the bottom of the valley, and I cannot by any means understand how it happens that an ancient structure so very important, and so strikingly visible to the eyes of every passer-by, can have continued undescribed up to this day, or, at any rate, how it happens not to have been discovered by any traveller. I consider myself fortunate in being the first to bring under public notice a very interesting structure, the remote antiquity of which can never be contested.

from the mass of rock on three sides only, that is to say, to the southward, westward, and northward. The entrance is to the westward. It is precisely a copy, on a large scale, of the Egyptian monolithic ediculi which are to be seen in our museums. A square dado, with the edges inclining slightly outward, constitutes the basis of the monument. Above runs an Egyptian cornice, formed as in the tombs of Absalom and Zachariah, of a torus surmounted by a wide cavetto, crowned by a simple square moulding. In the middle of the face opens a door, having at the summit two rectangular notches placed outside the jambs, and similar to those which are often seen on the doors of Egyptian excavations. The lateral faces are merely planned out, or finished towards such parts as are close to the exterior face.

The interior of the building is now full of filth, used as litter by some miserable fellah of Siloäm. The description of this interior is as follows:-The door, opening through a wall ten inches thick, leads into a small square antechamber of two and a half feet on each side, at the further end of which, another small low door, two feet wide, opens through a second wall, also ten inches thick. This door leads into a second square room, of rather more than seven feet on each side containing, in the left and rear walls, at a height of about two feet three inches above the ground, two arched recesses. The wall on the right is quite naked.

It is impossible not to recognise the striking resemblance of this monolith with the monolithic ediculi of pure Egyptian origin; nobody can, therefore,

ever think of ascribing it to a Roman or Grecian period. It is remarkably curious to compare the cornice by which it is decorated, with the cornice of one of the Nineveh structures dug out by M. Botta from the Mound of Khorsabad.* The plan of the two cornices is exactly the same. Only as at Nineveh, the building alluded to is much more extensive than that of Silöam, all the dimensions of the mouldings are on a somewhat larger scale, with the exception of that of the plat-band. The following is a comparative table of the respective

measurements :-

Without any doubt, the architects who planned these two cornices had studied in the same school, and had learned the same principles. The one was an Assyrian, and lived at least six hundred and twenty-five years before the Christian era; the other was neither Greek, nor Roman.

Here a very curious question presents itself. Does the monument of Silöam belong to the period of the kings of Judah? This is a point which it would be very important to settle. Two hypotheses offer themselves, which I shall examine by turns. It is either a tomb or a religious edifice. Let us begin with the first supposition. We know that the king's gardens occupied

* See p. 150 of the splendid work of M. Botta.

all that portion of the bottom of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, at present filled with orchards and gardens, watered by the fountain of Silöam. Without any doubt, the king would have never allowed tombs to be placed in the vicinity of his gardens, and more especially in such a situation as to command them. This would unavoidably have happened if a necropolis, on the site now occupied by the village of Silöam, had continued to receive the dead, after the king's gardens were laid out. It is, therefore, very probable that this necropolis of Silöam must have been abandoned from the day when Solomon selected the ground, placed a few yards below, for the formation of his royal gardens. In that case we might infer that this necropolis must have belonged to the Jebusites, who occupied the territory of Jerusalem before the arrival of the Israelites, and who remained masters of a portion of the town, even after David had got possession of the fortress of Zion. If then it be admitted that the building is a burying-place, I formally propose to consider the monolithic tomb of Silöam as a monument of the Jebusites.

I have alluded to the king's gardens. In the following passages of Scripture these gardens are specially mentioned. We read in 2 Kings (xxv. 4), " And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate, between two walls which is by the king's garden; (now the Chaldees were against the city round about ;) and the king (Zedekiah) went the way toward the plain. 5.-And the army of the Chaldees pursued after the king; and overtook him in the plains of Jericho, and all his army were scattered from him."

From the first passage the inference is that the Assyrians did not besiege so closely as the other parts, that portion of the town situated towards the Tyropæon, between the enclosure of the Temple and the fortified wall crowning Mount Zion. There is now standing, at the most favourable spot for the construction of a gate, the Bab-el-Morharbeh, which has, in my opinion, taken the place of the gate mentioned in the verses which I have just transcribed. Zedekiah fled with his army towards Jericho; the Assyrians pursued and overtook him there; the inference is that they had not previously occupied the valley of the Jordan, and that the invading army followed, if not the sea shore, the road leading to Jerusalem by the high lands.

We read in Nehemiah (iii. 15), "But the gate of the fountain, repaired Shallum the son of Col-hozeh, the ruler of part of Mizpah; he built it, and covered it, and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and the bars thereof, and the wall of the Pool of Siloah, by the king's garden, and unto the stairs that go down from the city of David." This pool of Siloah is no other than the Piscina of Silöam, and the gate of the fountain must consequently have been very near the present Fountain of the Virgin. This gate of the fountain must then have been situated so very near the gate by which King Zedekiah made his escape, that I am much disposed to identify these two gates first with each other, and secondly with the Bab-el-Morharbeh. A city so small as Jerusalem could not have had its enclosing wall literally riddled with gates. Besides, what would have been the use of so many, if we remember that all the roads by