xv. A POTTERY MOUND. 267 



sherds, not on quite so large a scale, may be seen 

 outside the walls of Alexandria and Cairo. The sites, 

 indeed, of many ancient towns, especially those built of 

 crude, sun-dried bricks, are often covered with great 

 quantities of such fragments exposed to view and col- 

 lected together by the disintegrating action of the 

 weather upon the ruins, giving them the appearance 

 of a deserted pottery rather than that of a town. Parti- 

 coloured heaps of broken pottery are common in the 

 neighbourhood of old villages and towns in Palestine. 

 They are especially abundant in one or two places near 

 Jerusalem. One of the gates of the city was called the 

 Potter's Gate, opening upon the Valley of Hinnom to 

 the south, because broken vessels of earthenware were 

 carried through it to be thrown out beyond the walls, 

 and also because it led to a place called the Potter's 

 Field the only spot in the neighbourhood of Jer- 

 usalem where potters still carry on their work. 

 Heaps of rubbish in the valley immediately outside 

 the recently discovered site of this gate have been 

 found to consist almost exclusively of broken and very 

 old pottery. The Potter's Field received afterwards 

 the name of Aceldama, or Field of Blood, from its 

 well-known association with the tragic fate of Judas ; 

 and it was purchased by the Jewish priests for the 

 thirty pieces of silver, the price of blood, which Judas 

 returned to them, as a burial place for strangers dying 

 in the city during the great festivals. Large quanti- 

 ties of earth were taken away to Europe from this spot 

 in the Middle Ages, under the impression that it had 



